avage who had nearly strangled him, before a second crashing blow
brought him down. He lay still then, overwhelmed in darkness for a long,
long time.

He scarcely knew when he was lifted at last and borne forward into the
great circle of light cast by one of the fires. He felt the glare upon
his eyeballs, but it conveyed nothing to him. Over by the farther fire
some festivity seemed to be in progress. He had a vague vision of
leaping, naked bodies, and the flash of knives. There was a good deal of
shouting also, and now and then a nightmare shriek. And then came the
torment of the fire, great heat enveloping him, thirst that was anguish.

He turned upon his captors, but his mouth was too dry for speech. He
could only glare dumbly into their evil faces, and they glared back at
him in fiendish triumph. Nearer to the red glow they came, nearer yet.
He could hear the crackle of the licking flames. They danced giddily
before his eyes.

Suddenly the arms that bore him swung back. He knew instinctively that
they were preparing to hurl him into the heart of the fire, and the
instinct of self-preservation rushed upon him, stabbing him to vivid
consciousness. With a gigantic effort he writhed himself free from their
hold.

He fell headlong, but the strength of madness had entered into him. He
fought like a man possessed, straining at his bonds till they cracked
and burst, forcing from his parched throat sounds which in saner moments
he would not have recognized as human, struggling, tearing, raging, in
furious self-defence.

He was hopelessly outmatched. The odds were such as no man in his senses
could have hoped to combat with anything approaching success. Almost
before his bonds began to loosen, his enemies were upon him again. They
hoisted him up, fighting like a maniac. They tightened his bonds
unconcernedly, and prepared for a second attempt.

But, before it could be made, a fierce yell rang suddenly from the
cliffs above them, echoing weirdly through the savage pandemonium,
arresting, authoritative, piercingly insistent.

What it portended Herne had not the vaguest notion, but its effect upon
the two Wandis who held him was instant and astounding. They dropped him
like a stone, and fled as if pursued by furies.

As for Herne, he wriggled and writhed from the vicinity of the fire,
still working at his bonds, his one idea to reach the water that he knew
was running within a stone's throw of him. It was an agonizing p