the point of this little game!" McTavish
muttered, squinting as he peered ahead, "and I don't fancy the idea at
all."

"I don't get what you mean?"

McTavish snorted.

"Did ye never see a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap?"

Then Gerry himself began to understand. On a broad platform before the
grandstand stood a line of men armed with gas-guns. Some were gray
scaled officers of the fighting forces, and others were dandified Green
Men of the decadent minority that had fawned upon and mingled with their
conquerers. In the flat and marshy expanse of the plain before them
there had been driven a number of short but heavy stakes like tent pegs,
each with a metal ring set in the top. There were long rows of them.
Gray scaled guards were busy fettering prisoners to the pegs, making
them fast by tying to the metal ring the other end of the long cord with
which their hands were tied behind them. The hunters and the audience
were ready, the bait was being prepared.

Closana was a few feet away from Gerry, fastened to the next stake. She
stood erect, her shoulders drawn back by the strain of her bonds and her
long hair blowing in the wind.

"This is the end, Geree," she said, "if not today, then tomorrow or the
next day. This was the tale told in Larr of what happens to the
prisoners of the Scaly Ones, but I never believed it till now."

* * * * *

There were sixty or eighty prisoners fastened in the field to serve as
bait for the giant dakta. About half were Golden Amazons captured in
various raids. The remainder were men and women of the Green People of
Giri, prisoners condemned to death by the grim and ruthless tribunals of
the Scaly Ones. Now a dozen attendants carrying leather buckets ran up
and down the lines of the captives, splashing each victim with a dipper
full of a purple colored and very pungent oil.

"Now what's the game?" Gerry muttered. Angus bent his head to sniff at
the heavy liquid trickling down his hairy chest.

"It smells like a harlot's dream!" he muttered sourly, "probably
intended to make us more attractive to whatever kind of creature it is
that's coming after us!"

The attendants had hurried away with their buckets of oil, and now the
crowds in the grandstand and on the plain settled down to wait. They
were in holiday mood, laughing and talking in their shrill voices.

Then a black dot appeared high up in the sky. A murmur of anticipation
ran over the crowd. T