.

* * * * *

Professor Prescott stood up and stretched.

"Thank God for small favors!" he exclaimed. "But you, Jack? You must
be burned cruelly.

"Forget it!" Stoddard was already wrapping a handkerchief around his
wrist. "Now let's see about getting out of here. These little rats all
seem to be asleep, and Lord knows where that maniac Krassnov is.
Perhaps we can make it. At any rate, we'll give them a run for their
money!"

As he spoke, he drew his automatic.

Silently, stealthily, they left that glittering chamber and proceeded
down the cavern toward what seemed to be the entrance, guided by their
remembrance of the way they had come.

A hundred yards or more they made, seeing no sign of their captors,
when suddenly a musical gong rang out.

"We've stepped on one of Krassnov's infernal signals!" cried Stoddard,
above the din. "Now there'll be hell to pay!"

And "hell to pay" there was, almost instantly--for before they had
taken ten more steps, the cavern ahead was full of small, ghostly
figures, jabbering in their shrill voices.

Indifferent now of what he did, their lives at stake, Stoddard blazed
away with his automatic, sweeping it from side to side of the stony
walls as he fired.

As the shots crashed out, the jabbers turned to shrieks of terror.
Several of the pigmies fell. The rest broke their ranks and shrank
into the shadows.

"Run!" yelled Stoddard, slipping a new clip into his pistol.

The professor needed no invitation. Gathering his long legs he sped
after the younger man, and together they burst from the mouth of the
cavern.

* * * * *

Outside, in the dazzle of moonlight, they paused for an instant.

"This way!" called Stoddard, racing toward that splintered arena.

They gained it and lunged across it to the shelving slope that reached
upward to the narrow, perilous ridge whence they had come.

As they proceeded, the pigmy horde following with incredible
swiftness, Stoddard wheeled and fired time and again--and now his
shots were answered by the reports of rifles.

"Krassnov and his Cossacks!" he muttered. "Well, we'll give them our
heels, unless they hit us."

"And Russians are notoriously bad shots, I understand," panted the
professor.

At any rate, they reached the slope and struggled upward toward the
ridge, putting themselves presently out of range behind the jagged
rocks that loomed on every side.

But ju