fern-fronds while they capered and danced and babbled excitedly.

* * * * *

Irrelevantly, Tommy thought of escaped galley slaves. Just such
hard-bitten, vice-ridden men as these, and filled with just such a
mad, gibbering hatred of the free men they had escaped from. Certainly
these men had been civilized once. As the golden-metal device came
nearer, its intricacy was the more apparent. No savages could utilize
a device like this one. And there was a queer deadliness in the very
grace of its outlines. It was a weapon of some sort, but whose nature
Tommy could not even guess.

And then he caught the gleam of metal also in the fern-forest. On the
ground. In glimpses and in fragments of glimpses between the swarming
naked bodies of the Ragged Men, he pieced together a wholly incredible
impression. There was a roadway skirting the edge of the forest. It
was not wide; not more than fifteen feet at most. But it was a solid
road-bed of metal! The dull silver-white of aluminum gleamed from the
ground. Two or more inches thick and fifteen feet wide, there was a
seamless ribbon of aluminum that vanished behind the tree-ferns on
either side.

The intricate device of golden metal was set up, now, and a shaggy,
savage-seeming man mounted beside it grinning. He manipulated its
levers and wheels with an expert's assurance. And Tommy saw repairs
upon it. Crude repairs, with crude materials, but expertly done. Done
by the Ragged Men, past doubt, and so demolishing any idea that they
came of a savage race.

"Watch here, Smithers," said Tommy grimly.

* * * * *

He sat to work upon the little catapult after Denham's design. His own
had seemed to work, but the other was more sure. This would be an
ambush the Ragged Men were preparing, and of course they would be
preparing it for men of the Golden City. The plane had sighted
Denham's steel globe. It had hovered overhead, and carried news of
what it had seen to the Golden City. And here was a roadway that must
have been made by the folk of the Golden City at some time or another.
Its existence explained why Denham remained nearby. He had been hoping
that some vehicle would travel along its length, containing civilized
people to whom he could signal and ultimately explain his plight. And,
being near the steel globe, his narrative would have its proofs at
hand.

And now it was clear that the Ragged Men expected some gro