en. He stared incredulously
at the glowing spot on a distant wall, where a flame must have
touched, and at the figure beneath it.

The figure of a woman! A young woman, tall, slender, fair-haired,
whose skin was white, a creamy white, whiter than snow.

A woman? It was a mere girl, slender and beautiful, her graceful young
body poised as if, in quick flight, she had been caught and held for a
moment of stillness.

What was she doing here? His exhausted brain could not comprehend what
it meant. He had seen women of the Mole-men tribe mingling with the
men. Like them their heads were pointed, their faces grotesque and
hideous. Rawson gave an inarticulate cry of amazement and staggered
forward.

Between him and the distant figure a crowd of Reds swarmed in. They
came from a connecting passage. Above their heads the lava tips of
flame-throwers were spitting jets of green fire. Every face was turned
toward him at his cry.

Beyond them the white figure vanished. Dean, leaning weakly against
the wall, told himself dully that it had been a phantom, a product of
his own despairing brain and his own weakness. Then that weakness
overcame him; and the red Mole-men, their white and hideous eyes, the
threatening jets of green flame, all vanished in the quick darkness
that swept over him....

CHAPTER XII

_Dreams_

The black curtain of unconsciousness which descended so quickly upon
Rawson was not easily thrown off. For hours, days or weeks--he never
knew how long he lay in the citadel of the Reds--it was to wrap him
around.

Nor was his waking a matter of a moment. Many and varied were the
impressions which came to him in times of semiconsciousness, and which
of them were realities and which dreams, he could not tell.

He was being tortured with knives, lances tipped with pain that
dragged him up from the black depths in which he lay. Dimly he
realized that his clothes were being stripped from him and that the
piercing knives were none the less real for being only the touch of
hands and rough cloth upon his blistered body. Then from head to foot
he was coated with a substance cool and moist. The pain died to a mere
throbbing and again he felt himself sinking back into unconsciousness.

There were other visions, many others, some of them plain and
distinct, some blurred and terrifying to his fevered brain trying
vainly to bring order and reason into what was utterly chaotic.

Once a bedlam of shrieking voices