to silence in the room where now the new announcer was
giving a list of the dead--a room where men were speechless before an
emergency no man could have foreseen. But Smithy's eyes, gazing far
off, saw nothing of that room. Again he was seated on an outthrust
point of rock, Dean Rawson beside him, and from the black depths
beneath a man's voice was rising clearly, mockingly it seemed, in
song:

"You're pokin' through the crust of hell
And braggin' too damn loud of it,
For, when you get to hell, you'll find
The devil there to pay!"

"The devil is there to pay," Smithy repeated softly. He leaned across
and placed one hand on Colonel Culver's knee. "With your assistance,
Colonel, I'd like to go down there and find him. You and I, we know
the way--we'll organize an expedition. Maybe we can settle that debt."

CHAPTER XV

_The Lake of Fire_

Before a barrier of gold, waist-high, Dean Rawson stood tense and
rigid. Behind him the great cave-room swarmed with warriors, leaders,
doubtless, of the unholy hordes. But beyond the barrier were the real
leaders of the Mole-men tribes--Phee-e-al, ruler in chief, and his
clustering guard of high priests. In the flooding light from the wall,
their eyes were circles of dead-white skin. A black speck glinted
wickedly in the center of each.

Phee-e-al was speaking. His artificially whitened face grimaced
hideously; the shrill whistling voice made no comprehensible sound.
But in some manner Rawson gathered a dim realization of what his
gestures meant.

Phee-e-al pointed at the captive; and one lean hand, with talons more
suggestive of a bird of prey than of a human hand, pointed downward.
"Gevarro," he said. The word was repeated many times in the course of
his whistling talk.

"Gevarro"--what did it mean? Then Rawson remembered. It was the word
he had heard in his dreams, the name of the lake of fire.

The voices of the priests rose in a shrill chorus of protests, and
even Phee-e-al stood silent. They crowded about their ruler, and
Rawson knew they were demanding him for themselves. Then the one who
still held a human body in his arms sprang forward and his long talons
worked unspeakable mutilation upon the body and face.

Rawson averted his eyes from the ghastly spectacle. For, swiftly, he
was seeing something more horrifying than this desecration of a dead
body; he was seeing himself, still living, tortured and torn by those
same beastly hands. The d