too certain hold. So swift was the pace now that within a few
minutes a wide clearing loomed ahead and her captor began to slip
groundward.

Suddenly the hairy creature halted on a wide limb bordering the clearing
as a host of shadowy forms rose around him. There was not enough light
for Dylara to make use of her eyes but she sensed these were the figures
of creatures similar to the one which held her.

They chattered shrilly among themselves in a completely unfamiliar
tongue for several moments, then all of them moved ahead a short
distance until the clearing itself was reached.

Dylara was expecting the entire party to descend to the ground. But
instead they began to climb higher and higher. At last the one carrying
her came to a halt well within the embrace of a jungle patriarch; and at
that moment Uda, the moon, appeared from behind a cloud and poured her
silver rays into the clearing.

* * * * *

For the first time since her capture she was able to see well enough to
distinguish objects. She was surrounded by a group of some ten or twelve
man-like beings--but beings like nothing she had ever dreamed of!

All were well over six feet in height, but so thin in body they seemed
much taller. All were naked except for girdles of grass about their
hips, the rest of their bodies being covered with monkey-like hair.
Their arms and legs were incredibly long and thin, their toes long and
prehensile. Each face was hairless and almost perfectly round,
containing small beady eyes, a brief blob of nose, a tiny lipless mouth
and almost no chin at all. It was more the face of some particularly
repellent insect--a comparison that leaped to Dylara's mind at sight of
the long hairy limbs, the thin torsos pinched in deeply at the waist and
the quick, jerky way in which they moved restlessly about her.

The one holding her let her slide from its back and the others moved
closer, reaching out to pluck at her tunic with abnormally long nailless
fingers, their voices like the rising skirl of an insect swarm.

Angrily she pushed away the exploring fingers. "Who are you?" she cried,
"and what do you want of me?"

One of the things, evidently angered at being repulsed, snaked out a
long arm and caught her roughly about the waist, dragging her to him.
Instantly the one that had brought her here leaped upon the intruder,
nearly sweeping Dylara from her precarious footing on the branch. For an
instant th