one horrified glance over his
shoulder. Then he crashed against the white trunk of a tree and helped
Harkness drag the body of the girl between two twin trunks. He pulled
himself to safety in the shelter of the protecting trees, and held
weakly to one of them.... And the crimson lace-work of the sap-wood that
showed through the white bark was no brighter red than the mark of his
blood-stained hands where they clung for support.

CHAPTER VIII

_Doomed_

The sun was high when they ventured forth. Diane would have come, but
the two men would have none of it. They remembered the sight they had
seen; they knew what was left of a man's body lying on the rocks above;
and they ordered the girl to stay hidden while Kreiss remained with her
as a guard.

There were only the four who lay hidden in the woods; Schwartzmann and
Max, with the remaining three men, were gone. Harkness' calls were
unanswered, and he ceased the halloo.

"Better keep quiet," he advised himself and the others. "We are out of
ammunition, though they don't know it. And they have got away. They will
keep on going, too, and I am not any too well pleased with that. I
wanted to put Schwartzmann where I could keep an eye on him.... Oh,
well, he isn't very dangerous."

But Chet Bullard made a few mental and unspoken reservations to that
remark. "That boy is always dangerous," he told himself, "and he won't
be happy unless he is making trouble. Thank the Lord he hasn't got that
gun!"

He came out cautiously from among the trees, but the red horde was gone.
The reptiles' wings had rasped and clashed furiously for a time; they
had darted in fiery flashes before the protecting trees: and the fitful
breeze had brought gusts of nauseous odors--until a thin haze formed in
the higher air and the red things were gone.

"There will not be any more for a while," said Harkness.

He pointed toward the fumerole they had seen from the lookout earlier in
the day: again it was emitting jets of thin, steamy vapor that did not
disappear like steam but floated up above their heads. "The gas has
driven them off," he added.

* * * * *

The two men climbed slowly up the slope that had been the wave front of
molten rock. Chet found his pistol by the path and picked it up.

"We'll get more ammunition up top," he told Harkness, "and we will toss
some down to Kreiss. He can have the extra gun you brought for
Schwartzmann, too."

He stop