ered Branasko, with a noticeable
shudder. "Let's go nearer; I have heard that there is a point near here
where one can look down into the Lake of Flame."

"The Lake of Flame!" echoed the American, "What is that?" "It is where
all of the dead of Alpha is cast by the black 'vultures of death.'"

Johnston said nothing, for it was difficult to keep up with the Alphian,
who was bounding over rocks and dangerous fissures toward the red glow
in the distance.

At every step the atmosphere got warmer, and they detected a slight
gaseous odor in the air. Finally, after an arduous tramp of an hour,
they climbed up a steep hill and looked sharply down into a vast
bubbling lake of molten matter more than a thousand yards below.
Branasko noticed a stone weighing several tons evenly balanced on the
verge of the great gulf, and pushed it with both his hands. It rocked,
broke loose from its slender hold on the cliff and bounded out into the
red space. Down it went, lessen-ing as it sank till it became a mere
black speck and then disappeared.

"That's where the dead go," said Branasko gloomily.

Just then the American, happening to glance up, saw something like a
huge black bird with outspread wings circling about in the red light
over the pit. Branasko saw it, too, and his face paled and a tremolo was
in his voice when he spoke.

"It is one of the 'vultures of death;' don't stir; we won't be seen if
we remain where we are!" The strange machine sank lower over the lake
of fire, till, as if buoyed up on the hot air, with faintly quivering
wings, it paused. A man opened a door of the black car and carelessly
threw out the bodies of a woman and a child.

The bodies whirled over and over and disappeared in the pit, and the man
closed the door. The machine then rose and gracefully winged its flight
to the east. In a moment others came with their grim burdens, and still
others, till the mouth of the pit was dark with them.

"Something has happened," whispered Branasko, "some great calamity, for
surely so many people do not die in Alpha in a single day."

For an hour they watched the coming and going of the vultures, till,
finally the last one hovered over the lake of fire. Suddenly the machine
swerved so near to Branasko and Johnston that they shrank close to the
earth to keep from being seen. Something was evidently wrong with the
machine, for there was a wild look of desperation on the driver's face
as he tugged excitedly at the pil