verrun North America.

Five days after the news of the Chinese disaster was confirmed, Cliff
Hynes came back from the capital of the American Confederation,
Washington.

"It's no use, Kay," he said. "The Government won't even look at the
Crumbler. I told them it would disintegrate every inorganic substance
to powder, and they laughed at me. And it's true, Kay: they've given
up the attempt to enslave China. Henceforward a hundred thousand of
our own citizens are to be sacrificed each year. Eaten alive, Kay!
God, if only the Crumbler would destroy organic forms as well!"

* * * * *

The first year's quota of fifty thousand boys and fifty thousand
girls, thrown to the maw of the monsters to save humanity, nearly
disrupted the Confederation. Despite the utmost secrecy, despite the
penalty of death for publishing news of the sacrifice, despite the
fact that those who drew the fatal lots were snatched from their homes
at dead of night, everything became known.

On the vast pampas in the extreme north of the Argentine Republic,
where Bolivia, the Argentine, Paraguay and Brazil unite, was the place
of sacrifice. Thousands of acres, white with the bones of those whom
the monsters had engulfed. Brainless, devoid of intelligence,
sightless, because even the sense had not become differentiated in
them, yet by some infernal instinct the Earth Giants had become aware
that this was their feasting ground.

By some tacit compact, the guards who had annually brought their
victims to be devoured had been unmolested, the vast wall of
semi-human shapes withdrawing into the shelter of the surrounding
forests while the Chinese were staked out in rows. Death, which would
have been a mercy, had been denied them. It was living flesh that the
Earth Giants craved. And here, on the spot known as Golgotha, the
hideous sacrifice had been annually repeated.

That first year, when the chosen victims were transported to the fatal
spot, all America went mad. Frenzied parents attacked the offices of
the Federation in every city. The cry was raised that Spanish
Americans had been selected in preference to those of more northern
blood. Civil war loomed imminent.

And year after year these scenes must be repeated. Boys and girls,
from fifteen to twenty years of age, the flower of the Federation, a
hundred thousand of them, must die a hideous death to save humanity.
Now the choice of the second year's victims was at ha