ed body.

The humming of the machine changed to a whistle. Placing his fingers on
his lips in a signal of quiet, Unani Assu whispered:

"Let Ana sleep. She mustn't see this."

Opening a door in the machine, his handsome face lighted with a grim
smile, he whispered exultingly:

"Watch!"

A scuttling sound issued forth and then, half drunkenly, an enormous rat
tumbled out--one of those horrible rats with the hairless, humanlike
faces that had so frequently come from the life-machine.

Hale could not crush back the cry that issued from his throat.

"Where is Sir Basil?" he gasped.

"There!" cried the Indian, pointing to the kicking rat, which was fast
gaining strength.

* * * * *

Hale staggered back. "No! You don't mean it, do you?"

Unani Assu turned the rat over with a contemptuous toe. "Yes, I mean it.
Behold Aimu, the man who thought himself creator and destroyer--the man
who said that a human being was no higher than a rat! Perhaps he was
right, for see this thing that was once a man!"

Hale buried his face in his hands. "Kill it, Unani Assu! Kill it!"

Unani Assu's low laugh was metallic. "You kill it."

Hale uncovered his face. "Open the disintegrator." Gingerly he reached
for the rat's tail.

But his hand never touched the animal. The hairless face turned for a
second, and the little, beady eyes blinked up at Hale with an expression
that his fevered imagination thought almost human. Then, like a dark
shadow, the rat dashed away. Once around the room it scampered, hunting
for an exit. Hale started in pursuit. He was almost upon the animal
again, when, leaping up from his grasp, it landed on a low shelf where
chemicals were stored. Several bottles fell, filling the room with
fumes.

Another bottle fell, and, suddenly, amid a thunderous roar, the ceiling
and walls began falling. Some highly explosive chemical had been stored
in one of the bottles.

Hale was thrown violently against the couch. His hand touched Ana's
body. One last shred of consciousness enabled him to pick her up and
drag her out. In the open, he fell, aware, before blackness descended,
that flames leaped high over the laboratory building and that Unani Assu
lay dead within.

* * * * *

Hale and Ana, leaning over the deck-rail of a small steam launch, gazed
into the dark waters of the Amazon.

"We ought to reach Para by morning," said Hale, "and then, dearest,
we'