sting him through.

The burst of water, icy cold, that descended upon him from above
shocked him from the stupor that claimed his senses. He was drenched
in an instant, strangling and gasping for breath. But he could think!
And, as the lean hands seized him again and hurried him forward, he
almost dared to hope.

* * * * *

To his eyes the passageway was a place of utter darkness, but the red
ones, their great owl eyes opened wide, hurried him on. His stumbling
feet encountered a flight of steps. With the red guard he climbed a
winding stair where the tunnel twisted upward.

That icy deluge had set every nerve aquiver with new life. He hardly
dared ask himself what might lie ahead. Yet he had been saved from
that mob; it might be his life would be spared, that in some way he
could learn to communicate with these people, learn more of this
subterranean world--which must be of tremendous extent. Without any
sure knowledge of their plans, he still was certain in his own mind
that they intended to swarm out upon the upper world. He might even be
able to show them the folly of that.

A thousand thoughts were flashing through his mind when the tunnel
ended. Beyond a square-cut opening the air was aglow with red. An
ominous thunder was in his ears. Then a score of hands lifted him
bodily and threw him out upon a rocky floor that burned his hands as
he fell.

Heat, blistering, unbearable, beat upon him. He was wrapped in
quick-rising clouds of steam from his wet clothes.

The platform ended. Far below was a sea of red faces, grotesque and
horrible, where each held two ghastly white disks, and at the center
of each disk a mere pinpoint eye.

He saw it all in the instant of his falling--the inhuman, shrieking
mob, the blast of hot flame not forty feet away at the back of the
rocky niche, and, between himself and the flame, a giant figure that
leaped exultantly, while its body, that appeared carved from metallic
copper, reflected the red fires until it seemed itself aflame.

* * * * *

Dean knew in the fraction of a second while he scrambled to his feet,
that the great room had gone silent. The roaring of the flames ceased;
even the clamor of shrill voices was stilled. He had thrown one arm
across his face to shield his eyes; the heat still poured upon him
like liquid fire. But his instant decision to throw himself out and
down into the waiting mob was chec