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CONTENTS

The Hills of the Dead 

Hawk of Basti

Wings In the Night 

The Children of Asshur 

THE HILLS OF THE DEAD

CHAPTER I
VOODOO

	The twigs which N' Longa flung, on the fire
broke and crackled. The upleaping flames lighted
the countenances of the two men. N'Longa, voodoo
man of the Slave Coast, was very old. His wizened
and gnarled frame was stooped and brittle, his
face creased by hundreds of wrinkles. The red
firelight glinted on the human finger-bones which
composed his necklace.

	The other was an Englishman, and his name
was Solomon Kane. He was tall and broad-
shouldered, clad in black close garments, the garb
of the Puritan. His featherless slouch hat was
drawn low over his heavy brows, shadowing his
darkly pallid face. His cold deep eyes brooded is
the firelight.

	"You come again, brother," droned the fetish-man, 
speaking in the jargon which passed for a
common language of black man and white on me
West Coast. "Many moons burn and die since we
make blood-palaver. You go to the setting sun, but
you come back!"

	"Aye," Kane's voice was deep and almost
ghostly. "Yours Is a grim land, N'Longa, a red
land barred with the black darkness of horror and
the bloody shadows of death. Yet I have returned"

	N’Longa stirred the fire, saying nothing, and
after a pause Kane continued.
	"Yonder in the unknown vastness" — his long
finger stabbed at the black silent Jungle which
Brooded beyond the, firelight — "yonder lie
mystery and adventure and nameless terror. Once
I dared the jungle — once she nearly claimed my
bones. Something entered into my blood, something 
stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed
sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding --over leagues
of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the
dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall
find curious adventure — mayhap my doom awaits
me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting 
urge, the fire that has burned my veins
with bitter longing."

	"She call," muttered N'Longa. "At night she
coil like serpent about my hut and whisper strange
things to me. Ai ya! The jungle call. We be blood brothers,
you and I. Me, N'Longa, mighty worker of nameless magic! 
You go to the jungle as all men go who hear her call. 
Maybe you live, morelike you die. 
You believe in my fetish work?"

	"I understand it not," said Kane grimly, "but
I have seen you send your soul forth from your
body to animate a lifeless corpse."
"Aye! Me N'Longa» priest of the Black God!
Now watch, I make magic."

	Kane gazed at me old voodoo man who bent
over the fire, making even motions with his hands
mumbling incantations. Kane watched and he
seemed to grow sleepy. A mist wavered in fron
of him, through which he saw dimly the form
N'Longa, etched dark against the flames. Then
faded out.

	Kane awoke with a start, hand shooting to
pistol in his belt. N'Longa grinned at him across
the flame and there was a scent of early dawn
the air. The fetish-man held a long stave
curious black wood In his hands. This stave was
carved in a strange manner, and one end tapered
to a sharp point.

"This voodoo staff," said N'Longa, putting it
in the Englishman's hand. "Where your guns and
long knife fail, this save you. When you want me
lay this on your breast, fold your hands on it and
sleep. I come to you in your dreams."

Kane weighed the thing in his hand, highly
suspicious of witchcraft. It was not heavy, but
seemed as hard as iron. A good weapon at least,
he decided. Dawn was just beginning to steal over
me Jungle and the river.

CHAPTER II	

RED EYES

	Solomon Kane shifted his musket from his
Shoulder and let the stock fall to the earth. Silence
lay about him like a fog. Kane’s lined face and
tattered garments showed the effect of long bush
travel. He look about him.

	Some distance behind him loomed the green,
rank jungle, thinning out to low shrubs, stunted
trees and tall grass. Some distance in front of
him rose me first of a chain of bare, sombre
hills, littered with boulders, shimmering in the
merciless heat of the sun. Between the hills and
the Jungle lay a broad expanse of rough, uneven
grasslands, dotted here and there by clumps of
thorn trees.

An utter silence hung over the country. The
only sign of life was a few vultures flapping
heavily across the distant hills. For the last few
days Kane had noticed the increasing number of
these unsavoury birds. The sun was rocking westward
but its heat was in no way abated.

Trailing his musket he started forward
slowly. He had no objective in view. This was all
unknown country and one direction was as good as
another. Many weeks ago he had plunged into the
jungle with the assurance born of courage and
ignorance. Having by some miracle survived the
first few weeks, he was becoming hard and
toughened. able to hold his own with any of the
grim denizens of the fastness he dared.

As he progressed he noted an occasional lion
spoor but there seemed to be no animals in me
grasslands — none that left tracks, at any rate.
Vultures sat like black, brooding images in some
of the stunted trees, and suddenly he saw an
activity among them some distance beyond.
Several of the dusky birds circled about a clump
high grass, dipping, then rising again. Some
beast of prey was defending his kill against them,

Kane decided, and wondered at the lack of snarling
and roaring which usually accompanied such
scenes. His curiosity was roused and he turned
his steps in that direction.                       

	At last, pushing through the grass which rose
about his shoulders, he saw, as through a corridor 
walled with the rank waving blades, a ghastly
sight. The corpse of a black man lay, face down, 
and as the Englishman looked, a great dark snake
rose and slid away into the grass, moving so
quickly that Kane was unable to decide its nature.
But it had a weird human-like suggestion about it.

	Kane stood over the body, noting that while
the limbs lay awry as if broken, the flesh was not
torn as a lion or leopard would have torn it. He
glanced up at the whirling vultures and was amazed
to see several of them skimming along close to
the earth, following a waving of the grass which
marked the flight of the thing which had presumably 
slain the black man. Kane wondered what
thing the carrion birds, which eat only the dead,
were hunting through the grasslands. But Africa
is full of never-explained mysteries.  

Kane shrugged his shoulders and lifted his
musket again. Adventures he had had in plenty
since he parted from N'Longa some moons agone,
but still that nameless paranoid urge had driven
him on and on, deeper and deeper into those
trackless ways. Kane could not have analysed this
call; he would have attributed it to Satan, who
lures men to their destruction. But it was but the
restless turbulent spirit of the adventurer, the
wanderer — the same urge which sends the gipsy
caravans about the world, which drove the Viking
galleys over unknown seas and which guides the
flights of the wild geese.

	Kane sighed. Here in this barren land seemed
neither food nor water, but he had wearied unto
death of the dank, rank venom of the thick jungle.
Even a wilderness of bare hills was preferable,
for a time at least He glanced at them, where
they lay brooding in the sun, and started forward
again.

	He held N'Longa's fetish stave in his left
hand, and though his conscience still troubled him
for keeping a thing so apparently diabolic in
nature, he had never been able to bring himself to
throw it away.

	Now as he went toward the hills, a sudden
commotion broke out in the tall grass In front of
him, Which was, in places, taller than a man. A
thin, high-pitched scream sounded and on its heels
an earth-shaking roar. the grass parted and a
slim figure came flying toward him like a wisp of
straw blown on the wind — a brown-skinned girl,
clad only in a skirt-like garment. Behind her,
some yards away but gaining swiftly, came a huge
lion.

	"The girl fell at Kane's feet with a wail and a
sob, and lay clutching at his ankles. The Englishman
dropped the voodoo stave, raised his musket to
his shoulder and sighted coolly at the ferocious
feline face which neared him every instant. Crash !
The girl screamed once and slumped on her face.
The huge cat leaped high and wildly, to fall and lie
motionless.

	Kane reloaded hastily before he spared a
glance at the form at his feet. The girl lay as still
as the lion he had just slain, but a quick examination 
showed that she had only fainted.         ]

	He bathed her face with water from his canteen 
and presently she opened her eyes and sat up.
Fear flooded her face as she looked at her rescuer, 
and she made to rise.                   ;

	Kane held out a restraining hand and she
cowered down, trembling. The roar of his heavy
musket was enough to frighten any native who had
never before seen a white man, Kane reflected. 

The girl was slim and well-formed. Her nose
was straight and thin-bridged. She was a deep
brown in colour, perhaps with a strong Berber
strain.

Kane spoke to her in a river dialect, a simple
language he had learned during his wanderings
and she replied haltingly.  The inland tribe
traded slaves and ivory to the river people and
were familiar with their jargon.

	"My village is there," she answered Kane's
question, pointing to the southern jungle with a
slim, rounded arm. "My name is Zunna. My
mother whipped me for breaking a cooking-kettle
and I ran away because I was angry. I am afraid;
let me go back to my mother!"
	"You may go," said Kane, "but I will take
you, child. Suppose another lion came along? You
were very foolish to run away."

She whimpered a little. "Are you not a god ?” 
"No. Zunna. I am only a man. though the colour 
of my skin is not as yours. Lead me now to your 

Village.”
	She rose hesitantly, eyeing him apprehensively
through the wild tangle of her hair. To Kane she
seemed like some frightened young animal. She led
the way and Kane followed. She indicated that her
village lay to the southeast, and their route
brought them nearer to the hills. The sun began to
sink and the roaring of lions reverberated over
grasslands, Kane glanced at the western sky;
open country was no place in which to be
caught by night. He glanced toward the hills and
that they were within a few hundred yards of
the nearest. He saw what seemed to be a cave.
	"Zunna," said he haltingly, "we can never
reach your village before nightfall. If we bide here
the lions will take us. Yonder is a cavern where
we may spend the night —- "

	She shrank and trembled.
	"Not in the hills, master!" she whimpered.
“Better the lions!"

	"Nonsense!" His tone" was impatient; he had
had enough of native superstition. "We will spend
the night in yonder cave."

	She argued no further, but followed him. They
went up a short slope and stood at the mouth of the
cavern, a small affair, with sides of solid rock
a floor of deep sand.

	"Gather some dry grass, Zunna," commanded
Kane, standing his musket against the wall at the
mouth of the cave. "but go not far away, and listen
for lions. I will build here, a fire which shall keep
us safe from beasts tonight Bring some grass and
twigs you may find, like a good child, and we
will sup. 1 have dried meat in my pouch and water
also."                            

	She gave him a strange, long glance, then
turned away without a word. Kane tore up grass
near at hand, noting how it was seared and crisp
from the sun, and heaping it up, struck flint and
steel. Flame leaped up and devoured the heap in
an instant. He was wondering how he could gather,
enough grass to keep a fire going all night, when
he was aware that he had visitors.

	Kane was used to grotesque sights, but at
first glance he started and a slight coldness
travelled down his spine. Two men stood before
him in silence. They were tall and gaunt and
entirely naked. Their skins were a dusty black,
tinged with a grey, ashy hue, as of death. Their
faces were different from any he had ever seen.
The brows were high and narrow, the noses huge
and snout-like; the eyes were inhumanly large and
inhumanly red. As the two stood there it seemed
to Kane that only their burning eyes lived.

	He spoke to them, but they did not answer.
He invited them to eat with a motion of his hand,
and they silently squatted down near the cave
mouth, as far, from the dying, embers of the fire
as they could get.                               

	Kane turned to his pouch and began taking out 
the strips of dried meat which he carried. Once
he glanced at his silent guests; it seemed to him
that they were watching the glowing ashes of his
fire, rather than him.

	The sun was about to sink behind the western
horizon. A red, fierce glow spread over the
grasslands, so that oil seemed like a waving sea
of blood. Kane knelt over his pouch, and glancing
up, saw Zunna come around the shoulder of the
hill with her arms full of grass and dry branches.

	As he looked, her eyes flared wide; the
branches dropped from her arms and her scream
knifed the silence, fraught with terrible warning.
Kane whirled on his knee. Two great forms loomed
over him as he came up with the lithe motion of a
springing leopard. The fetish stave was in his
hand and he drove it through the body of the nearest 
foe with a force which sent its sharp point out
between the man's shoulders. Then the long, lean
arms of the other locked about him, and the two
went down together.

	The talon-like nails of the stranger were
tearing at his face, the hideous red eyes staring
into his with a terrible threat, as Kane writhed
about and, fending off the clawing hands with one
arm, drew a pistol. He pressed the muzzle close
against the savage side and pulled the trigger. At
the muffled report, the stranger's body jerked to
the concussion of the bullet, but the thick lips
merely gaped in a horrid grin.

	One long arm slid under Kane's shoulders,
the other hand gripped his hair. the Englishman
felt his head being forced back irresistibly. He
clutched at the other's wrists with both hands, but
the flesh under his frantic fingers was as hard as
wood. Kane's brain was reeling; his neck seemed
ready to break with a little more pressure. He
threw his body backward with one volcanic effort,
breaking the deadly hold. The other was on him.
and the talons were clutching again. Kane found
and raised the empty pistol, and he felt the man's
skull cave in like a shell as he brought down the
long barrel with all his strength. And once again
the writhing lips parted in fearful mockery.

	And now a near panic clutched Kane. What
sort of man was this, who still menaced his life
with tearing fingers, after having been shot and
mortally bludgeoned ? No man, surely, but one of
the sons of Satan! At the thought Kane wrenched
and heaved explosively, and the close-locked.
combatants tumbled across the earth to come to a
rest in the smouldering ashes before the cave
mouth. Kane barely felt the heat, but the mouth of
his foe gaped, this time in seeming agony. The
frightful fingers loosened their hold and Kane
sprang clear.

	The savage creature with his shattered skull
was rising on one hand and one knee when Kane
struck, returning to the attack as a gaunt wolf
returns to a wounded bison. From the side he
leaped, landing full on the sinewy back, his steely
arms seeking and finding a deadly wrestling hold;
and as they went to the earth together he broke the
other's neck, so that the hideous dead face looked
back over one shoulder. The body lay still but to
Kane it seemed that it was-not dead even then, for
the red eyes still burned with their grisly light.

	The Englishman turned, to see the girl
crouching against the cave wall. He looked for his
stave; it lay in a heap of dust, among which were
a few mouldering bones. He stared, his brain
reeling. Then with one stride he caught up the
voodoo staff and turned to the fallen man. His face
set in grim lines as he raised it; then he drove it
through the savage breast. And before his eyes,
the great body crumbled, dissolving to dust as he
watched horror-struck, even as the first opponent
had crumbled when Kane had first thrust the stave.

CHAPTER III

DREAM MAGIC

	"Great God!" whispered Kane. "The men
were dead! Vampires! This is Satan's handiwork
manifested."

	Zunna crawled to his knees and clung there.
	"These be walking dead men, master," she
whimpered. "I should have warned you."
	"Why did they not leap on my back when they
first came?" asked he.
	“they feared the fire. They were waiting for
'the embers to die entirely."
	"Whence came they?"
	"From the hills. Hundreds of their kind
swarm among the boulders and caverns of these
hills, and they live on human life, for a man they
will slay, devouring his ghost as it leaves his
quivering body. Aye, they are suckers of souls !

"Master, among the greater of these hills
there is a silent city of stone, and in the old times,
in. the days of my ancestors, these people lived
there. They were human, but they were not as we,
for they had ruled this land for ages and ages. The
ancestors of my people made war on them and
slew many, and their magicians made all the dead
men as these were. At last all died.

	"And for ages have they preyed on the tribes
of the jungle, stalking down from the hills at mid-
night and at sunset to haunt the jungle-ways and
slay and slay. Men and beasts flee them and only
fire will destroy them."

	"Here is that which will destroy them," said
Kane grimly, raising the voodoo stave. "Black
magic must fight black magic, and I know not what
spell N'Longa put hereon, but — "

	"You are a god," Zunna decided aloud. "No
man could overcome two of the walking dead men.
Master, can you not lift this curse from my tribe?
There is nowhere for us to flee and the monsters
slay us at will, catching wayfarers outside the
village wall. Death is on this land and we die
helpless!"

	Deep in Kane stirred the spirit of the crusader, 
the fire of the zealot — the fanatic who
devotes his life to battling the powers of darkness.
	"Let us eat," said he; "then we will build a
great fire at the cave mouth. The fire which keeps
away beasts shall also keep away fiends." 

	Later Kane sat just inside the cave, chin
rested on clenched fist, eyes gazing unseeingly
into the fire. Behind in the shadows, Zunna
watched him, awed.
	"God of Hosts," Kane muttered, "grant me
aid! My hand it is which must lift the ancient
curse from this dark land. How am I to fight these
dead fiends, who yield not to mortal weapons?
Fire will destroy ,them — a broken neck renders
them helpless — the voodoo stave thrust through
them crumbles them to dust — but of what avail ?
How may I prevail against the hundreds who haunt
these hills, and to whom human life-essence is
Life? Have not — as Zunna says — warriors
come against them in the past, only to find them
fled to their high-walled city where no man can
come against them?"

	The night wore on. Zunna slept, her cheek
pillowed on her round, girlish arm. The roaring
of the lions shook the hills and still Kane sat and
gazed broodingly into the fire. Outside, the night
was alive with whispers and rustlings and stealthily 
soft footfalls. And at times Kane, glancing up
from his meditations, seemed to catch the gleam
of great red eyes beyond the flickering light of me
fire.

	Grey dawn was stealing over the grasslands
when Kane shook Zunna into wakefulness.
	"God have mercy on my soul for delving in
barbaric magic," said he, "but demonry must be
fought with demonry, mayhap. Tend ye the fire
and aware me if aught untoward occur."
	
	Kane lay down on his back on the sand floor
and laid the voodoo staff on his breast, folding his
hands upon it. He fell asleep instantly. And sleeping,
he dreamed. To his slumbering self it seemed
that he walked through a thick fog and in this fog
he met N'Longa, true to life. N'Longa spoke, and
the words were clear and vivid, impressing
themselves on his consciousness so deeply as to
span the gap between sleeping and waking.
	“Send this girl to her village soon after sun-
up when the lions have gone to their lairs,” said
N'Longa, "and bid her bring her lover to you at
this cave. There make him lie down as if to
slumber, holding the voodoo stave."

	The dream faded and Kane awoke suddenly ,
wondering. How strange and vivid had been the
vision, and how strange to hear N'Longa talking in
English, without the jargon! Kane shrugged his
shoulders. He knew that N'Longa claimed to
possess the power of sending his spirit through
space, and he himself had seen the voodoo man.
animate a dead man's body. Still —-

	"Zunna," said Kane, giving the problem, up,
"I will go with you as far as the edge of the jungle
and you must go on to your village and return here
to this cave with your lover."
	"Kran?" she asked naively.
	"Whatever his name is. Eat and we will go."
	Again the sun slanted toward the west. Kane
sat in the cave, waiting. He had seen the girl
safely to the place where the jungle thinned to the
grasslands, and though his conscience stung him
at the thought of the dangers which might confront
her, he sent her on alone and returned to the cave.
He sat now, wondering if he would not be damned
to everlasting flames for tinkering with the magic
of a black sorcerer, blood-brother or not.

	Light footfalls sounded, and as Kane reached
for his musket, Zunna entered, accompanied by a
tall, splendidly proportioned youth whose brown
skin showed that he was of the same race as the
girl. His soft dreamy eyes were fixed on Kane in
a sort of awesome worship. Evidently the girl had
not minimized this new god's glory in her telling.

	He bade the youth lie down as he directed and
placed the voodoo stave in his hands. Zunna
crouched at one side, wide-eyed. Kane stepped
back, half ashamed of this mummery and wondering 
what, if anything, would come of it. Then to
his horror, the youth gave one gasp and stiffened!

	Zunna screamed, bounding erect-
	"You have killed Kran!" she shrieked, flying
at the Englishman who stood struck speechless.
	Then she halted suddenly, wavered, drew a
hand languidly across her brow — she slid down
to lie with her arms about the motionless body of
her lover.

	And this body moved suddenly, made aimless
motions with hands and feet, then sat up, disengaging 
itself from the clinging arms of the still
senseless girl.

	Kran looked up at Kane and grinned, a sly,
knowing grin which seemed out of place on his
face somehow. Kane started. Those soft eyes had
changed in expression and were now hard and
glittering and snaky — N'Longa's eyes !

	"Ai ya," said Kran in a grotesquely familiar
voice. "Blood-brother, you got no greeting for
N'Longa?"

	Kane was silent. His flesh crawled in spite of
himself- Kran rose and stretched his arms in an
unfamiliar sort of way, as if his limbs were new
to him. He slapped his breast approvingly.

"Me N'Longa!" said he in the old boastful
manner. "Mighty ju-ju man! Blood-brother, not 
you know me, eh?"                           

	"You are Satan," said Kane sincerely. "Are
you Kran or are you N'Longa?"

	"Me N'Longa," assured the other. "My body
sleep in Ju-ju hut on Coast many treks from here.
I borrow Kran's body for while. My ghost travel
ten days march in one breath; twenty days march
In same time. My ghost go out from my body and
drive out Kran's."

	"And Kran is dead?"
	"No, he no dead. I send his ghost to shadow-
land for a while — send the girl's ghost too, to
keep him company; bimeby come back."

	"This is the work of he Devil," said Kane
frankly, "but I have seen you do even fouler
magic — shall I call you N'Longa or Kran?"

	"Kran — kah! Me N'Longa — bodies like
clothes ' Me N'Longa, in here now!" he rapped his
breast. "Bimeby Kran live along here — then he
be Kran and I be N'Longa, same like before. Kran
no live along now; N'Longa live along this one
fellow body. Blood-brother, I am N'Longa!"

	Kane nodded. This was in truth a land of
horror and enchantment; anything was possible,
even that the thin voice of N'Longa should speak to
him from the great chest of Kran, and the snaky
eyes of N'Longa should blink at him from the
handsome young face of Kran.

	"This land I know long time," said N'Longa,
getting down to business. "Mighty ju-ju, these
dead people! No need to waste one fellow time — I
know -- I talk to you in sleep. My blood-brother
want to kill out these dead fellows, eh?"
	"Tis a thing opposed to nature," said Kane
sombrely. "They are known in my land as vampires
I never expected to come upon a whole nation of them."

CHAPTER IV
THE SILENT CITY

	"Now we find this stone city," said N'Longa.
	"Yes? Why not send your ghost out to kill
these vampires?" Kane asked idly-
	"Ghost got to have one fellow body to work in."
N'Longa answered. "Sleep now. Tomorrow we
start"

	The sun had set; the fire glowed and flickered
in the cave mouth. Kane glanced at the still form
of the girl, who lay where she had fallen, and pre-
pared himself for slumber.
	"Awake me at midnight," he admonished, "and
I will watch from then until dawn."
	But when N'Longa finally shook his arm, Kane
awoke to see me first light of dawn reddening the
land.

	"Time we start," said the fetish-man.
	"But the girl — are you sure she lives?"
	"She live, blood-brother."

	"Then in God's name, we can not leave her
here at the mercy of any prowling fiend who might
chance upon her. Or some lion might — "

	"No lion come. Vampire scent still linger,
mixed with man scent. One fellow lion he no like
man scent and he fear the walking dead men. No
beast come, and" — lifting the voodoo stave and
laying it across the cave entrance — "no dead
man come now."

	Kane watched him sombrely and without
enthusiasm.
	"How will that rod safeguard her?"
	"That mighty ju-ju," said N'Longa. "You see
how one fellow vampire go along dust alongside
that stave! No vampire dare touch or come near
it. I gave it to you, because outside Vampire Hills
one fellow man sometimes meet a corpse walking
in jungle when shadows be black. Not all walking
dead men be here. And all must suck Life from
men — if not, they rot like dead wood."

	"Then make many of these rods and arm me
people with them."

	"No can do!" N'Longa'a skull shook violently.
"That ju-ju rod be mighty magic! Old, old! No
man live today can tell how old that fellow ju-ju
stave be. I make my blood-brother sleep and do
magic with it to guard him, that time we make
palaver in Coast village. Today we scout and run,
no need it. Leave it here to guard girl."

	Kane shrugged his shoulders and followed the
fetish-man, after glancing back at the still shape
which lay in the cave. He would never have agreed
to leave her so casually, had he not believed in his
heart that she was dead. He had touched her, and
her flesh was cold.

They went up among the barren hills as the
sun was rising. Higher they climbed, up steep
clay slopes, winding their way through ravines
and between great boulders. The hills were honey-
combed with dark, forbidding caves, and these
they passed warily, and Kane's flesh crawled as
he thought of the grisly occupants therein. For
N'Longa said:

"Them vampires, he sleep in caves most all
day till sunset. Them caves, he be full of one
fellow dead man."

The sun rose higher, baking down on the bare
slopes with an intolerable heat. Silence brooded
like an evil monster over the land. They had seen
nothing, but Kane could have sworn at times that a
black shadow drifted behind a boulder at their
approach.

"Them vampires, they stay hid in daytime."
said N'Longa with a low laugh. "They be afraid of
one fellow vulture! No fool vulture! He know death
when he see it! He pounce on one fellow dead man
and tear and eat if he be lying or walking!"

A strong shudder shook his companion,

"Great God!" Kane cried, striking his thigh
with his hat; "is there no end to the horror of this
hideous land? Truly this land is dedicated to the
powers of darkness.'"

Kane's eyes burned with a dangerous light.
The terrible heat, the solitude and the knowledge
of the horrors lurking on either hand were shaking
even his steely nerves.

"Keep on one fellow hat, blood-brother,"
admonished N'Longa with a low gurgle of
amusement. "That fellow sun, he knock you dead,
suppose you no look out."

	Kane shifted the musket he had insisted on
bringing and made no reply. They mounted an
eminence at last and looked down on a sort of
plateau. And in the centre of this plateau was a
silent city of grey and crumbling stone. Kane was
smitten by a sense of incredible age as he looked!
The walls and houses were of great stone blocks,
yet they were falling into ruin. Grass grew on the
plateau, and high in the streets of that dead city.
Kane saw no movement among the ruins.

	"That is their city — why do they choose to
asleep in the caves ? "

	"Maybe-so one fellow stone fall on them from
roof and crush. Them stone huts, he fall down
bimeby. Maybe-so they no like to stay together —
maybe-so they eat each other, too."

	"Silence!" whispered Kane; "how it hangs
over all!"

	"Them vampires no talk nor yell; they dead.
They sleep in caves, wander at sunset and at night.
Maybe-so them fellow bush tribes come with
spears, them vampires go to stone kraal and fight
behind walls."

	Kane nodded. The crumbling walls which sur-
rounded that dead city were still high and solid
enough to resist the attack of spearmen —
especially when defended by these snout-nosed
fiends.
	"Blood-brother," said N'Longa solemnly, "I
have mighty magic thought! Be silent a little
while."

	Kane seated himself on a boulder, and gazed
broodingly at the bare crags and slopes which
surrounded them. Far away to the south he saw
the leafy green ocean that was the jungle. Distance
lent a certain enchantment to the scene. Closer at
hand loomed the dark blotches that were the
mouths of the caves of horror.

	N'Longa was squatting, tracing some strange
pattern in the clay with a dagger point. Kane
watched him, thinking how easy they might fall
victim to the vampires if even three or four of the
fiends should come out of their caverns. And even
as be thought it, a black and horrific shadow fell
across the crouching fetish-man

	Kane acted without conscious thought. He shot
from the boulder where he sat-like a stone hurled
from a catapult, and his musket stock shattered
the face of the hideous thing who had stolen upon
them. Back and back Kane drove his inhuman foe
staggering, never giving him time to halt or
launch an offensive, battering him with me on-
slaught of a frenzied tiger.

	At the very edge of the cliff the vampire
wavered, then pitched back over, to fall for a
hundred feet and lie writhing on the rocks of the
plateau below. N'Longa was on his feet pointing;
the hills were giving up their dead.

	Out of the caves they were swarming, the
terrible black silent shapes; up the slopes they
came charging and over the boulders they came
clambering, and their red eyes were all turned
toward the two humans who stood above the silent
city. The caves belched them form in an unholy
judgment day.

	N'Longa pointed to a crag some distance away
and with a shout started running fleetly toward it.
Kane followed. From behind boulders taloned
hands clawed at them, tearing their garments.
They raced past caves, and mummied monsters
came lurching out of the dark, gibbering silently,
to join in the pursuit.

	The dead hands were close at their back w)'an
they scrambled up the last slope and stood on a
ledge which was the top of the crag. The fiends
halted silently a moment, then came clambering
after them. Kane clubbed his musket and smashed
down into the red-eyed faces, knocking aside the
upleaping hands. They surged up like a great wave;
he swung his musket in a silent fury that matched
theirs. The wave broke and wavered back; came
on again.

	He — could — not — kill — them! These
words beat on his brain like a sledge on an anvil
as he shattered wood-like flesh and dead bone with
his smashing swings. He knocked them down,
hurled them back, but they rose and came on
again. This could not last — what in God's name
was N'Longa doing? Kane spared one swift, tor-
tured glance over his shoulder. The fetish-man
stood on the highest part of the ledge, head thrown
back, arms lifted as if in invocation.

Kane's vision blurred to the sweep of hideous
faces with red, staring eyes. Those in front were
horrible to see now, for their skulls were shattered, 
their faces caved in and their limbs broken.
But still they came on and those behind reached
across their shoulders to clutch at the man who
defied them.

	Kane was red but the blood was all his. From
the long-withered "veins of those monsters no
single drop of warm red blood trickled. Suddenly
from behind him came a long piercing wall —•
N'Longa! Over the crash of the flying musket-
stock and the shattering of bones it sounded high
and clear —- the only voice lifted in that hideous
fight.

	The wave of vampires washed about Kane's
feet, dragging him down. Keen talons tore at him,
flaccid lips sucked at his wounds. He reeled up
again, dishevelled and bloody, clearing a space
with a shattering sweep of his splintered musket.
Then they closed in again and he went down.

	"This is the end ! "he thought, but even at that
instant the press slackened and the sky was
suddenly filled with the beat of great wings.

	Then he was free and staggered up, blindly
and dizzily, ready to renew the strife. He halted,
frozen. Down the slope the vampire horde was
fleeing and over their heads and close at their
shoulders flew huge vultures, tearing and rending
avidly, sinking their beaks in the dead flesh,
devouring the creatures as they fled.

	Kane laughed, almost insanely.

	"Defy man and God, but you may not deceive
the vultures, sons of Satan They know whether a
man be alive or dead!"

	N'Longa stood like a prophet on the pinnacle,
and the great blackbirds soared and wheeled about
him. His arms still waved and his voice still
wailed out across the hills. And over the skylines
they came, hordes on endless hordes — vultures,
vultures, vultures! come to the feast so long
denied them. They blackened the sky with their 
numbers, blotted out the sun; a strange darkness
fell on the land. They settled in long dusky lines,
diving into the caverns with a whir of wings and a
clash of beaks. Their talons tore at the evil
horrors which these caves disgorged.            

	Now all the vampires were fleeing to their
city. The vengeance held back for ages had come
down on them and their last hope was the heavy
walls which had kept back the desperate human
foes. Under those crumbling roofs they might find
shelter. And N'Longa watched them stream into
the city, and he laughed until he crags re-echoed:

	Now all were in and the birds settled like a
cloud over the doomed city, perching in solid rows 
along the walls, sharpening their beaks and claws
on the towers.

	And N'Longa struck flint and steel to a bundle
of dry leaves he had brought with him. The bundle.
leaped into instant flame and he straightened and
flung the blazing thing far out over the cliffs. It
fell like a meteor to the plateau beneath, shower-
ing sparks. The tall grass of the plateau leaped
aflame.

	From me silent city beneath them Fear flowed
in unseen waves, like a white fog. Kane smiled
grimly.
	"The grass is sere and brittle from me
drouth," he said; "there has been even less rain
than usual this season; it will burn swiftly."

	Like a crimson serpent the fire ran through
high dead grass. It spread and it spread and
Kane, standing high above, yet felt the fearful
intensity of the hundreds of red eyes which
watched from the stone city.

	Now the scarlet snake had reached the walls
and was rearing as if to coil and writhe over them.
The vultures rose on heavily flapping wings and
soared reluctantly. A vagrant gust of wind whipped
the blaze about and drove it in a long red sheet
around the wall. Now the city was hemmed In on
all sides by a solid barricade of flame. The roar
came up to the two men on the high crag.

	Sparks flew across the wall, lighting in the
high grass in the streets. A score of flames
leaped up and grew with terrifying speed. A veil of
red cloaked streets and buildings, and through this
crimson, whirling mist Kane and N'Longa saw
hundreds of dark shapes scamper and writhe, to
vanish suddenly In red bursts of flame. There
rose an intolerable scent of decayed flesh burning.

	Kane gazed, awed. This was truly a hell on
earth. As In a nightmare he looked into the roaring 
red cauldron where dark insects fought against
their doom and perished. The flames leaped a
hundred feet into the air, and suddenly above their
roar sounded one bestial, inhuman scream like a
shriek from across nameless gulfs of cosmic
apace, as one vampire, dying, broke the chains of
silence which had held him for untold centuries.
High and haunting it rose, the death cry of a
vanishing race.

Then the flames dropped suddenly. The
conflagration had been a typical grass fire, short
and fierce. Now the plateau showed a blackened
expanse and the city a charred and smoking mass
of crumbling stone. Not one corpse lay in view,
not even a charred bone. Above all whirled the
dark swarms of the vultures, but they, too, were
beginning to scatter.

	Kane gazed hungrily at the clean blue sky.
Like a strong sea wind clearing a fog of horror 
was the sight to him. From somewhere sounded 
the faint and far-off roaring of a distant lion. Ihe
vultures were flapping away in black, straggling
lines.

CHAPTER V

PALAVER SET!

Kane sat in the mouth of the cave where Zunna
lay, submitting to the fetish-man's bandaging.

The Puritan's garments hung in tatters about
his frame; his limbs and breast were deeply
gashed and darkly bruised, but he had had no
mortal wound in that deathly fight on the cliff.

"Mighty men, we be!" declared N'Longa with
deep approval. "Vampire city be silent now, sure
'nough! No walking dead man live along these
hills."

"I do not understand," said Kane, resting
chin on hand. "Tell me, N'Longa, how have you
done things? How talked you with me in my
dreams; how came you into the body of Kran; and
how summoned you the vultures ?"             

"My blood-brother," said N'Longa, discarding
his pride in his pidgin English, to drop into the
river language understood by Kane, "I am so old
that you would call me a liar if I told you my age .
All my life I have worked magic, sitting first at
the feet of mighty ju-ju men of the south and the
east; then I was a slave to the Buckra and learned
more. My brother, shall I span all these years in
a moment and make you understand with a word,
what has taken me so long to learn? I could not
even make you understand how these vampires
have kept their bodies from decay by drinking the
lives of men.

"I sleep and my spirit goes out over the jungle
and the rivers to talk with the sleeping spirits of
my friends. There is a mighty magic on the voodoo 
staff I gave you — a magic out of the Old Land
which draws my ghost to it as a white man's mag-
net draws metal."

Kane listened unspeaking, seeing for the first
time in N'Longa's glittering eyes something
stronger and deeper than the avid gleam of the
worker in black magic. To Kane it seemed almost
as if he looked into the far-seeing and mystic eyes
of a prophet of old.

"I spoke to you in dreams," N'Longa went on,
and I made a deep sleep come over the souls of
Kran and of Zunna, and remove them to a far dim
land, whence they shall soon return, unremembering. 
All things bow to magic, blood-brother.
and beasts and birds obey the master words. I
worked strong voodoo, vulture-magic, and
flying people of the air gathered at my call.

	"these things I know and am a part of, but
how shall I tell you of them ? Blood-brother. you
are a mighty warrior, but in the ways of magic 
you are as a little child lost. And what has taken
me long dark years to know, I may not divulge to
you so you would understand. My friend, you
think only of bad spirits, but were my magic
always bad, should I not take this fine young body
in place of my old wrinkled one and keep it? But
Kran shall have his body back safely.            

	"Keep the voodoo staff, blood-brother. It has
mighty power against all sorcerers and serpents
and evil things. Now I return to the village on the
Coast where my true body sleeps. And what of
you, my blood-brother?"

	Kane pointed silently eastward.
	"'The call grows no weaker. I go."

	N'Longa nodded, held out his hand. Kane
grasped it. The mystical expression had gone
from the fetish-man's face and the eyes twinkled
snakily with a sort of reptilian mirth.

	"Me go now, blood-brother,*' said the fetish-
man, returning to his beloved jargon, of which
knowledge he was prouder man all his conjuring
tricks. "You take care — that one fellow jungle,
she pluck your bones yet! Remember that voodoo
stave, brother. Ai ya, palaver set!"

	He fell back on the sand, and Kane saw the
keen, sly expression of N'Longa fading from the
face of Kran. His flesh crawled again. Somewhere
back on the Slave Coast, the body of N'Longa,
withered and wrinkled, was stirring in the ju-ju
hut, was rising as if from a deep sleep. Kane
shuddered.

	Kran sat up, yawned, stretched and smiled.
Beside him the girl Zunna rose, rubbing, her eyes.

	"Master," said Kran apologetically, "we must
have slumbered."

HAWK OF BASTI

	"Solomon Kane!"
	The interlapping branches of the great trees
rose In mighty arches, hundreds of feet above the
moss carpeted earth, making a Gothic twilight
among the giant trunks. Was this witchcraft?
Who, in this heathen, forgotten land of shadowy
mysteries, broke the brooding silence to shout the
name of a strange wanderer?

	Kane’s cold eyes roved among the trees; one
lean iron hand hardened on the carved, sharp-
pointed stave he carried, the other hovered near
one of the long flintlock pistols he wore.

	Then from among the shadows stepped a
bizarre figure. Kane's eyes widened slightly. A
white man it was, strangely clad. A silken loin-
cloth was his only garment, and he wore curious
sandals on his feet. Armlets of gold and a heavy
golden chain about his neck increased the barbarity 
of his appearance, as well as the hoop-like
rings in his ears. But while the other ornaments
were of curious and unfamiliar workmanship, the
earrings were such as Kane had seen hundreds of
times in the ears of European seamen.

	The man was scratched and bruised as if he
had been racing through thick woods recklessly;
there were shallow gashes on his limbs and body
feat no thorn or bramble could have made. In his
right hand he held a short curved sword, dyed a
sinister red.

	"Solomon Kane, by the howling hounds of
hell!" exclaimed this man, glaring in amazement,
as he approached the staring Englishman. "Keel-
haul me from Satan's craft, but you gave me a
start! I thought to be the only white man for a
thousand miles!"

	"I had thought the same of myself," answered
Kane. "But I know you not."

	The other laughed harshly.

	"I wonder not thereat," quoth he. "Belike I'd
scarce know myself should I meet myself suddenly.
Well, Solomon, my sober cutthroat, it's been
many a year since I gazed on that sombre face of
yours, but I'd know it in Hades. Come, have you
forgotten the brave old days when we harried the
Dons from the Azores to Darien and back again?
Cutlass and carronade! By the bones of the saints,
ours was a red trade! You've not forgotten Jeremy
Hawk!"

	Recognition glimmered in Kane's cold eyes as
a shadow passes across the surface of a frozen
lake.

	"I remember; we did not sail on the same
ship, though. I was with Sir Richard Grenvllle.
You sailed with John Bellefonte."

	"Aye!" cried Hawk with an oath. "I'd give the
crown I've lost to live those days again! But Sir
Richard's at the bottom of the sea, and Bellefonte's
in hell, and many of the bold brethren are
swinging in chains or feeding the fishes with good
English flesh. Tell me, my melancholy murderer
does good Queen Bess still rule old England 7"
	"It's been many moons since I left our native 
shores." answered Kane. "She sat firmly on her"
throne when I sailed."                          

	He spoke shortly, and Hawk stared at him
curiously. "You never loved the Tudors, eh,
Solomon?"                                   

	"Her sister harried my people like beasts of
prey," answered Kane harshly. "She herself has;
lied to and betrayed the folk of my faith — but 
mat's neither here nor there. What do you here?" 
Hawk, Kane noticed, from time to time turned
his head and stared back in the direction from
which he had come, in an attitude of close listening, 
as if he expected pursuit.

	"It’s a long story," he answered. "I'll tell it
briefly — you know there were high words between
Bellefonte and others of the English captains —- "
	"I've heard he became no better than a common 
pirate." Kane said bluntly.

	Hawk grinned wickedly. "Why, so they said,
At any rate, away to the Main we sailed, and by
Satan's eyes, we lived like kings among the isles,
preying on the plate ships and treasure galleons.
then came a Spanish warship and harried us sore.
A bursting cannon shot sent Bellefonte to his
master, the Devil, and I, as first mate, became
captain. There was a French rogue name La
Costa who opposed me — well, I hanged La Costa
to the main-yards and squared sails for the south.
We gave the warship the slip at last, and made for
the Slave Coast for a cargo of black ivory. But our
luck went with Bellefonte. We piled on a reef in a
heavy fog and when the mist cleared, a hundred
war-canoes full of naked, howling devils were
swarming about us.                  

"We fought for half a day, and when we had
beaten them off, we found ourselves nearly out of
powder, half our men dead, and the ship ready to
slip off the reef where she hung and sink under our
feet. There were but two things to do: take to sea
in open boats or come ashore. And there was but
one boat the bombards of the warship had left unshattered. 
Some of the crew piled into it, and the
last we saw of them, they were rowing westward.
The rest of us got ashore on rafts. 

"By the gods of Hades! It was madness — but
what else was there for us to do? The jungles
swarmed with blood-lusting savages. We marched
northward, hoping to come upon a barracoon
where slavers came, but they cut us off, and we
turned due eastward perforce. We fought every
step of the way; our band melted like mist before
the sun. Spears and savage beasts and venomous
serpents took their fearful toll. At last I alone
faced the jungle that had swallowed all my men. I
eluded the natives. For months I travelled alone
and all but unarmed in this hostile land. At last I
came out upon the shores of a great lake and saw
the walls and towers of an island kingdom rising
before me."

Hawk laughed fiercely. "By the bones of the
saints! It sounds like a tale of Sir John Mandeville! 
I found a strange people upon, the islands —-
and a curious and ungodly race who ruled over
them. They had never seen a white man before, in
my youth I wandered about with a band of thieves
who masked their real characters by tumbling and
juggling. By virtue of my skill at sleight o' hand,
I impressed the people. They looked on me as a
god — all except old Agara, their priest — and he
could not explain away my white skin.

	"They made a fetish of me and old Agara
secretly offered to make me a high priest. I appeared
to acquiesce and learned many of his
secrets. I feared the old vulture at first, for he
could make magic that made my sleight o' hand
seem childish — but the people were strongly
drawn to me.
	
	"The lake is called Nyayna; the isles thereon
are named the Isles of Ra, and the main island is
called Basti. The ruling class called themselves
Khabasti and the slaves are named Masutos.

	"The life of the latter is wretched indeed.
They have no will of their own save the desires of
their cruel masters. They are more brutally
treated than the Indians of Darlen are treated by
the Spanish, I have seen women flogged to death
and men crucified for the slightest of faults. The
cult of Khabasti is a dark and bloody one, which
they brought with them from whatever foul land
they came from. On the great altar in the temple
of the Moon, each week a howling victim dies be-
neath old Agara's dagger — always a Masuto
sacrifice, a strong young lad or a virgin. Nor is
that the worst " before the dagger brings relief
from suffering, the victim is mutilated in ways
hideous to mention. The Holy Inquisition pales
before the tortures inflicted by Basti's priests;

	yet so hellish is their art that the gibbering, mowing,
blind and skinless creature lives until the
final thrust of the dagger speeds him or her be-
yond me reach of the torturing devils,"

	Hawk's covert glance showed him that deep
volcanic fires were beginning to smoulder coldly in
Kane's strange eyes. His expression became more
darkly brooding than ever, as he motioned the
buccaneer to continue.
	"No Englishman could look on the daily agonies
of the poor wretches without pity. I became their
champion as soon as I learned the language, and I
took the part of me Masutos. Then old Agara would
have slain me, but the slaves rose and slew the
fiend who held the throne. Then they begged me to
remain and rule them. I did so. Under my rule
Basti prospered, both the Masutos and the Kha-
basti. But old Agara, who had slunk away to some
secret hiding place, was working in the shadows.
He plotted against me and finally even turned many
of the Masutos against their deliverer. The poor
fools! Yesterday he came out in the open and in a
pitched battle, the streets of ancient Basti ran
red. But old Agara prevailed with his evil magic,
and most of my adherents were cut down. We re-
treated in canoes to one of the lesser islands, and
there they came upon us. and again we lost the
fight. All of my henchmen were slain or taken --
and God help those taken alive! — only I escaped.
They have hunted me like wolves since. Even now
they are hard on my track. They will not rest until
they slay me, if they have to first follow me
across the continent."
	"Then we should waste no time in talk."
Kane, but Hawk smiled coldly.

	"Nay — the moment I glimpsed you through
the trees and realized that by some strange whim
of Fate I had met a man of my own race, I saw
that again I should wear the golden, gem-set
circlet that is the crown of Basti. Let them come

-- we will go and meet them!                 

	"Harkee, my bold Puritan, what I did before,
I did unarmed, by sheer craft o' head. Had I a
firearm, I had been ruler in Basti at this hour,
They never heard of powder. You have two pistols
—- enough to make us kings a dozen times over ~
but would you had a musket."

	Kane shrugged his shoulders. Needless to tell
Hawk of the fiendish battle in which his musket
had been splintered; even now he wondered if that
ghastly episode had not been a vision of delirium. 

	"I have weapons enow," said he, "though my
supply of powder and shot be limited."

	"Three shots will put us on the throne of
Basti," quoth Hawk. "How, my brave broadbrim.
wilt chance it with an old comrade?"

	"I will aid you in all that it be my power,"
answered Kane sombrely. "But I wish no earthly
throne of pride and vanity, If we bring peace to a
suffering race and punish evil men for their
cruelty, it is enough for me."

	They made a strange contrast, those two,
standing there in the twilight of that great tropic
forest. Jeremy Hawk was as tall as Solomon Kane
like him was rangy and powerful -- steel
springs and whalebone. But where Solomon was
dark, Jeremy Hawk was blond. Now he was burned
light bronze by the sun, and his tangled yellow
locks fell over his high narrow forehead. His jaw,
masked by a yellow stubble, was lean and aggressive; 
his thin gash of a mouth was cruel. His
grey eyes were gleaming and restless, full of wild
glitterings and shifting lights. His nose was thin
and aquiline, and his whole face was that of a bird
of prey. He stood, leaning slightly forward in his
usual attitude of fierce eagerness, nearly naked,
gripping his reddened sword.

	Facing him stood Solomon Kane, likewise tall
and powerful, in his worn boots, tattered 'garments,
and featherless slouch hat, girt with
pistols, rapier, and dagger; with his powder-and-
shot pouch slung to his belt. There was no hint of
likeness between the wild, reckless hawk's face of
the buccaneer and the sombre features of the
Puritan, whose dark pallor rendered his face almost
corpse-like. Yet in the tigerish litheness of
the pirate, in the wolfish appearance of Kane the
same quality was apparent. Both of these men
were born rovers and killers, curst with a paranoid 
driving urge that burned them like a quenchless 
fire and never gave them rest.

"Give me one of your pistols," exclaimed
Hawk, "and half your powder and shot. They will
soon be upon us — by Judas, we won't await them!
We'll go to meet them! Leave it all to me — one
shot and they will fall down and worship us. Come!
And as we go, tell me how you come to be here."

"I have wandered for many moons," said Kane
half-reluctantly. "Why I am here I know not — but
the jungle called me across many leagues of blue
sea, and I came. Doubtless the same Providence
which hath guided my steps all my years has led
me hither for some purpose which my weak eyes
have not yet seen."

	"You carry a strange stick," said Hawk, as
they moved with long, swinging strides beneath
the huge arches.                              

Kane's eyes drifted to the stave in his right
hand. It was as long as a sword, hard as iron, and
sharpened at the smaller end. The other end was
carved in the shape of a cat's head, and all up and
down the stave were strange wavering lines and
curious carvings.                             

	"I doubt not but that it is a thing of black
magic and sorcery." said Kane sombrely. "But in
time past it hath prevailed mightily against beings
of darkness, and it is a goodly weapon. It was
given me by a strange creature — one N'Longa, a,
fetish man of the Slave Coast, whom I have seen
perform nameless and ungodly feats. Yet beneath
his savage and wrinkled hide beats the heart of a
true man, I doubt not."

	"Hark!" Hawk halted, stiffening suddenly.
From ahead of them sounded the tramp of many
sandaled feet — faint as a wind in the tree-tops,
yet, keen-eared as hunting hounds, both he and his
companion heard and translated it.

	"There's a glade just ahead," grinned Hawk
fiercely. "We'll await them there — "

And so Kane and the ex-king of Basti stood in
plain view at one side of the glade when a hundred
men burst from the other side, like a pack of
wolves on a hot trail. They stopped in amazement,
struck speechless at the sight of he who had been
fleeing for his life and who now faced them with a
cruel, mocking smile — and at the sight of his
silent companion.

	As for Kane, he gazed at them in wonder. Half
of them were negroes, stocky, burly fellows, with
barrel chests and short legs of men who spend
much of their time in canoes. They were naked
and armed with heavy spears, It was the others
who arrested the Englishman's attention. These
were tall, well-formed men whose regular
features and straight black hair showed scant
trace of negroid blood. Their colour was a coppery
brown, ranging from a light reddish tan to a deep
bronze. Their faces were open and not unpleasing.
their garments consisted only of sandals and
silken loincloths. On their heads many wore a
sort of helmet made of bronze, and each bore on
his left arm a small round buckler of wood, rein-
forced with hardened hide and braced with copper
nails. Their arms were curved swords similar to
that borne by Hawk, polished wooden maces, and
light battle-axes. Some carried heavy bows of
evident power and quivers of long barbed arrows.

And it came forcibly to Solomon Kane that
somewhere he had seen men much like these, or
pictures of men like them. But where he could not
say. They halted in the midst of the glade, to gaze
uncertainly at the two white men.

"Well," said Hawk, mockingly, "you have
found your king — have you forgotten your duty
your ruler ? Down on your knees, dogs!"

	A well-built young warrior at the head of the
men spoke passionately, and Kane started as he
realized that he understood the language. It was
much akin to the numerous Bantu dialects, many
of which Kane had picked up in his travels, though
some of the words were unintelligible to him and
had a tang of peculiar antiquity.

	"Red-handed murderer!" exclaimed the youth,
his dark cheeks flushing in anger. "You dare to
mock us? I know not who this man is, but our
quarrel is not with him; It is your head that we
will take back to Agara with us. Seize him — "

His own hand went. back with the javelin he
carried, and in that instant Hawk aimed deliberately
and fired. The heavy-bored pistol crashed
deafeningly, and in the smoke Kane saw the young
warrior drop like a log. The effect on the rest was
just as Kane had seen it be on savages in many
other lands. Their weapons slipped from nerve-
less hands, and they stood frozen, gaping like
frightened children. Some of the warriors cried
out and dropped to their knees or flat on their
faces.

The distended eyes of all were drawn as by a
magnet to the silent corpse. At the close range,
the heavy ball had literally shattered the youth's
skull — had blasted out his brains. And while his
comrades stood like sheep. Hawk struck while the
iron was hot.

"Down, dogs!" he cried sharply, striding
forward and striking a warrior to his knees with a
blow of his open hand. "Shall I loose the thunders
of death upon you all, or will you receive me again
as your rightful king?"

Dazed, brains numbed, me warriors sank to
their knees; some wriggled prostrate on their
bellies and whimpered. Hawk placed his heel on
me neck of the nearest warrior and grinned
savagely and triumphantly at Kane.

"Arise," said he, with a contemptuous kick.
"But none forget I am king! Will ye return to
Basti and fight for me, or will ye all die here?"

"We will fight for you, master," came me
answering chorus. Hawk grinned again.
"Retaking the throne is easier than even I
thought," said he. "Rise now — leave that carrion
where it has fallen. I am your king, and this is
Solomon Kane, my comrade. He is a terrible
magician, and even if you should slay me — who
am immortal — he will blast you all out of
existence."

Men are sheep, thought Solomon, as he saw
the warriors of both factions meekly forming
themselves according to Hawk's orders. They
formed short ranks, three abreast, and in the
centre walked Kane and Hawk.

"No fear of a spear in the back," said the
buccaneer to Kane. "they are cowed — see the
dazed look in their eyes ? Yet be on guard."

Then calling to a man who had the appearance
of a chief, he ordered him to walk between himself
and Kane.

WINGS IN THE NIGHT

CHAPTER I

THE HORROR ON THE STAKE

	Solomon Kane leaned on his strangely carved
staff and gazed in scowling perplexity at the
mystery which spread silently before him. Many a
deserted village Kane had seen in the months that
had passed since he turned his face east from the
Slave Coast and lost himself in the mazes of jungle
and river, but never one like this.

	It was not famine that had driven away the
inhabitants, for yonder the wild rice still grew
rank and unkempt in the untilled fields. There
were no Arab slave-raiders in this nameless land 
—- it must have been a tribal war that devastated
the village, Kane decided, as he gazed sombrely
at the scattered bones and grinning skulls that
littered the space among the rank weeds and
grasses. These bones were shattered and splintered,
and Kane saw jackals and a hyena furtively
slinking among the ruined huts. But why had the
slayers left the spoils? There lay war spears,
their shafts crumbling before the attacks of the
white ants. There lay shields, mouldering in the
rains and sun. There lay the cooking pots, and
about the neck-bones of a shattered skeleton
glistened a necklace of gaudily painted pebbles and
shells —- surely rare loot for any savage conqueror.

	He gazed at the huts, wondering why the thatch
roofs of so many were torn and rent, as if by
taloned things seeking entrance. Then something
made his cold eyes narrow in startled unbelief.
Just outside the mouldering mound that was once
the village wall towered a gigantic baobab tree,
branchless for sixty feet, its mighty bole too large
to be gripped and scaled. Yet in the ^topmost
branches dangled a skeleton, apparently impaled
on a broken limb.

	The cold hand of mystery touched the shoulder
of Solomon Kane. How came those pitiful remains
in that tree? Had some monstrous ogre's inhuman
hand flung them there?

	Kane shrugged his broad shoulders and his
hand unconsciously touched the black butts of his
heavy pistols, the hilt of his long rapier, and the
dirk in his belt. Kane felt no fear as an ordinary
man would feel, confronted with the Unknown and
Nameless. Years of wandering in strange lands
and warring with strange creatures had melted
away from brain, soul, and body all that was not
steel and whalebone. He was tall and spare, almost
gaunt, built with the savage economy of the wolf.
Broad-shouldered, long-armed, with nerves of
ice and thews of spring steel, he was no less the
natural killer than the born swordsman.

The brambles and thorns of the jungle had
dealt hardly with him; his garments hung in
tatters, his featherless slouch hat was torn and
his boots of Cordovan leather were scratched and
worn. The sun had baked his chest and limbs to a
deep bronze, but his ascetically lean face was
impervious to its rays. His complexion was still
of that strange, dark pallor which gave him an
almost corpse-like appearance, belied only by his
cold, light eyes.

	And now Kane, sweeping the village once more
with his searching gaze, pulled his belt into a
more comfortable position, shifted to his left hand
the cat-headed stave N'Longa had given him, and
took up his way again.

	To the west lay a strip of thin forest, sloping
downward to a broad belt of. savannas, a waving
sea of grass waist-deep and deeper. Beyond that
rose another narrow strip of woodlands, deepening
rapidly into dense jungle. Out of that Jungle Kane
had fled like a hunted wolf with pointed-toothed
men hot on his trail. Even now a vagrant breeze
brought faintly the throb of a savage drum which
whispered its obscene tale of hate and blood-
hunger and belly-lust across miles of jungle and
grassland.

	The memory of his flight and narrow escape
was vivid in Kane's mind, for only the day before
had he realized too late that he was in cannibal
country, and all that afternoon in the reeking
stench of the thick jungle, he had crept and run
and hidden and doubled and twisted on his track
with the fierce hunters ever close behind him,
until night fell and he gained and crossed the
grasslands under cover of darkness.

	Now in the late morning he had seen nothing,
heard nothing of his pursuers, yet he had no
reason to believe that they bad abandoned the
chase. They had been close on his heels when he
took to the savannas.

	So Kane surveyed the Land in front of him. To
the east, curving from north to south ran a
straggling range of hills, for the most part dry
and barren, rising in the south to a jagged black
skyline that reminded Kane of the black hills of
Negari. Between him and these hills stretched a
broad expanse of gently rolling country, thickly
treed, but nowhere approaching the density of a
Jungle. Kane got the impression of a vast upland
plateau, bounded by the curving hills to the east
and by the savannas to the west.

	Kane set out for the hills with his Long,
swinging, tireless stride. Surely somewhere
behind him the savage demons were stealing after
him, and he had no desire to be driven to bay. A
shot might send them flying in sudden terror, but
on the other hand, so low they were in the scale of
humanity, it might transmit no supernatural fear
to their dull brains. And not even Solomon Kane,
whom Sir Francis Drake had called Devon's king
of swords, could win in a pitched battle with a
whole tribe.

	The silent village with its burden of death and
mystery faded out behind him. Utter silence
reigned among these mysterious uplands where no
birds sang and only a silent macaw flitted among
the great trees. The only sounds were Kane's cat-
like tread, and the whisper of the drum-haunted"
breeze.

	And then Kane caught a glimpse among the
trees that made his heart leap with a sudden,
nameless horror, and a few moments later he
stood before Horror itself, stark and grisly, In a
wide clearing, on a rather bold incline stood a
grim stake, and to this stake was bound a thing
that had once been a man. Kane had rowed,
chained to the bench of a Turkish galley, and he
had toiled in Barbary vineyards; he had battled
red Indians in me New Lands and had languished
in the dungeons of Spain's Inquisition. He knew
much of the fiendishness of man's inhumanity, but
now he shuddered and grew sick. Yet it was not so
much the ghastliness of the mutilations, horrible
as they were, that shook Kane's soul, but the
knowledge that the wretch still lived.

	For as he drew near, the gory head that lolled
on the butchered breast lifted and tossed from side
to side. spattering blood from the stumps of ears,
while a bestial, rattling whimper drooled from the
shredded lips.

	Kane spoke to the ghastly thing and it scream-
ed unbearably, writhing in incredible contortions.
while its head jerked up and down with the jerking
of mangled nerves, and the empty, gaping eye-
sockets seemed striving to see from their emptiness.
And moaning low and brain-shatteringly it
huddled its outraged self against the stake where
it was bound and lifted its head in a grisly attitude
of listening, as if it expected something out of
the skies.

"Listen," said Kane, in the dialect of the
river tribes. "Do not fear me — I will not harm
you and nothing else shall harm you any more. I
am going to loose you."

Even as he spoke Kane was bitterly aware of
the emptiness of his words. But his voice had
filtered dimly into the crumbling, agony-shot
brain of the man before him. From between
splintered teeth fell words, faltering and uncertain,
mixed and mingled with the slavering
droolings of imbecility. He spoke a language akin
to the dialects Kane had learned from friendly
river folk on his wanderings, and Kane gathered
that he had been bound to the stake for a long time
— many moons, he whimpered in the delirium of
approaching death; and all this time, inhuman, evil
things had worked their monstrous will upon him.
These things he mentioned by name, but Kane
could make nothing of it for he used an unfamiliar
term that sounded like akaana. But these things
had not bound him to the stake, for the torn wretch
slavered the name of Goru, who was a priest and
who had drawn a cord too tight about his legs —
and Kane wondered that the memory of this small
pain should linger through the red mazes of agony
that the dying man should whimper over it.

And to Kane's horror, the man spoke of his
brother who had aided in the binding of him, and he
wept with infantile sobs. Moisture formed in the
empty sockets and made tears of blood. And he
muttered of a spear broken long ago in some dim
hunt, and while he muttered in his delirium, Kane
gently cut his bonds and eased his broken body to
the grass. But even at the Englishman's careful
touch, the poor wretch writhed and howled like a
dying dog, while blood started anew from a score
of ghastly gashes, which, Kane noted, were more
like the wounds made by fang and talon than by
knife or spear. But at last it was done and the
bloody, torn thing lay on the soft grass with
Kane's, old slouch hat beneath its death's-head,
breathing in great, rattling gasps.

	Kane poured water from his canteen between
the mangled lips, and bending close, said: "Tell
me more of these devils, for by the God of my
people, this deed shall not go unavenged, though
Satan himself bar my way."

	It is doubtful if the dying man heard. But he
heard something else. The macaw, with the
curiosity of its breed, swept from a near-by
grove and passed so close its great wings fanned
Kane's hair. And at the sound of those wings, the
butchered man heaved upright and screamed in a
voice that haunted Kane's dreams to the day of his
death: '"The wings! the wings! They come again!
Ahhh, mercy, the wings!"

	And the blood burst in a torrent from his lips
and so he died.

	Kane rose and wiped the cold sweat from his
forehead. "The upland forest shimmered in the
noonday heat. Silence lay over the land like an
enchantment of dreams. Kane's brooding eyes
ranged to the black, malevolent hills crouching in
the distance and back to the far-away savannas.
An ancient curse lay over that mysterious land
and the shadow of it fell across the soul of Solomon 
Kane.

	Tenderly he lifted the red ruin that had once
pulsed with life and youth and vitality, and carried
it to the edge of the glade, where arranging the
cold limbs as best he might, and shuddering once
again at the unnameable mutilations, he piled
stones above it till even a prowling jackal would
find it hard to get at the flesh below.

	And he had scarcely finished when something
jerked him back out of his sombre broodings to a
realization of his own position. A slight sound —
or his own wolf-like instinct -- made him whirl.

	On the other side of the glade he caught a
movement among the tall grasses — the glimpse
of a hideous face, with an ivory ring in the flat
nose, thick lips parted to reveal teeth whose filed
points were apparent even at that distance, beady
eyes and a low slanting forehead topped by a mop
of frizzly hair. Even as the face faded from view
Kane Leaped back into the shelter of the ring of
trees which circled the glade, and ran like a deer-
hound, flitting from tree to tree and expecting at
each moment to hear the exultant clamour of the
warriors and to see them break cover at his back.

	But soon he decided that they were content to
hunt him down as certain beasts track their prey,
slowly and inevitably. He hastened through the up-
land forest, taking advantage of every bit of cover,
and he saw no more of his pursuers; yet he knew,
as a hunted wolf knows, that they hovered close
behind him, waiting their moment to strike him
down without risk to their own hides.

	Kane smiled bleakly and without mirth, If it
was to be a test of endurance, he would see how
savage thews compared with his own spring-steel
resilience. Let night come and he might yet give
them the slip. If not — Kane knew in his heart
that the savage essence of his very being which
chafed at his flight, would make him soon turn at
bay, though his pursuers outnumbered him a
hundred to one.

	The sun sank westward. Kane was hungry,
for he had not eaten since early morning when he
wolfed down the last of his dried meat. An occasional
spring had given him water, and once he
thought he glimpsed the roof of a large hut far
away through the trees. But he gave it a wide
berth. It was hard to believe that this silent
plateau was inhabited, but if it were, the natives
were doubtless as ferocious as those hunting him.

	Ahead of him the land grew rougher, with
broken boulders and steep slopes as he neared the
lower reaches of the brooding hills. And still no
sight of his hunters except for faint glimpses
caught by wary backward glances — a drifting,
shadow, the bending of the grass, the sudden
straightening of a trodden twig, a rustle of leaves.
Why should they be so cautious ? Why did they not
close in and have it over?

	Night fell and Kane reached me first long
slopes which led upward to the foot of the hills 
which now brooded black and menacing above him.
They were his goal, where he hoped to shake off
his persistent foes at last, yet a nameless aversion 
warned him away from them. They were
pregnant with hidden evil, repellent as the coil of
a great sleeping serpent, glimpsed in the tall
grass.

	Darkness fell heavily. The stars winked redly
in the thick heat of the tropic night. And Kane,
halting for a moment in an unusually dense grove,
beyond which the trees thinned out on the slopes,
heard a stealthy movement that was not the night
wind — for no breath of air stirred the heavy
leaves. And even as he turned, there was a rush
in the dark, under the trees.

	A shadow that merged with the shadows flung
itself on Kane with a bestial mouthing and a rattle
of iron, and the Englishman, parrying by the
gleam of the stars on the weapon, felt his assail-
ant duck into close quarters and meet him chest to
chest. Lean wiry arms locked about him, pointed
teeth gnashed at him as Kane returned the fierce
grapple. His tattered shirt ripped beneath a
Jagged edge, and by blind chance Kane found and
pinioned the hand that held the iron knife, and
drew his own dirk, flesh crawling in anticipation
of a spear in the back.

But even as the Englishman wondered why the
others did not come to their comrade's aid, he
threw all of his iron muscles into the single com-
bat. Close-clinched they swayed and writhed in the
darkness, each striving to drive his blade into the
other's flesh, and as the superior strength of the
Puritan began to assert itself, the cannibal howled
like a rabid dog, tore and bit.

A convulsive spin-wheel of effort pivoted them
out into the starlit glade where Kane saw the
ivory Hose-ring and the pointed teeth that snapped
beast-like at his throat. And simultaneously he
forced back and down the hand that gripped his
knife-wrist, and drove the dirk deep into the
savage wrists. The warrior screamed, and the
raw acrid scent of blood flooded the night air. And 
in that instant Kane was stunned by a sudden 
savage rush and beat of mighty wings that dashed 
him to earth, and the cannibal was torn from his 
grip and vanished with a scream of mortal agony. 
Kane leaped to his feet, shaken to his foundation. 
The dwindling scream of the wretched savage
sounded faintly and from above him.              

Straining his eyes into the skies he thought he
caught a glimpse of a shapeless and horrific
Thing crossing the dim stars — in which the
writhing limbs of a human mingled namelessly
with great wings and a shadowy shape — but so
quickly it was gone, he could not be sure.

And now he wondered if it were not all a
nightmare. But groping in the grove he found the
ju-ju stave with which he had parried the short
stabbing spear that lay beside it. And here, if
more proof was needed, was his long dirk, still
stained with blood.

Wings! Wings in the night! The skeleton in the
village of torn roofs — the mutilated warrior
whose wounds were not made with knife or spear 
and who died shrieking of wings. Surely those
hills were the haunt of gigantic birds who made
humanity their prey. Yet if birds, why had they
not wholly devoured the torn man on the stake? 
And Kane knew in his heart that no true bird ever 
cast such a shadow as he bad seen flit across the
stars.                                           

He shrugged his shoulders, bewildered. The 
night was silent. Where were the rest of the
cannibals who had followed him from their distant
jungle? Had the fate of their comrade frightened
them into flight? Kane looked to his pistols.
Cannibals or no, he went not up into those dark
hills that night.

Now he must sleep, if all the devils of the
Elder World were on his track. A deep roaring to
the westward warned him that beasts of prey were
aroam, and he walked rapidly down the rolling
slopes until he came to a dense grove some distance
from that in which he had fought the cannibal.
He climbed high among the great branches
until he found a thick crotch that would accommodate
even his tall frame. The branches above would
guard him from a sudden swoop of any winged
thing, and if savages were lurking near, their
clamber into the tree would warn him, for he slept
lightly as a cat. As for serpents and leopards,
they were chances he had taken a thousand times.

Solomon Kane slept and his dreams were
vague, chaotic, haunted with a suggestion of pre-
human evil and which at last merged into a vision
vivid as a scene in waking life. Solomon dreamed
he woke with a start, drawing a pistol — for so
long had his life been that of the wolf, that reaching
for a weapon was his natural reaction upon
waking suddenly.

His dream was that a strange, shadowy thing
had perched upon a great branch close by and
gazed at him with greedy, luminous yellow eyes
that seared into his brain. The dream-thing was
tall and lean and strangely misshapen, so blended
with the shadows that it seemed a shadow itself,
tangible only in the narrow yellow eyes. And Kane
dreamed he waited, spellbound, while uncertainty
came, into those eyes and then the creature walked
out on the limb as a man would walk, raised great
shadowy wings, sprang into space and vanished.

	Kane jerked upright, the mists of sleep fading.
In the dim starlight, under the arching Gothic-like
branches, the tree was empty save for himself.
Then it had been a dream, after all — yet it had
been so vivid, so fraught with inhuman foulness --
even now a faint scent like that exuded by birds of
prey seemed to linger in the air. Kane strained
his ears. He heard the sighing of the night wind,
the whisper of the leaves, the far-away roaring of
a lion, but naught else. Again Solomon slept —
while high above him a shadow wheeled against the
stars, circling again and again as a vulture
circles a dying wolf.

CHAPTER II

THE BATTLE IN THE SKY

	Dawn was spreading whitely over the eastern
hills when Kane woke. The thought of his nightmare
came-to him and he wondered again at its
vividness as he climbed down out of the tree. A
nearby spring slaked his thirst and some fruit,
rare in these highlands, eased his hunger.
	Then he turned his face again to the hills. A
finish fighter was Solomon Kane. Along that grim
skyline dwelt Some evil foe to the sons of men,
and that mere fact was as much a challenge to the
Puritan as had ever been a glove thrown in his
face by some hot-headed gallant of Devon.

	Refreshed by his night's sleep, he set out with
his long easy stride, passing the grove that had
witnessed the battle in the night, and coming into
the region where the trees thinned at the foot of
the slopes. Up these slopes he went, halting for a
moment to gaze back over the way he had come.
Now that he was above the plateau, he could easily
make out a village in the distance — a cluster of
mud-and-bamboo huts with one unusually large hut
a short distance from me rest on a sort of low
knoll.

	And while he gazed, with a sudden rush of
grisly wings the terror was upon him! Kane
whirled, galvanized. All signs had pointed to the
theory of a winged thing that hunted by night. He
had not expected attack in broad daylight — but
here a bat-like monster was swooping at him out
of the very eye of the rising sun. Kane saw a
spread of mighty wings, from which glared a
horribly human face; then he drew and fired with
unerring aim and the monster veered wildly in
midair and came whirling and tumbling out of the
sky to crash at his feet.

	Kane leaned forward, pistol smoking in his
hand, and gazed wide-eyed. Surely this thing was
a demon out of the pits of hell, said the sombre
mind of the Puritan; yet a leaden ball had slain it.
Kane shrugged his shoulders, baffled; he had
never seen aught to approach this, though all his
life had fallen in strange ways.

	The thing was like a man, inhumanly tall and
inhumanly thin; the head was long, narrow, and
hairless — the head of a predatory creature. The
ears were small, close-set and queerly pointed.
The eyes, set in death, were narrow, oblique and
of a strange yellowish colour. The nose was thin
and hooked, like the beak of a bird of prey, the
mouth a wide cruel gash, whose thin lips, writhed
in a death snarl and flecked with foam, disclosed
wolfish fangs.

	The creature, which was naked and hairless,
was not unlike a human being in other ways. the
shoulders were broad and powerful, the neck long
and lean. The arms were long and muscular, the
thumb being set beside the fingers after the
manner of the great apes. Fingers and thumbs
were armed with heavy hooked talons. The chest
was curiously misshapen, the breast-bone Jutting
out like the keel of a ship, the ribs curving back
from it. The legs were long and wiry with huge,
hand-like, prehensile feet, the great toe set
opposite the rest like a man's thumb. The claws
on the toes were merely long nails.

	But the most curious feature of this curious
creature was on its back. A pair of great wings,
shaped much like the wings of a moth but with a
bony frame and of leathery substance, grew from
its shoulders, beginning at a point just back and
above where the arms joined the shoulders, and
extending half way to the narrow hips. These
wings, Kane reckoned, would measure some
eighteen feet from tip to tip.

	He laid hold on the creature, involuntarily
shuddering at the slick, hard leather-like feel of
the skin, and half-lifted it. The weight was little
more than half as much as it would have been in a
man the same height — some six and a halt feet.
Evidently the bones were of a peculiar bird-like
structure and the flesh consisted almost entirely
of stringy muscles.

	Kane stepped back, surveying the thing again.
then his dream had been no dream after all —
that foul thing or another like it had in grisly
reality lighted in the tree beside him — a whir of
mighty wings! A sudden rush through the sky!
Even as Kane whirled he realized he had committed
the jungle-farer's unpardonable crime — he
had allowed his astonishment and curiosity to
throw him off guard. Already a winged fiend was
at his throat and there was no time to draw and
fire his other pistol. Kane saw, in a maze of
thrashing wings, a devilish, semi-human face --
he felt those wings battering at him — he felt
cruel talons sink deep into his breast; then he was
dragged off his feet and felt empty space beneath
him.

	The winged man had wrapped his limbs about
the Englishman's legs. and the talons he had
driven into Kane's breast muscles held like fanged
vices. The wolf-like fangs drove at Kane's throat,
but the Puritan gripped the bony throat and thrust
back the grisly head, while with his right hand he
strove to draw his dirk. The birdman was mounting
slowly and a fleeting glance showed Kane that
they were already high above the trees. The
Englishman did not hope to survive this battle in
the sky, for even if he slew his foe, he would be
dashed to death in the fall. But with the innate
ferocity of the fighting man he set himself grimly
to take his captor with him.

	Holding those keen fangs at bay, Kane man-
aged to draw his dirk, and he plunged it deep into
the body of the monster. The bat-man veered
wildly and a rasping, raucous screech burst from
his half-throttled throat. He floundered wildly,
beating frantically with his- great wings, bowing
his back and twisting his head fiercely in a vain
effort to free it and sink home his deadly fangs.
He sank the talons of one hand agonizingly deeper
and deeper into Kane's breast muscles, while with
the other he tore at his foe's head and body. But
the Englishman, gashed and bleeding, with the
silent and tenacious savagery of a bulldog, sank
his fingers deeper into the lean neck and drove his
dirk home again and again, while far below awed
eyes watched the fiendish battle that was raging at
that dizzy height.

	They had drifted out over me plateau, and the
fast-weakening wings of the bat-man barely sup-
ported their weight. They were sinking earthward
swiftly, but Kane, blinded with blood and battle
fury, knew nothing of this. With a great piece of
his scalp hanging loose, his chest and shoulders
cut and ripped, the world had become a blind, red
thing in which he was aware of but one sensation
— the bulldog urge to kill his foe.

	Now me feeble and spasmodic beating of the
dying monster's wings held them hovering for an
instant above a thick grove of gigantic trees, while
Kane felt the grip of claws and twining limbs grow
weaker and the slashing of the talons become a
futile flailing.

With a last burst of power he drove the reddened
dirk straight through the breastbone and felt
a convulsive tremor run through the creature's
frame. The great wings fell limp — and victor and
vanquished dropped headlong and plummet-like
earthward.

	Through a red wave Kane saw the waving
branches rushing up to meet them — he felt them
flail his face and tear at his clothing, as still
locked in that death-clinch he rushed downward
through leaves which eluded his vainly grasping
hand; then his head crashed against a great limb,
and an endless abyss of blackness engulfed him.

CHAPTER III

THE PEOPLE IN THE SHADOW

	Through colossal, black basaltic corridors of
night, Solomon Kane fled for a thousand years.
Gigantic winged demons, horrific in the utter
darkness, swept over him with a rush of great
bat-like pinions and in the blackness he fought
with them as a cornered rat fights a vampire bat,
while fleshless jaws drooled fearful blasphemies
and horrid secrets in his ears, and the skulls of
men rolled under his groping feet.

	Solomon Kane came back suddenly from the
land of delirium and his first sight of sanity was
that of a fat, kindly native face bending over him.
Kane saw he was in a roomy, clean and well-
ventilated hut, while from a cooking pot bubbling
outside wafted savoury scents. Kane realized he
was ravenously hungry. And he was strangely
weak. the hand he lifted to his bandaged head
shook, and its bronze was dimmed.

	"he fat man and another, a tall, gaunt, grim-
faced warrior, bent over him, and the fat man
said: "He is awake, Kuroba, and of sound mind."
The gaunt man nodded and called something which
was answered from without.

	"What is this place?" asked Kane in a language
he had learned that was similar to the dialect
just used. "How long have I lain here? "

	"This is me last village of Bogonda." The fat
man pressed him back with hands as gentle as a
woman's. "We found you lying beneath the trees
on the slopes, badly wounded and senseless. You
have raved in delirium for many days. Now eat."

	A lithe young warrior entered with a wooden
bowl full of steaming food and Kane ate ravenously.
"He is like a leopard, Kuroba," said the fat
man admiringly. "Not one in a thousand would
have lived with his wounds."

	"Aye," returned the other. "And he slew the
akaana that rent him, Goru."

	Kane struggled to his elbows. "Goru?" he
cried fiercely. "The priest who binds men to
stakes for devils to eat?"

	And he strove to rise so that he could strangle
the fat man, but his weakness swept over him like
a wave, the hut swam dizzily to his eyes and he
sank back panting, where he soon fell into a sound,
natural sleep.

	Later he awoke and found a slim young girl,
named Nayela, watching him. She fed him, and
feeling much stronger, Kane asked questions
Which she answered shyly but intelligently.

	This was Bogonda, ruled by Kuroba the chief
and Goru the priest. None in Bogonda had ever
seen or heard of a white man before. She counted
the days Kane had lain helpless, and he was
amazed. But such a battle as he had been through
was enough to kill an ordinary man. He wondered
that no bones had been broken, but the girl said
the branches had broken his fall and he had landed
on the body of the akaana. He asked for Goru, and
the fat priest came to him, bringing Kane's
weapons.

"Some we found with you where you lay." said
Goru, "some by the body of the akaana you slew
with the weapon which speaks in fire and smoke.
You must be a god — yet the gods bleed not and
you have just all but died. Who are you ? "

	"I am no god," Kane answered, "but a man
like yourself. I come from a far land amid the
sea, which land, mind ye, is the fairest and
noblest of all lands. My name is Solomon Kane and
I am a landless wanderer. From the lips of a
dying man I first heard your name. Yet your face
seemeth kindly."

	A shadow crossed the eyes of me shaman and
he hung his head.

	"Rest and grow strong, oh man, or god or
whatever you be," said he, "and In time you will
learn of the ancient curse that rests upon this
ancient land."

	And in the days that followed, while Kane
recovered and grew strong with the wild beast
vitality that was his, Goru and Kuroba sat and
spoke to him at length, telling him many curious
things.

	Their tribe was not aboriginal here, but had
come upon the plateau a hundred and fifty years
before, giving it the name of their former home.
They had once been a powerful tribe in Old
Bogonda, on a great river far to the south. But
tribal wars broke their power, and at last before
a concerted uprising, the whole tribe gave way,
and Goru repeated legends of that great flight of a
thousand miles through jungle and swampland,
harried at every step by cruel foes.

	At last, hacking their way through a country
of ferocious cannibals, they found themselves safe
from man's attack — but prisoners in a trap from
which neither they nor their descendants could
ever escape. They were in the horror-country of
Akaana, and Goru said his ancestors came to
understand the jeering laughter of the man eaters
who had hounded them to the very borders of the
plateau.

	The Bogondi found a fertile country with good
water and plenty of game. There were numbers of
goats and a species of wild pig that throve here in
great abundance. At first the people ate these
pigs, but later they spared them for a good
reason. The grasslands between plateau and
jungle swarmed with antelopes, buffaloes and the
like, and there were many lions. Lions also
roamed the plateau, but Bogonda meant "Lion-
slayer" in their tongue and it was not many moons
before the remnants of the great cats took to the
lower levels. But it was not lions they had to fear,
as Goru's ancestors soon learned.

	Finding that the cannibals would not come past
the savannas, they rested from their long trek and
built two villages — Upper and Lower Bogonda.
Kane was in Upper Bogonda; he had seen the ruins
of the lower village. But soon they found that they
had strayed into a country of nightmares with
dripping fangs and talons. They heard the beat of
mighty wings at night, and saw horrific shadows
cross the stars and loom against the moon.
Children began to disappear and at last a young
hunter strayed off into the hills, where night
overtook him. And in the grey light of dawn a
mangled, half-devoured corpse fell from the skies
into the village street and a whisper of ogreish
laughter from high above froze the horrified on-
lookers. Then a little later the full horror of their
position burst upon the Bogondi.

	At first the winged men were afraid of the
newcomers. They hid themselves and ventured
from their caverns only at night. Then they grew
bolder. In the full daylight, a warrior shot one
with an arrow, but the fiends had learned they
could slay a human, and its death scream brought
a score of the devils dropping from the skies, who
tore the slayer to pieces In fall sight of the tribe.

	The Bogondi then prepared to leave that
devil's country and a hundred warriors went up
into the hills to find a pass. They found steep
walls, up which a man must climb laboriously,
and they found the cliffs honeycombed with caves
where the winged men dwelt.

	Then was fought the first pitched battle between
men and bat-men, and it resulted in a
crushing victory for the monsters. The bows and
spears of the natives proved futile before the
swoops of the taloned fiends, and of all that
hundred that went up into the hills, not one survived;
for the akaanas hunted down those that fled
and dragged down the last one within bowshot of
the upper village.

	Then it was that the Bogondi, seeing they
could not hope to win through the hills, sought to
fight their way out again the way they had come.
But a great horde of cannibals met them in the
grasslands, and in a great battle that lasted
nearly all day, hurled them back, broken and
defeated. And Goru said while the battle raged,
the skies were thronged wife hideous shapes,
circling above and laughing their fearful mirth to
see men die wholesale.

	So the survivors of those two battles, licking
their wounds, bowed to the inevitable with the
fatalistic philosophy of the savage. Some fifteen
hundred men, women and children remained, and
they built their huts, tilled the soil and lived
stolidly in the shadow of the nightmare.

	In those days there were many of the bird-
people, and they might have wiped out the Bogondi
Utterly, had they wished. No one warrior could
cope with an akaana, for he was stronger than a
human, he struck as a-hawk strikes, and if he
missed, his wings carried him out of reach of a
counterblow.

	Here Kane interrupted to ask why the Bogondi
did not make war on the demons with arrows. But
Goru answered that it took a quick and accurate
archer to strike an akaana in midair at all, and
so tough were their hides that unless the arrow
struck squarely it would not penetrate. Kane knew
that the natives were very indifferent bowmen and
that they pointed their shafts with chipped stone,
bone, or hammered iron almost as soft as copper;
he thought of Poitiers and Agincourt and wished
grimly for a file of stout English archers -- or a
rank of musketeers.

	But Goru said the akaanas did not seem to
wish to destroy the Bogondi utterly. Their chief
food consisted of the little pigs which then swarm-
ed the plateau, and young goats. Sometimes they
went out on the savannas for antelope, but they
distrusted the open country and feared the lions.
Nor did they haunt the jungles beyond, for the
trees grew too close for the spread of their wings.
They kept to the hills and the plateau — and what
lay beyond those hills none in Bogonda knew.

	The akaanas allowed the Bogondi to inhabit
the plateau much as men allow wild animals to
thrive, or stock lakes with fish — for their own
pleasure. The bat-people, said Goru, had a
strange and grisly sense of humour which was
tickled by the sufferings of a howling human.
Those grim hills had echoed to cries that turned
men's hearts to ice.

	But for many years, Goru said, once the
Bogondi learned not to resist their masters, the
akaanas were content to snatch up a baby from
time to time, or devour a young girl strayed from
the village or a youth whom night caught outside
the walls. The bat-folk distrusted me village;
they circled high above it but did not venture
within. There the Bogondi were safe until late
years.

	Goru said that the akaanas were fast dying out;
once there had been hope that the remnants of his
race would outlast them — in which event, he said
fatalistically, the cannibals would undoubtedly
come up from the jungle and put the survivors in
their cooking pots. Now he doubted if there were
more than a hundred and fifty akaanas altogether.
Kane asked him why did not the warriors then
sally forth on a great hunt and destroy the devils
utterly, and Goru smiled a bitter smile and repeated
his remarks about the prowess of the bat-
people in battle. Moreover, said he, the whole
tribe of Bogonda numbered only about four hundred
souls now, and the bat-people were their only
protection against the cannibals to the west.

	Goru said the tribe had thinned more in the
past thirty years than in all the years previous.
As the numbers of the akaanas dwindled, their
hellish savagery increased. They seized more and
more of the Bogondi to torture and devour in their
grim black caves high up in the hills, and Goru
spoke of sudden raids on hunting parties and
toilers in the plantain fields, and of the nights
made ghastly by horrible screams and gibberings
from the dark hills, and blood-freezing laughter
that was half-human; of dismembered limbs and
gory grinning heads flung from the skies to fall in
the shuddering village, and of grisly feasts among
the stars.

	Then came drouth, Goru said, and a great
famine. Many of the springs dried up and the
crops of rice and yams and plantains failed. The
gnus, deer, and buffaloes which had formed the
main part of Bogonda's meat diet withdrew to the
jungle in quest of water, and the lions, their
hunger overcoming their fear of man, ranged into
the uplands. Many of the tribe died, and the real
were driven by hunger to eat the pigs which were
the natural prey of the bat-people. This angered
the akaanas and thinned the pigs. Famine, Bogondi,
and the Lions destroyed all the goats and
half the pigs.

	At last the famine was past, but the damage
Was done. Of all the great droves which once
swarmed the plateau, only a remnant was left, and
these were hard to catch. The Bogondi had eaten
the pigs, so the akaanas ate the Bogondi. Life
became a hell for the humans, and the lower
village, numbering now only some hundred and
fifty souls, rose in revolt. Driven to frenzy by
repeated outrages, they turned on their masters.
An akaana lighting In the .very streets to steal a
child was set on and shot to death with arrows.
And the people of Lower Bogonda drew into their
huts and waited for their doom.

	And in the night, said Goru, it came. The
akaanas had overcome their distrust of the huts.
The full flock of them swarmed down from the
hills, and Upper Bogonda awoke to hear the fearful
cataclysm of screams and blasphemies that
marked the end of the other village. All night
Goru's people had lain sweating in terror, not
daring to move, harkening to the howling and
gibbering that rent the night. At last these sounds
ceased, Goru said, wiping the cold sweat from his
brow, but sounds of grisly and obscene feasting
still haunted the night with demon's mockery.
the early dawn Goru's people saw the hell-
flock winging back to their hills, like demons
flying back to hell through the dawn. They flew
slowly and heavily, like gorged vultures. Later
the people dared to steal down to the accursed
village, and what they found there sent them
shrieking away. And to that day, Goru said, no
man passed within three bow shots of that silent
horror. And Kane nodded in understanding, his
cold eyes more sombre man ever.

	For many days after that, Goru said the
people waited in quaking fear. Finally in desperation
of fear. which breeds unspeakable cruelty,
the tribe cast lots and the loser was bound to a
stake between the two villages, in hopes that the
akaanas would recognize this as a token of sub-
mission so that the people of Bogonda might
escape the fate of their kinsmen. The custom,
said Goru, had been borrowed from the cannibals
who in old times worshipped the akaanas and
offered a human sacrifice at each moon. But
chance had shown them that the akaanas could be
killed, so they ceased to worship them — at least
that was Goru's deduction, and he explained at
much Length that no mortal thing is worthy of real
adoration, however evil or powerful it may be.

	His own ancestors had made occasional sac-
rifices to placate the winged devils, but until
lately it had not been a regular custom. Now It
was necessary; the akaanas expected it, and each
moon they chose from their waning numbers a
strong young man or a girl whom they bound to the
stake.

	Kane watched Goru's face closely as he spoke
of his sorrow for this unspeakable necessity, and
the Englishman realized that the priest was sin-
cere. Kane shuddered at the thought of a tribe of
human beings thus passing slowly but surely into
the maws of a race of monsters.

	Kane spoke of the wretch he had seen, and
Goru nodded, pain in his soft eyes. For a day and
a night he had been hanging there, while the
akaanas glutted their vile torture-lust on his
quivering, agonized flesh. Thus far the sacrifices
had kept doom from the village. The remaining
pigs furnished sustenance for the dwindling
akaanas, together with an occasional baby snatched
up, and they were content to have their nameless
sport with the single victim each moon.

	A thought came to Kane.
"The cannibals never come up into me
plateau?"
Goru shook his head; safe in their jungle, they
never raided past the savannas.

	"But they hunted me to the very foot of the
hills."
	Again Goru shook his head. There was only
one cannibal; they had found his footprints. Evidently
a single warrior, bolder than the rest, had
allowed his passion for the chase to overcome his
fear of the grisly plateau and had paid the penalty.
Kane's teeth came together with a vicious snap
which ordinarily took the place of profanity with
him. He was stung by the thought of fleeing so long
from a single enemy. No wonder that enemy had
followed so cautiously, waiting until dark to
attack. But, asked Kane, why had the akaana
seized the cannibal instead of himself — and why
had be not been attacked by the bat-man who
alighted in his tree that night?

	The cannibal was bleeding, Goru answered.
The scent called the bat-fiend to attack, for they
scented raw blood as far as vultures. And they
were very wary. They had never seen a man like
Kane, who showed no fear. Surely they had decided
to spy on him, take him off guard before
they struck.

	Who were these creatures? Kane asked. Goru
shrugged his shoulders. They were there when his
ancestors came, who had never heard of them
before they saw them. There was no intercourse
with the cannibals, so they could learn nothing
from them. The akaanas lived in caves, naked like
beasts; they knew nothing of fire and ate only
fresh, raw meat.. But they, had a language of a
sort and acknowledged a king among them. Many
died in the great famine when the stronger ate the
weaker. They were vanishing swiftly; of late years
no females or young had been observed among
them. When these males died at last, there would
be no more akaanas; but Bogonda, observed Goru,
was doomed already, unless —he looked strangely
and wistfully at Kane. But the Puritan was deep in
thought.

	Among the swarm of native legends he had
heard on his wanderings, one now stood out. Long,
long ago, an old, old ju-ju man had told him,
winged devils came flying out of the north and
passed over his country, vanishing in the maze of
the jungle-haunted south. And the ju-ju man related
an old, old legend concerning these
creatures — that once they had abode in myriad
numbers far on a great lake of bitter water many
moons to the north, and ages and ages ago a
chieftain and his warriors fought them with bows
and arrows and slew many, driving the rest into
the south. The name of the chief was N'Yasunna
and he owned a great war canoe with many oars
driving it swiftly through the bitter water.

	And now a cold wind blew suddenly on Solomon
Kane, as if from a door opened suddenly on Outer
gulfs of Time and Space. For now he realized the
truth of that garbled myth, and the truth of an
older, grimmer legend. For what was the great
bitter lake but the Mediterranean Ocean and who
was the chief N'Yasunna but the hero Jason, who
conquered the harpies and drove them — not alone
into the Strophades Isles but into Africa as well?

The old pagan tale was true then, Kane thought
dizzily, shrinking aghast from the strange realm:
of grisly possibilities this opened up. For if this
myth of the harpies were a reality, what of the
other legends — the Hydra, the centaurs, the
chimera. Medusa, Pan, and the satyrs ?

	All those myths of antiquity -- behind them
did there lie and lurk nightmare realities with
slavering fangs and talons steeped in shuddersome
evil? Africa, the Dark Continent, land of shadows
and horror, of bewitchment and sorcery, into
which all evil things had been banished before the
growing light of the western world!

	Kane came out of his reveries with a start.
Goru was tugging gently and timidly at his sleeve.

	"Save us from the akaanas!" said Goru. "If
you be not a god. there is the power of a god, in
you! You bear in your hand the mighty ju-ju stave
which has in times gone by been the sceptre of
fallen empires and the staff of mighty priests. And
you have weapons which speak death in fire and
smoke— for our young men watched and saw you
slay two akaanas. We will make you king — god --
what you will! More than a moon has passed since
you came into Bogonda and the time for the sacrifice
is gone by, but the bloody stake stands bare.
The akaanas shun the village where you lie; they
steal no more babes from us. We have thrown off
their yoke because our trust is in you!"

	Kane clasped his temples with his hands. "You
know not what you ask!" he cried. "God knoweth it
is in my deepest heart to rid the land of this evil,
but I am no god. With my pistols I can slay a few
of the fiends, but I have but a little powder left.
Had I great store of powder and ball, and the
musket I shattered in the vampire-haunted Hills of
the Dead. then indeed would there be a rare hunting.
But even if I slew all those fiends, what of the
cannibals?"

	"They too will fear you!" cried old Kuroba,
while the girl Nayela and the lad, Loga, who was
to have been the next sacrifice, gazed at his wife
their souls in their eyes. Kane dropped his chin on
his fist and sighed.

	"Yet will I stay here in Bogonda all the rest
of my life if ye think I be protection to the people."

	So Solomon Kane stayed at the village of
Bogonda of the Shadow. The people were a kindly
folk, whose natural sprightliness and fun-loving '
spirits were subdued and saddened by long dwelling
in the Shadow. But now they had taken new
heart by the Englishman's coming, and it wrenched
Kane's heart to note the pathetic trust they placed
in him. Now they sang in the plaintain fields and
danced about the fire, and gazed at him wifh
adoring faith in their eyes. But Kane, cursing his
own helplessness, knew how futile would be his
fancied protection if the winged fiends swept
suddenly out of the skies.

	But he stayed in Bogonda. In his dreams the
gulls wheeled above the cliffs of old Devon carved
in the clean, blue, wind-whipped skies, and in the
day the call of the unknown lands beyond Bogonda
clawed at his heart wife fierce yearning. But he
abode in Bogonda and racked his brains for a plan.
He sat and gazed for hours at the ju-ju stave,
hoping in desperation that black magic would aid
him, where his mind failed. But N'Longa's ancient
gift gave him no aid. Once he had summoned the
Slave Coast shaman to him across leagues of
intervening space — but it was only when confronted
with supernatural manifestations that
N'Longa could come to him, and these harpies
were not supernatural.

	The germ of an idea began to grow at the back
of Kane's mind, but he discarded it. It had to do
with a great trap — and how could the akaanas be
trapped? The roaring of lions played a grim accompaniment
to his brooding meditations. As man
dwindled on the plateau, the hunting beasts who
feared only the spears of the hunters were beginning
to gather. Kane laughed bitterly. It was.
not lions, that might be hunted down and slain
singly, that he had to deal with.

	At some little distance from the village stood
the great hut of Goru, once a council hall. This
hut was full of many strange fetishes, which Goru
said with a helpless wave of his fat hands, were
strong magic against evil spirits but scant protection
against winged hellions of gristle and bone
and flesh.

CHAPTER IV

THE MADNESS OF SOLOMON

	Kane woke suddenly from a dreamless sleep.
A hideous medley of screams burst horrific in his
ears. Outside his hut, people were dying in the
night, horribly, as cattle die in the shambles. He
had slept, as always, with his weapons buckled on
him. Now he bounded to the door, and something
fell mouthing and slavering at his feet to grasp his
knees in a convulsive grin and gibber incoherent
pleas.

	In the faint light of a smouldering fire near by,
Kane in horror recognized the face of the youth
Loga, now frightfully torn and drenched in blood,
already freezing into a death mask. The night was
full of fearful sounds, inhuman howling mingled
with the whisper of mighty wings, the tearing of
thatch and a ghastly demon-laughter. Kane freed
himself from the locked dead arms and sprang to
the dying fire. He could make out only a confused
and vague maze of fleeing forms and darting
shapes, the shift and blur of dark wings against
the stars.

	He snatched up a brand and thrust it against
the thatch of his hut — and as the flame leaped up
and showed him the scene he stood frozen and
aghast. Red, howling doom had fallen on Bogonda.
Winged monsters raced screaming through her
streets, wheeled above the heads of the fleeing
people, or tore apart the hut thatches to get at the
gibbering victims within.

With a choked cry the Englishman woke from
his trance of horror, drew and fired at a darting
flame-eyed shadow which fell at his feet with a
shattered skull. And Kane gave tongue to one
deep, fierce roar and bounded into the melee, all
the berserk fury of his heathen Saxon ancestors
bursting into terrible being.

	Dazed and bewildered by the sudden attack,
cowed by long years of submission, the Bogondl
were incapable of combined resistance and for the
most part died like sheep. Some maddened by desperation,
fought back, but their arrows went wild
or glanced from the tough wings while the devilish
agility of the creatures made spear thrust and axe
stroke uncertain. Leaping from the ground they
avoided the blows of their victims and, sweeping
down upon their shoulders, dashed them to earth
where fang and talon did their crimson work.

	Kane saw old Kuroba, gaunt and bloodstained,
at bay against a hut wall with his foot on the neck
of a monster who had not been quick enough. The
grim-faced old chief wielded a two-handed axe in
great sweeping blows that for the moment held
back the screeching onset of half a dozen of the
devils. Kane was leaping to his aid when a low,
pitiful whimper checked him. The girl Nayela
writhed weakly, prone in the bloody dust, while on
her back a vulture-like thing crouched and tore.
Her dulling eyes sought the face of the English-
man in anguished appeal.

	Kane ripped out a bitter oath and fired point
blank. The winged devil pitched backward with an
abhorrent screeching and a wild flutter of dying
wings, and Kane bent to the dying girl. She
whimpered and kissed his hands with uncertain
lips as he cradled her head in his arms. Her
eyes set.

 	 Kane laid the body gently down, looking for
'Kuroba. He saw only a huddled cluster of grisly
shapes that sucked and tore at something between
them. And Kane went mad. With a scream that cut
through the inferno he bounded up, slaying even as
he rose. Even in the act of lunging up from bent
knee he drew and thrust, transfixing a vulture-
like throat. Then whipping out his rapier as the
thing floundered and twitched in its death struggle,
the raging Puritan charged forward seeking new
victims.

	On all sides of him the people of Bogonda were
dying hideously. They fought futilely or they fled
and the demons coursed them down as a hawk
courses a hare. They ran into the huts and the
fiends rent the thatch or burst the door, and what
took place in those huts was mercifully hidden
from Kane's eyes.

	And to the frantic Puritan's horror-distorted
brain it seemed that he alone was responsible.
The Bogondi had trusted him to save them. They
had withheld the sacrifice and defied their grim
masters. Now they were paying the horrible
penalty and he was unable to save them. In the
agony-dimmed eyes turned toward him, Kane
quaffed the black dregs of the bitter cup. It was
riot anger or the vindictiveness of fear. It was
hurt and a stunned reproach. He was their god and
he had failed them.

	Now he ravened through the massacre and the
fiends avoided him, turning to the easy victims.
But Kane was not to be denied. In a red haze that
was not of the burning hut, he saw a culminating
horror; a harpy gripped a writhing naked thing
that had been a woman, and the wolfish fangs
gorged deep. As Kane sprang, thrusting, the
bat-man dropped his yammering, mowing prey
and soared aloft. But Kane dropped his rapier and
with the bound of a blood-mad panther caught the
demon's throat and locked his iron legs about its
lower body.

	Once again he found himself battling in mid-
Air, but this time close above the hut roofs.
Terror had entered the cold brain of the harpy.
He did not fight to hold and slay; he wished only to
be rid of this silent, clinging thing that stabbed so
savagely for his life.  He floundered wildly,
screaming abhorrently and thrashing with his
wings, then as Kane's dirk bit deeper, dipped
suddenly sidewise and fell headlong.

	The thatch of a hut broke their fall, and Kane
and the dying harpy crashed through to land on a
writhing mass on the hut floor. In the lurid
flickering of the burning hut outside that vaguely
lighted the hut into which he had fallen, Kane saw
a deed of brain-shaking horror being enacted ,--
red-dripping fangs in a yawning gash of a mouth,
and a crimson travesty of a human form that still
writhed with agonized life. Then, in the maze, of
madness that held him, his steel fingers closed on
the fiend's throat in a grip that no tearing of talons
or hammering of wings could loosen, until he felt
the horrid life flow out from under his fingers and
the bony neck hung broken.

	Outside, the red madness of slaughter continued.
Kane bounded up, his hand closing blindly
on the haft of some weapon, and as he leaped
from the hut a harpy soared from under his very
feet. It was an axe that Kane had snatched up, and
he dealt a stroke that spattered the demon's brains
like water. He sprang forward, stumbling over
bodies and parts of bodies, blood streaming from
a dozen wounds, and then halted baffled and
screaming with rage.

	The bat-people were taking to the air. No
longer would they face this strange madman who
in his insanity was more terrible than they. But
they went not alone into the upper regions. In their
lustful talons they bore writhing,  screaming
forms, and Kane, raging to and fro with his
dripping axe, found himself alone in a corpse-
choked village.

	He threw back his head to shriek his hate at
the fiends above him and he felt warm, thick drops
fall into his face, while the shadowy skies were
filled with screams of agony and the laughter of
monsters.

	As the sounds of that ghastly feast in the skies
filled the night and the blood that rained from the
stars fell into his face, Kane's last vestige of
reason snapped. He gibbered to and fro, screaming
chaotic blasphemies.

	And was he not a symbol of Man, staggering
among the tooth-marked bones and severed grinning
heads of humans, brandishing a futile axe, and
screaming incoherent hate at the grisly, winged
shapes of Night that make him their prey, chuck-
ling in demoniac triumph above him and dripping
into his mad eyes the pitiful blood of their human
victims?

CHAPTER V

THE CONQUEROR

A shuddering, white-faced dawn crept over
the black hills to shiver above the red shambles
that had been the village of Bogonda. The huts
stood intact, except for the one which had sunk to
smouldering coals, but the thatches of many were
torn. Dismembered bones, half or wholly stripped
of flesh, lay in the streets, and some were splintered
as though they had been dropped from a
great height.

It was a realm of the dead where was but one
sign of life. Solomon Kane leaned on his blood-
clotted axe and gazed upon the scene with dull, mad
eyes. He was grimed and clotted with half-dried
blood from long gashes on chest, face, and
shoulders, but he paid no need to his hurts.

The people of Bogonda had not died alone.
Seventeen harpies lay among the bones. Six of
these Kane bad slain. The rest had fallen before
the frantic dying desperation of the Bogondi. But
It was poor toll to take in return. Of the four
hundred odd people of Upper Bogonda, not one had
lived to see the dawn. And the harpies were gone
-- back to their caves in the black hills, gorged to
repletion.

With slow, mechanical steps Kane went about
gathering up his weapons. He found his sword,
dirk, pistols, and the ju-ju stave. He left the main
village and went up the slope to the great hut of
Goru. And there he halted, stung by a new horror.
The ghastly humor of the harpies had prompted a
delicious jest. Above the hut door stared the
severed head of Goru. The fat cheeks were
shrunken, the lips lolled in an aspect of horrified
idiocy, and the eyes stared like a hurt child. And
in those dead eyes Kane saw wonder and reproach.

Kane looked at the shambles that had been
Bogonda, and he looked at the death mask of Goru.
And he lifted his clenched fists above his head,
and with glaring eyes raised and writhing lips
flecked with froth, he cursed the sky and the
earth and the spheres above and below. He cursed
the cold stars, the blazing sun, the mocking moon,
and the whisper of the wind. He cursed all fates
and destinies, all that he had loved or hated, the
silent cities beneath the seas, the past ages and
the future eons. In one soul-shaking burst of
blasphemy he cursed the gods and devils who
make mankind their sport, and he cursed Man
who lives blindly on and blindly offers his back to
the iron-hoofed feet of his gods.

Then as breath failed he halted, panting.
From the lower reaches sounded the deep roaring
of a lion and into the eyes of Solomon Kane came a
crafty gleam. He stood long, as one frozen, and
out of his madness grew a desperate plan. And he
silently recanted his blasphemy, for if the brazen-
hoofed gods made Man for their sport and play-
thing, they also gave him a brain that holds craft
and cruelty greater than any other living thing.

	"There you shall bide," said Solomon Kane to
the head of Goru. "The sun will wither you and the
cold dews of night will shrivel you. But I will keep
the kites from you and your eyes shall see the fall
of your slayers. Aye, I could not save the people
of Bogonda, but by the God of my race, I can
avenge them. Man is the sport and sustenance of
titanic beings of Night and Horror whose giant
wings hover ever above him. But even evil things
may come to an end — and watch ye, Goru."

	In the days that followed Kane laboured mightily,
beginning with the first grey light of dawn and
toiling on past sunset, into the white moonlight till
he fell and slept the sleep of utter exhaustion. He
snatched food as he worked and he gave his wounds
absolutely no heed, scarcely being aware that they
healed of themselves. He went down into the lower
levels and cut bamboo, great stacks of long, tough
stalks- He cut thick branches of trees, and tough
vines to serve as ropes.
	With this material he reinforced the walls and
roof of Goru's hut. He set the bamboos deep in the
earth, hard against the wall, and interwove and
twined them, binding them fast with the vines that
were pliant and tough as cords. The long branches
he made fast along the thatch, binding them close
together. When he had finished, an elephant could
scarcely have burst through the walls.

	The lions had come into the plateau in great
numbers and the herds of little pigs dwindled fast.
Those the lions spared, Kane slew, and tossed to
the jackals. This racked Kane's heart, for he was
a kindly man and this wholesale slaughter, even of
pigs who would fall prey to hunting beasts anyhow,
grieved him. But it was part of his plan of vengeance,
and he steeled his heart.

	The days stretched into weeks. Kane tolled by
day and by night, and between his stints he talked
to the shrivelled, mummied head of Goru, whose
eyes, strangely enough, did not change in the
blaze of the sun or the haunt of the moon, but retained
their life-like expression. When the memory
of those lunacy-haunted days had become only
a vague nightmare, Kane wondered if, as it had
seemed to him, Goru's dried lips had moved in
answer, speaking strange and mysterious things.

	Kane saw the akaanas wheeling against the sky
at a distance, but they did not come near, even
when he slept in the great hut, pistols at hand.
They feared his power to deal death with smoke
and thunder.

	At first he noted that they flew sluggishly,
gorged with the flesh they had eaten on that red
night, and the bodies they had borne to their caves.
But as the weeks passed they appeared leaner and
leaner and ranged far a field in search of food. And
Kane laughed, deeply and madly.

	This plan of his would never have worked
before, but now there were no humans to fill the
bellies of the harpy-folk. And there were no more
pigs. In all the plateau there were no creatures
for the bat-people to eat. Why they did not range
east of the hills, Kane thought he knew. That must
be a region of thick jungle like the country to the
west. He saw them fly into the grassland for
antelopes and he saw the lions take toll of them.
After all, the akaanas were weak beings among
the hunters, strong enough only to slay pigs and
deer — and humans.

At last they began to soar close to him at
night, and he saw their greedy eyes glaring at him
through the gloom. He judged the time was ripe.
Huge buffaloes, too big and ferocious for the bat-
people to slay, had strayed up into the plateau to
ravage the deserted fields of the dead Bogondi.
Kane out one of these out of the herd and drove
him, with shouts and volleys of stones, to the hut
of Goru. It was a tedious, dangerous task, and
time and again Kane barely escaped the surly
bull's sudden charges, but persevered and at last
shot the beast before the hut.

	A strong west wind was blowing and Kane
flung handfuls of blood into the air for the scent to
waft to the harpies in the hills. He cut the bull to
pieces and carried its quarters into the hut, then
managed to drag the huge trunk itself inside. Then
he retired into the thick trees nearby and waited.

	He had not long to wait. The morning air filled
suddenly with the beat of many wings, and a
hideous flock alighted before the hut of Goru. All
of the beasts — or men — seemed to be there,
and Kane gazed in wonder at the tall, strange
creatures, so like to humanity and yet so unlike --
the veritable demons of priestly legend. They

folded their wings like cloaks about them as they
walked upright, and they talked to one another In a
strident, crackling voice that had nothing of the
human in it.

	No, Kane decided, these things were not men.
"They were the materialization of some ghastly jest
of Nature — some travesty of the world's infancy
when Creation was an experiment. Perhaps they
were the offspring of a forbidden and obscene
mating of man and beast; more likely they were a
freakish offshoot on the branch of evolution — for
Kane had long ago dimly sensed a truth in the
heretical theories of the ancient philosophers, that
Man is but a higher beast. And if Nature made
many strange beasts in the past ages, why should
she not have experimented with monstrous forms
of mankind? Surely Man as Kane knew him was not
the first of his breed to walk the earth, nor yet to
be the last.

	Now me harpies hesitated, with their natural
distrust for a building, and some soared to the
roof and tore at the thatch. But Kane had builded
well. They returned to earth and at last, driven
beyond endurance by the smell of raw blood and
the sight of the flesh within, one of them ventured
inside. In an instant all were crowded into the
great hut, tearing ravenously at the meat, and
when the last one was within, Kane reached out a
hand and jerked a long vine which tripped the
catch that held the door he had built. It fell with a
crash, and the bar he had fashioned dropped into
place. That door would hold against the charge of
a wild bull.

	Kane came from his cover and scanned the
sky. Some hundred and forty harpies had entered
the hut. He saw no more winging through the skies
and believed it safe to suppose he had the whole
flock trapped. Then with a cruel, brooding smile,
Kane struck flint and steel to a pile of dead
leaves next the wall. Within sounded an uneasy
mumbling as the creatures realized that they were
prisoners. A thin wisp of smoke curled upward
and a flicker of red followed it; the whole heap
burst into flame and the dry bamboo caught.

	A few moments later the whole side of toe
wall was ablaze. The fiends inside scented the
smoke and grew restless. Kane heard them
cackling wildly and clawing at the walls. He
grinned savagely, bleakly and without mirth. Now
a veer of the wind drove the flames around the
wall and up over the thatch — with a roar the
whole hut caught and leaped into flame.

	From within sounded a fearful pandemonium.
Kane heard bodies crash against the walls, which
shook to the impact but held. The horrid screams
were music to his soul, and brandishing his arms,
he answered them with screams of fearful, soul-
shaking laughter. The cataclysm of horror rose
unbearably, paling the tumult of the flames. Then
it dwindled to a medley of strangled gibbering and
gasps as the flames ate in and the smoke thicken-
ed. An intolerable scent of burning flesh pervaded
the atmosphere, and had there been room in
Kane's brain for aught else than insane triumph,
he would have shuddered to realize that the scent
was of that nauseating and indescribable odour that
only human flesh emits when burning.

	From the thick cloud of smoke, Kane saw a
mowing, gibbering thing emerge through, the
shredding roof and flap slowly and agonizingly
upward on fearfully burned wings. Calmly he
aimed and fired, and the scorched and blinded
thing tumbled back into the flaming mass just as
the walls crashed in. To Kane it seemed that
Goru's crumbling face, vanishing in the smoke,
split suddenly in a wide grin and a sudden shout of
exultant human laughter mingled eerily in the roar
of the flames. But the smoke and insane brain
plays queer tricks.

Kane stood with tile ju-ju stave in one hand the
smoking pistol in the other, above the smouldering
ruins that hid forever from the sight of man the
last of those terrible, semi-human monsters
whom another hero had banished from Europe in
an, unknown age. Kane stood, an unconscious
statue of triumph — cold-eyed, dominant, the
supreme fighting man.

Smoke curled upward into the morning sky,
and the roaring of foraging lions shook the plateau.
Slowly, like light breaking through mists, sanity
returned to him.

"The light of God's morning enters even into
dark and lonesome lands," said Solomon Kane
sombrely. "Evil rules in the waste lands of the
earth, but even evil may come to an end. Dawn
follows midnight and even in this lost land the
shadows shrink. Strange are Thy ways, oh God of
my people, and who am I to question Thy wisdom ?
My feet have fallen in evil ways but Thou hast
brought me forth scatheless and hast made me a
scourge for the Powers of Evil. Over the souls of
men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters
and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart
and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some
far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of
Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till
then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters
 in his own heart and without, and with the
aid of God he may yet triumph."

	And Solomon Kane looked up into the silent
hills and felt the silent call of the hills and the
unguessed distances beyond; and Solomon Kane
shifted his belt, took his staff firmly in his hand
and turned his face eastward.

THE CHILDREN OF ASSHUR

Chapter I

Solomon Kane started up in the darkness,
snatching at the weapons which lay on the pile of
skins that served him as a crude pallet. It was not
the mad drum of the tropic rain on the leaves of
the hut roof which had wakened him, nor the bellowing
of the thunder. It was the screams of human
agony, the clash of steel that cut through the din
of the tropical storm. Some sort of a conflict was
taking place in the native village in which he had
sought refuge from the storm, and It sounded
much like a raid in force. As Solomon groped for
his sword, he wondered what bushmen would raid
a village in the night and in such a storm as this.
His pistols lay beside his sword, but he did not
take them up, knowing that they would be useless
in such a torrent of rain — a rain which would wet
their priming instantly.

He had laid down fully clad, save for his
slouch hat and cloak, and without stopping for
them, he ran to the door of the hut. A ragged
streak of lightning which seemed to rip the sky
open showed him a chaotic glimpse of struggling
figures in the spaces between the huts, dazzlingly
glinting back from flashing steel. Above me storm
he heard the shrieks of the black people and deep-
toned shouts in a language unfamiliar to him.
Springing from the hut he sensed the presence of
one in front of him; then another thunderous burst
of fire ripped across the sky, limning all in a
weird blue light. In that flashing instant Solomon
thrust savagely, felt the blade bend double in his
hand, and saw a heavy sword swinging for his
head. A burst of sparks, brighter than the lightning,
exploded before his eyes; then blackness
darker than the jungle night engulfed him.

	Dawn was spreading pallidly over the dripping
jungle reaches when Solomon Kane stirred and sat
up in the ooze before the hut. Blood had caked on
his scalp and his head ached slightly. Shaking off
a slight grogginess, he rose. The rain had long
since ceased, the skies were clear. Silence lay
over the village, and Kane saw that it was in
truth a village of the dead. Corpses of men,
women, and children lay strewn everywhere — in
the streets, in the doorways of the huts, inside
the huts, some of which had been literally ripped
to pieces, either in search of cowering victims,
or in sheer wantonness of destruction. They had
not taken many prisoners, Solomon decided, who-
ever the unknown raiders might be. Nor had they
taken the spears, axes, cooking pots, and plumed
head-pieces of their victims, this fact seeming to
argue a raid by a race superior in culture and
artisanship to the crude villagers. But they had
taken all the ivory they could find, and they had
taken, Kane discovered, his rapier and his dirk,
pistols, and powder-and-shot pouches. And they
had taken his staff, the sharp-pointed, strangely-
carved, cat-headed stave, which his friends,
N'Longa, the West Coast witch-man, had given
him, as well as his hat and cloak.

	Kane stood in the centre of the desolated
village, brooding over the matter, strange speculations
running at random through his mind. His
conversation with the natives of the village, into
which he had made his way me night before out of
the storm-beaten jungle, gave him no clue as to
the nature of the raiders. The natives themselves
had known little about the land into which they had
but recently come, driven over a long trek by a
rival, more powerful tribe. They had been a
simple, good-natured people, who had welcomed
him into their huts and given him freely of their
humble goods. Kane's heart was hot with wrath
against their unknown destroyers, but even deeper
than that burned his unquenchable curiosity, the
curse of the intelligent man.

	For Kane had looked on mystery in the night.
And the storm -- that vivid flame of lightning —
had showed him etched momentarily in its glare a
fierce, black-bearded race — the face of a white
man. Yet according to sanity there could be no
white men — not even Arab raiders — within
hundreds and hundreds of miles. Kane had had no
time to observe the man's dress, but he had a
vague impression that the figure was clad bizarrely.
And that sword which, striking glancing and
flat, had struck him down — surely that had been
no crude native weapon.

	Kane glanced at the crude mud wall which 
surrounded the village, at the bamboo gates which 
now lay in ruins — hewn to pieces by the raiders
The storm had apparently abated when the raiders
marched forth, for he made out a broad trampled
track leading out of the broken gate and into the
jungle.

	Kane picked up a crude native axe that lay
nearby. If any of the unknown slayers had fallen
in the battle, their bodies had been carried away
by their companions. Leaves pieced together made
him a makeshift hat to protect his head from the 
force of the sun. Then Solomon Kane went through
the broken gate and into the dripping jungle, fol-
lowing the spoor of the unknown.

	Under the giant trees the tracks became
clearer, and Kane made out that most of them
were of sandals — a type of sandal, likewise, that
was strange to him. The remaining tracks were of
bare feet, indicating that some prisoners had been
taken. Apparently they had a long start for, though
he travelled without pause, swinging along tirelessly
on his rangy legs, he did not sight the
column in that day's march.

	He ate of the food he had brought from the
ruined village, and pressed on without halting,
consumed by anger and with the desire to "solve
the mystery of that lightning-limned face; more,
the raiders had taken his weapons, and in that
dark land a man's weapons were his life. The day
wore on. As the sun sank, the jungle gave way to
forest-land, and at twilight Kane came out on a
rolling, grass-grown, tree-dotted plain, and saw
far across it what appeared to be a low-lying
grange of hills. The tracks led straight out across
the plain, and Kane believed the raiders goal was
those low, even hills.

	He hesitated; across the grasslands came the
thunderous roaring of lions, echoing and re-echoing
from a score of different points. The great
cats were beginning to stalk their prey, and it
would be suicide to venture across that vast open
space, armed with only an axe. Kane found a giant
tree and, clambering into it, settled himself in a
crotch as comfortably as he might. Far out across
the plain he saw a point of light twinkling among
the hills. Then on the plain, approaching the hills,
he saw other lights, a twinkling fire-set serpentine
line that moved toward the hills, now scarcely
visible against the stars along the horizon, It was
the column of raiders with their captives, he
realized. They were bearing torches and travel-
ling swiftly. The torches were no doubt to keep
off the lions, and Kane decided that their goal
must be very near at hand if they risked a night
march on those carnivore-haunted grasslands.

As he watched, he saw the twinkling fire-
points move upward, and for awhile they glittered
among the hills; then be saw them no more-
Speculating on the mystery of it all, Kane
slept, while the night winds whispered dark
secrets of ancient Africa among the leaves, and
lions roared beneath his tree, lashing their tufted
tails as they gazed upward with hungry eyes.

Again dawn lighted the land with rose and
gold, and Solomon descended from his perch and
took up his journey. He ate the last of the food he
had brought, drank from a stream that looked
fairly pure, and speculated on the chance of finding
food among the hills, If he did not find it, he might
be in a precarious position, but Kane had been
hungry before — aye, and starving and freezing
and weary. His rangy, broad-shouldered frame
was hard as iron, pliant as steel.

	So he swung boldly out across the savannas,
watching warily for lurking lions, but slackening
not his pace. The sun climbed to the zenith and
dipped westward. As he approached the low range,
it began to grow in distinctness. He saw that
instead of rugged hills, he was approaching a low
plateau that rose abruptly from the surrounding
plain and appeared to be level. He saw trees and
tall grass on the edges, but the cliffs seemed
barren and rough. However, they were at no
point more than seventy or eighty feet in height,
as far as he could see, and he anticipated no
great difficulty in surmounting them.

	Approaching them he saw that they were almost
solid rock, though overlaid by a fairly thick
stratum of soil. Boulders had tumbled down in
many places and he saw that an active man could
scale the cliffs in many places. But he saw some-
thing else — a broad road which wound up the
steep pitch of the precipice, and up which led the
spoors he was following.

	Kane approached the road, noting the excellence
of the road's workmanship — certainly
no mere animal path or even a native trail. The
road had been cut into the cliff with consummate
skill, and it was paved and palustraded with
smoothly cut blocks of stone.

	Wary as a wolf, he avoided the road; further
on he found a less steep slope up which he went. It
was unstable footing, and boulders that seemed to
poise on the slope threatened to roll down upon
him, but he accomplished the task without undue
hazard and came out over the edge of the cliff.

	Kane stood on a rugged, boulder-strewn slope,
which pitched off rather steeply onto a flat expanse.
From where he stood, he saw the broad
plateau spread out beneath his feet, carpeted with
lush green grass. And in the midst — he blinked
his eyes and shook his head, thinking he looked on
some mirage or hallucination. No! It was still
there: a massive walled city, rearing from the
grassy plain. He saw the battlements, the towers
beyond, with small figures moving about them. On
the other side of the city he made out a small lake,
on the shores of which stretched luxuriant gardens
and fields, and meadow-like expanses filled with
grazing cattle,

	Amazement at the sight held the Puritan
frozen for an instant; then the clink of an iron
heel on a stone brought him quickly about to face
the man who had come from among the boulders.
This man was broad-built and powerful, almost as
tall as Kane, and heavier. His bare arms bulged
with muscles, and his legs were like knotted iron
pillars. His face was a duplicate of that Kane had
seen in the lightning flash — fierce, black-
bearded; the face of a white man with arrogant
eyes and a predatory hooked nose. From his bull
throat to his knees he was clad in a corselet of
iron scales, and on his head was an iron helmet.
A metal-braced shield of hardwood and leather
was on his left arm, a dagger in his girdle, and a
short but heavy Iron mace in his band.

	All this Kane saw in a glance as the man
roared and leaped. The Englishman realized in
that instant that there was to be no such thing as a
parley, it was to be a battle to the death. As a
tiger leaps, he sprang to meet the warrior,
launching his axe with all the power of that rangy
frame. The warrior caught me blow in his shield.
The axe-edge turned, the haft splintering in Kane's
hand, the buckler shattered.  

	Carried by the momentum of his savage lunge,
Kane's body crashed against his foe who dropped
the useless shield and, staggering, grappled with
the Englishman. Straining and gasping they reeled
on hard-braced feet, and Kane snarled like a wolf
as be felt the full power of his foe's strength. The
armour hampered the Englishman, and the warrior
had shortened his grasp on the iron mace and was
ferociously striving; to crash it on Kane's bare
head.

	The Englishman was striving to pinion the
warrior's arm, but his clutching fingers missed,
and the mace crashed sickeningly against his bare
head. Again it fell, as a fire-shot mist clouded
Kane's vision, but his instinctive wrench avoided
It, though it half-numbed his shoulder, ripping the
skin so that the blood started in streams.

Maddened, Kane Lunged fiercely against the
stalwart body of the mace wielder, and one blindly
grasping hand closed oh the dagger hilt at the
warrior's girdle. Ripping it forth, he stabbed
blindly and savagely.

Close-locked, the fighters staggered back-
ward, the one stabbing in venomous silence, the
other striving to tear his arm free so that he
might crash home one destroying blow. The
warrior's short, half-hindered blows glanced from
Kane's head and shoulders, lacerating the skin and
bringing blood in streams. Red lances of agony
pierced the Englishman's clouding brain. And still
the dagger in his Lunging hand glanced from the
iron scales that guarded his foe's body.           

Blinded, dazed, fighting on instinct alone as a
wounded wolf fights, Kane's teeth snapped, fang-
like, into the great bull throat of his foe. The torn
flesh and a burst of flooding blood brought an
agonized roar from the powerful frame. The lashing
mace faltered and the warrior flinched back.
They reeled on the edge of a low precipice and
pitched, rolling headlong and close clinched. At
the foot of the slope they brought up, Kane upper-
most. The dagger in his hand glittered high above
his head and flashed downward, sinking hilt-deep
in the warrior's throat. Kane's body pitched for-
ward with the blow and he lay senseless above his
slain enemy.

They lay in a widening pool of blood, In the
sky specks appeared, black against the blue,
wheeling, circling, and dropping lower.
Then from among the defiles appeared men
similar in apparel and appearance to he who lay
dead beneath Kane's senseless body. They had
been attracted by the sounds of battle, and now
they stood about discussing the matter in harsh
and gutteral tones. Slaves stood a little way from
them In complete silence.

	They dragged the forms apart and discovered
that one was dead, one probably dying. Then, after
some discussion, they made a litter of, their
spears and sword-slings, and ordered their slaves
to lift the bodies and carry them. The party set
out toward the city which gleamed strangely in the
midst of the grassy plain.

Chapter II

Consciousness returned to Solomon Kane. He
was lying on a couch covered with finely dressed
skins and furs, in a large chamber, whose floor,
walls, and ceiling were of stone. There was one
window, heavily barred, and a single doorway.
Outside stood a stalwart warrior, in appearance
much like the man he had slain.

	Then Kane discovered another thing; golden
chains were on his wrists, neck, and ankles. They
were linked together in an intricate pattern, and
were made fast to a ring set in the wall with a 
strong silver lock.

	Kane found that his wounds had been bandaged,
and as he pondered over his situation a slave
entered with food and a kind of purple wine. The
Englishman made no attempt at conversation, but
ate the food offered and drank deeply. The wine
was drugged, and he soon fell asleep. Many hours
later when he awakened, he found that the bandages
had been changed. A different guard stood
outside the door—- a man of the same caste as the
former soldier, however — muscular, black-
bearded, and clad In armour.

	This time when he awakened he felt strong and
refreshed. Kane quickly decided that when the
slave returned he would seek to learn something
of the curious environs into which he had fallen.
The scruff of leather sandals on the tilings announced
the approach of someone, and Kane sat up
on his couch as a group of figures entered the
chamber.

	In the background lurked the slave who had
brought Kane's food. Before him, a group of men
had assembled in a little clump; robed, inscrutable,
shaven of face and head. And a little apart
from them stood a man whose figure dominated the
whole scene. He was tall, with garments of silk
bound by a golden-scaled girdle. His blue-black
hair and beard were curiously curled; his hawk-
nosed face cruel and predatory. The arrogance of
the eyes, which Kane had noticed as characteristic
of the unknown race, was in this man much more
evident than in the others. On his head was a
curiously carved circlet of gold, in his hand a
golden wand. The attitude of the rest toward him
was one of cringing servility, and Kane believed
that he looked upon either the king or the high
priest of the city.

	Beside this personage stood a shorter, fatter
man, with shaven face and head, clad in robes
much Like those worn by the lesser persons in the
background, but far more costly. In his hand he
bore a scourge composed of six thongs made fast
to a Jewel-set handle. The thongs ended in tri-
angular shaped bits of metal, and the whole represented
as savage as implement of punishment as
Kane had ever looked upon. The man who bore
this had small eyes, shifty and crafty, and his
whole attitude was a mixture of fawning servility
toward the man with the sceptre, and of intolerant
despotism toward the lesser-beings.

	Kane gave back their stare, trying to place an
elusive sense of familiarity, There was something
in the features of these people which vaguely suggested
the Arab; yet they were strangely unlike
any Arabs he had ever seen. They spoke together,
and their language at times had a somehow
familiar sound. But he could not define these
faint stirrings of half-memory.

	At last the tall man with the sceptre turned
and strode majestically forth, followed by his
slavish companions. Kane was left alone. After a
time the fat second in command returned with half
a dozen soldiers and acolytes. Among these was
the young slave who brought Kane's food, and a
tall and sombre figure, naked but for a loin
cloth, who bore a great key at his girdle. The
soldiers ringed Kane, javelins ready, while this
man unlocked the chains from the ring in the wall.
They surrounded him and, holding to his chains,
indicated that he was to march with them. Surrounded
by his captors, Kane emerged from the
chamber into what appeared to be a series of wide
galleries winding about the interior of the vast
structure. Tier by tier they mounted and turned at
last into a chamber much like that he had left,
similarly furnished. Kane's chains were made
fast to a ring in the stone wall near me single
window. He could stand upright, or lie, or sit on
the skin-piled couch, but he could not move half a
dozen steps in any direction. Wine and food was
placed at his disposal.

	His captors left him, and Kane noticed that
neither was the door bolted nor a guard placed
before it. He decided that they considered his
chains sufficient to keep him safe, and after testing
them he realized that they were right. Yet,
there was another reason for their apparent carelessness,
as he was to learn.

	The Englishman looked out of the window,
which was larger than the other had been and not
so thickly barred. He was looking out over the city
from a considerable height. Below him were
narrow streets, broad avenues flanked by what
seemed to be columns and carven stone lions, and
on wide expanses of flat-roofed houses. Many of
the buildings were of stone, and others were of a
sun-dried brick. There was a massiveness about
this architecture that was vaguely repellent —- a
sombre, heavy motif that seemed to suggest a
sullen and slightly inhuman character of the
builders.

 A wall that surrounded the city was tall and
thick, with towers spaced at regular intervals. He
saw armoured figures moving sentinel-like along
wall, and meditated upon the warlike aspect of
this people. The streets and market places below
him offered a colourful maze as the richly clad
people moved in an ever-shifting panorama.

	As for the building which was his prison,
Kane could make out little of its nature. Yet, below
him he saw a series of massive tiers descending
like giant stair-steps. It must be, he decided
with a rather unpleasant sensation, built much
like the fabled Tower of Babel, one tier above
another.

	Kane turned his attention back to his chamber.
The walls were rich in mural decorations, carvings
painted in various colours, well-tinted and
blended. Indeed, the art was of as high a standard
as any the Englishman had ever seen in Asia or in
Europe. Most of the scenes were of war or of the
hunt — powerful men with black beards that were
often curled, in armour, slaying lions and driving
other warriors before them. Some of the pursued
warriors were naked black men; others closely
resembled their pursuers.

	The human figures were not as well depicted
as those of me beasts; they were conventionalised
to a point that often lent them a somewhat wooden
aspect. But the lions were portrayed with vivid
realism. Some of the scenes showed the black-
bearded slayers in chariots, drawn by fire-
breathing steeds, and Kane felt again that strange
sense of familiarity, as if he had seen these
scenes — or similar scenes — before. The
chariots and horses, he noted, were inferior in
life-likeness to the lions. The fault was not in
conventionalising but in the artist's ignorance of
his subject, Kane decided, noting mistakes that
seemed incongruous considering the skill with
which they were portrayed.

	Time passed swiftly as he pondered over the
carvings. Presently the silent slave entered with
food and wine.

	When he set down the viands, Kane spoke to
him in a dialect of the bush tribes, to one of the
divisions of which he believed the man belonged,
having noted certain tribal scars on his features.
The dull face lighted slightly, and the man answered 
in a tongue similar enough for Kane to
understand him.

	"What city is this?"
	"Ninn, bwana."
	"Who are these people?"
The dull slave shook his head in doubt.
	"They be very old people, bwana. They have
dwelt here very long time."
	"Was that their king who came to my chamber
with his men?"
	"Yes, bwana. That be King Asshur-ras-arab."
	"And the man with the lash?"
	"Yamen, the priest, bwana Persian."
	“Why do you call me that?" asked Kane nonplussed.
	"So the masters name you, bwana — " the
slave shrank back and his skin turned ashy as the
shadow of a tall figure fell across the doorway. A
shaven-headed, half-naked giant entered, and the
slave fell to his knees wailing his terror. Mighty
fingers closed about the terrified throat, and Kane
saw the wretched slave's eyes protruding, his
tongue thrust from his gaping mouth. His body
writhed and threshed unavailingly; hands clawed
weakly and more weakly at iron wrists. Then he
went limp in his slayer's hands. As the shaven-
headed warrior released him, the corpse slumped
loosely to the floor. The warrior smote his hands
together, and a pair of slaves entered. Their
faces turned ashy at the sight of their companion's
corpse, but at a gesture they callously laid hold of
the dead man's feet and dragged him form.

	The warrior turned at the door and his opaque
and implacable eyes met Kane's gaze, as if in
warning. Hate drummed in Kane's temples, and it
was the grim eyes of the murderer which fell be-
fore me cold fury in the Englishman's glare. The
man went noiselessly forth, leaving Kane to his
meditations.

	When food was next brought to Kane, it was
carried by a rangy young slave of genial and intelligent
appearance. Kane made no effort to speak
to him; apparently the masters did not wish for
their captive to learn anything about them for
some reason or another.

	How many days Kane remained in the high-
flung chamber, he did not know. Each day was
exactly like the last, and he lost count of time.
Sometimes Yamen the priest came and looked upon
him with a satisfied air that made Kane's eyes
turn red with the killer's lust; sometimes me
giant murderer noiselessly appeared, to disappear
just as noiselessly.

	Kane's eyes were riveted to the key that
swung from the silent giant's girdle. Could he but
once get within reach of the fellow — but his
captor was careful to stay out of reach unless
Kane was surrounded by warriors with readied
javelins.  

	Then one night to his chamber came Yamen
the priest with the silent giant who was called
Siem and some fifty acolytes and soldiers, it was
Shem who unlocked Kane's chains from the wall,
and, between two columns of soldiers and priests,
the Englishman was escorted along the winding
galleries that were lighted by flaring torches set
in the niches along the walls, and borne in the
hands of the priests.

By the light Kane again observed the carven
figures marching everlastingly around the massive
walls of the galleries. Many were life-sized,
some dimmed and somewhat defaced as with age.
Most of these. Kane noted, portrayed men in
chariots drawn by horses, and he decided that the
later, imperfect figures of steeds and chariots,
had been copied from these older carvings. Apparently
 there were no horses or chariots In the
city now. Various racial distinctions were evident
in the human figures — the hooked noses and
curled black beards of the dominant race wore
plainly distinguishable. Their opponents were
sometimes black men, sometimes men like them-
selves, and occasionally tall, rangy men with
unmistakable Arab features.
was startled to note that in some of the
older scenes, men were depicted whose apparel
and features were entirely different from those of
the Ninnites. These strangers were always pictured
in battle scenes and significantly Kane
thought, not always in retreat. Frequently they
seemed to be having the best of the fight, and nor-
where could the Englishman find them portrayed
as slaves. But what interested him was the familiarity
those carven features were like the countenance 
of a friend in a strange land to the
wanderer. Apart from their strange, barbaric
arms and apparel they might have been English-
men, with their European features and yellow
locks.

	Somewhere, in the long, long ago, Kane
knew, the ancestors of the men of Ninn had
warred with men kin to his own ancestors. But in
what age, and in what land? Certainly the scenes
were not laid in the country that was now the
homeland of the Ninnites, for these scenes showed
fertile plains, grassy hills, and wide rivers. Aye,
and great cities like Ninn, but strangely unlike.

	And suddenly Kane remembered where he had
seen similar carvings, wherein kings with black
curled beards slew lions from chariots. He had
seen them on crumbling pieces of masonry that
marked the site of a long forgotten city in Mesopotamia,
and men had told him those ruins were
all that remained of Nineveh the Bloody, the
accursed of God.

The Englishman and his captors had reached
the ground tier of the great temple, and they
passed between huge columns, squat and carven
Like the walls. At length they came to a vast
circular space between the massive wall and the
flanking pillars. Cut from the stone of the mighty
wall sat a colossal idol — carven features as
devoid of human weakness and kindness as the
face of a Stone Age monster.

Facing the idol on a stone throne in the shadow
of the pillars sat the King, Asshur-ras-arab. The
firelight flickered on his strongly chiselled face so
that at first Kane thought it was an idol that sat on
the throne.

Before the god and facing the king's throne
was another, smaller throne. A brazier on a
golden tripod stood before it; coals glowed in the
brazier and smoke curled languorously upward.

A flowing robe of shimmering green silk was
put upon Kane, hiding his tattered and stained
garments and the golden chains. He was motioned
to sit in the throne before the brazier, and he did
so without a sound. Then his ankles and wrists
were locked cunningly to the throne, hidden by the
folds of the silken robe.

The lesser priests and the soldiers melted
away, leaving only Kane, the priest Yamen, and
the king upon his throne. Back in the shadows
among the tree-like columns Kane occasionally
glimpsed a glint of metal like fireflies in the dark.
Warriors still lurked there, out of sight. He
sensed that some sort of a stage had been set.
Kane felt a suggestion of charlatanry in the whole
procedure.

Now Asshur-ras-arab lifted the golden wand
and struck once upon a gong that hung near his
throne. A full and mellow note like a distant
chime echoed among the dim reaches of the shadowy
temple. Along the dusky avenue between the
columns came a group of men whom Kane realized
must be the nobles of that fantastic city. They
were tall men, black-bearded and haughty of bearing, 
clad in shimmering silk and gleaming gold.
And among them walked one in golden chains, a
youth whose attitude seemed a mixture of apprehension 
and defiance.

	The assemblage knelt before the king, bowing
their heads to the floor. At a word from him, they
arose and faced the Englishman and the god behind
him. Now Yamen, with the firelight glinting on his
shaven head and into his evil eyes so that he looked
like a paunchy demon, cried out a sort of weird
chant and flung a handful of powder into the
brazier. Instantly a greenish smoke billowed up-
ward, half-veiling Kane's face. The Englishman
gagged, the smell and taste were unpleasant in the
extreme. He felt groggy, drugged. His brain
reeled like a drunken man's, and he tore savagely
at his chains. Only half-conscious of what he
said, unaccustomed oaths ripped from his lips.

	He was dimly aware that Yamen cried out
fiercely at his curses, the priest leaning forward
in an attitude of listening. Then the powder burned
out, the smoke waned away, and Kane sat groggy
and bewildered on the throne.

	Yamen turned toward the king and bent low.
He straightened and, with his arms outstretched,
spoke in a sonorous tone. The king solemnly repeated 
his words and Kane saw the face of the
noble prisoner go white. Then his captors seized
his arms, and the band marched slowly away,
their footfalls coming back eerily through the
shadowy vastness.

	Like silent ghosts the soldiers came from the
shadows and unchained him. Again they grouped
themselves about Kane and led him up and up
through the dim galleries to his chamber, where
again Shem locked his chains to the wall. Kane sat
on his couch, chin on his fist, striving to find
some motive In all the bizarre actions be had
witnessed. And presently he realized that there
was undue stir in the streets below.

	The Englishman peered out from his window.
Great fires blazed in the market place and the
figures of men, curiously foreshortened, came
and went. They seemed to be busying themselves
about a figure in the centre of the market place,
but they clustered about it so thickly he could
make nothing of it. A circle of soldiers ringed the
group; the firelight glanced on their armour. About
them clamoured a disorderly mob, yelling and
shouting.

	Suddenly a scream of frightful agony cut
through the din, and the shouting died away for an
instant, to be renewed with more force than before. 
Most of the clamour sounded like protest,
Kane thought, though mingled with it was the sound
of Jeers, taunting howls, and devilish laughter.
And all through the babble rang those ghastly,
intolerable shrieks.

	A swift pad of naked feet sounded on the tiles,
and the young slave who was called Sula rushed in
and thrust his head into the window, panting with
excitement. The firelight from without shone on
his contorted face.

	"The people strive with the spearmen," he
exclaimed, forgetting in his excitement the order
not to converse with the strange captive. "Many of
the people loved well the young Prince Bel-lardath
— oh, bwana, there was no evil in him! Why did
you bid the king have him flayed alive?"

	"I!" exclaimed Kane, taken aback and dumb-
founded. "I said naught! I do not even know this
prince! I have never seen him.

	Sula turned his head and looked full into
Kane's face.
	
	"Now I know what I have secretly thought,
bwana," he said in the Bantu tongue Kane under-
stood. "You are no god, nor mouthpiece of a god,
but a man such as I have seen before the men of
Ninn took me captive. Once before, when I was
small, I saw men cast in your mold, who came
with their native servants and slew our warriors
with weapons which spoke with fire and thunder."

	"Truly I am but a man," answered Kane,
dazedly. "But what — I do not understand. What
is it they do in yonder marketplace?"

	"They are skinning Prince Bel-lardath alive,"
answered Sula. "It has been talked freely among
the marketplaces that the king and Yamen hated
the prince, who is of the blood of Abdulai. But he
had many followers among the people, especially"
among the Arbii, and not even the king dared
sentence him to death. But when you were brought
into the temple, secretly, none in the city knowing
of it, Yamen said you were the mouthpiece of the
gods. And he said Baal had revealed to him that
Prince Bel-lardath had roused the wrath of
the gods. So they brought him before the oracle
of the gods — "

	Kane swore sickly. How incredible — how
ghastly — to think that his lusty English oaths had
doomed a man to a horrible death. Aye — crafty
Yamen had translated his random words in his
own way. And so the prince, whom Kane had never
seen before, writhed beneath the skinning knives
of his executioners in the marketplace below,
where the crowd shrieked or jeered.

	"Sula." he said, "what do these people call
themselves?"

	"Assyrians, bwana," answered the slave absently,
staring in horrified fascination at the
grisly scene below.

Chapter III

	In the days that followed Sula found opportunities
from time to time to talk with Kane. Little he
could tell the Englishman of the origin of the men
of Ninn. He only knew that they had come out of the
east in the long, long ago, and had built their
massive city on the plateau. Only the dim legends
of his tribe spoke of them. His people lived in the
rolling plains far to the south and had warred with
'the people of the city for untold ages. His tribe
was called Sulas, and they were strong and war-
like, he said. From time to time they made raids
on the Ninnites, and occasionally the Ninnites re-
turned the raid, but not often did they venture far
from the plateau. In such a raid Sula had been
captured. Of late the Ninnites had been forced to
range further a field in search of slaves, as the
tribes shunned the grim plateau, and generation by
generation moved further back into the wilderness.

	The life of a slave of Ninn was hard, Sula
said, and Kane believed him — seeing the marks
of lash, rack, and brand on me youth's body. The
drifting ages had not softened the spirit of the
Assyrians, nor modified their fierceness, a by-
word in the ancient East.

	Kane wondered much at the presence of this
ancient people in this unknown land, but Sula had
nothing further to tell him. They came from the
east, long, long ago — that was all Sula knew.
The Englishman knew now why their features and
language had seemed remotely familiar. Their
features were the original Semitic features, now
modified In the modern inhabitants of Mesopotamia, 
and many of their words had an unmistakable
likeness to certain Hebraic words and phrases.

	Kane learned from Sula that not all of the la-
habitants were of one blood. They did not mix with
their slaves, or if they did, the offspring of such
a union was instantly put to death. The dominant
strain, Sula had learned, was Assyrian; but there
were some of the people, both commoners and
nobles, who were called "Arbii." They were like
the Assyrians, yet differing somewhat.

	Another group were the "Kaldii" — magicians
and soothsayers who were held in no great esteem
by me true Assyrians. Shem, Sula said, and his
kind were Elamites, and Kane started at the bib-
lical term. There were not many of them, but they
were the tools of the priests -- slayers and doers
of strange and unnatural deeds. Sula had suffered
at the hands of Shem, as had every other slave of
the temple.

	And it was this same Shem on whom Kane kept
hungry eyes riveted. At his girdle hung the golden
key that meant liberty. But as if he read the
meaning in the Englishman's cold eyes, Shem
walked with care, a dark sombre giant with a
grim carven face. He came not within reach of the
captive's long and steely arms, unless accompanied 
by armed guards.

	Never a day passed but Kane heard the crack
of the scourge, the screams of agonized slaves
beneath the brand, the lash, or the skinning knife.
Ninn was a veritable Hell, he reflected, ruled by
the demoniac Asshur-ras-arab and his crafty and
lustful satellite, Yamen the priest. The king was
high priest as well, as had been his royal ancestors
in ancient Nineveh. And Kane realized why
they called him a Persian, seeing in him a resemblance 
to those wild old Aryan tribesmen who had
ridden down from their mountains to sweep the
Assyrian empire off the earth. Surely it was
fleeing those yellow-haired conquerors that the
people of Ninn had come into Africa.

	The days passed and Kane abode as a captive
in the city of Ninn. But he went no more to the
temple as an oracle.

	One day there was confusion in the city. Kane
heard the trumpets blaring upon the wall, and the
roll of kettle-drums. Steel clanged in the streets,
and the sound of men marching rose to his eyrie.
Looking out, over the wall, across the plateau, he
saw a horde of naked black men approaching the
city in loose formation. Their spears flashed in
the sun, their headpieces of ostrich-plumes
floated in the breeze, and their yells came faintly
to him.

	Sula rushed in, his eyes blazing.
	"My people!" he exclaimed. "They come
against the men of Ninn. My people are warriors!
Bogaga is warchief - Katayo is king. The war-
chiefs of the Sulae hold their honours by the might
of their hands, for any man who is strong enough
to slay him with his naked hands, becomes war-
chief in his place! So Bogaga won the chieftain-
ship, but it will be many a day before any slays
him, for he is the mightiest chieftain of them all!"

	Kane's window afforded a better view over the
wall than any other, for his chamber was in the
top-most tier of Baal's temple. To his chamber
came Yamen, with his grim guards, Shem, and
another sombre Elamite. They stood out of Kane's
reach, looking through one of the windows.

	The mighty gates swung wide; the Assyrians
were marching out to meet their enemies. Kane
reckoned that there were fifteen hundred armed
warriors; that left three hundred still in the city,
the bodyguard of the king, the sentries, and house-
troops of the various noblemen.

	The host, Kane noted, was divided into four
divisions. The centre was in the advance, consisting
of six hundred men, while each flank or wing
was composed of three hundred. The remaining
three hundred marched in compact formation
behind the centre, between the wings, so the
whole presented an appearance of this figure:
 	  -----
	/  ~~   \

	The warriors were armed with javelins,
swords, maces, and short heavy-bows. On their
backs were quivers bristling with shafts.

	The Ninnites marched out on the plain in
perfect order and took up their position apparently
awaiting the attack. It was not slow in coming.
Kane estimated that the attackers numbered at
least three thousand warriors, and even at that
distance he could appreciate their splendid stature
and courage. But they had no system or order for
warfare. It was in one great ragged, disorderly
horde that they rushed onward, to be met by a
withering blast of arrows that ripped through their
bull-hide shields as though they had been made of
paper.

	The Assyrians had slung their shields about
their necks and were drawing and loosing methodically, 
not in regular volleys as the archers of
Crecy and Agincourt had loosed, but steadily and
without pause, nevertheless. With reckless
courage the Sulas hurled themselves forward, into
the teeth of the fearful hail. Kane saw whole lines
melt away, and the plain became carpeted with the
dead. But the invaders came forward, wasting
their lives like water. Kane marvelled at the
perfect discipline of the Semitic soldiers who went
through their motions as coolly as if they were on
the drill ground. The wings had moved forward,
their foremost tips connecting with the ends of file
centre, presenting an unbroken front. The men in
the company between the wings maintained their
place, unmoving, not yet having taken any part in
the battle.

	The invading horde was broken, staggering
back under the deadly fire against which flesh and
blood could not stand. The great ragged crescent
had broken to bits, and from the fire of the right
flank and the centre, the Sulas were falling back
disorderly, hounded by the ranging shafts of (he
Ninnite warriors. But on the left flank, a frothing
mob of perhaps four hundred savage fighters had
burst through the fearful barrage and, yelling like
fiends, they shocked against the Assyrian wing.
But before the spears clashed, Kane saw the
company in reserve between the wings wheel and
march in double quick time to support the threatened 
wing. Against that double wall of six hundred
mailed men of war, the onslaught staggered,
broke, and reeled backward.

	Swords flashed among the spears, and Kane
saw the naked warriors falling like grain before
the reaper as the javelins and swords of the
Assyrians mowed them down. Not all the corpses
on the bloody ground were those of the attackers,
but where one Assyrian lay dead or wounded, ten
Sulas had died.

	Now the attackers were in full flight across
the plain, and the iron ranks moved forward in
quick but orderly pace, loosing at every step,
hunting the vanquished across the plateau, plying
the dagger on the wounded, they took no prisoners. 
Sulas did not make good slaves as Solomon
was instantly to see.

	In Kane's chamber, the watchers were
crowded at the windows, eyes glued in fascination
on the wild and gory scene. Sula's chest heaved
with passion; his eyes blazed with the blood lust of
the savage as the shouts and the slaughter and the
spears of his tribesmen fired all the slumbering
ferocity in his warrior's soul.

	With the yell of a blood-mad panther, he
sprang on the backs of his masters. Before any
could lift a hand, he snatched the dagger from
Shem's girdle and plunged it to the hilt between
Yamen's shoulders. The priest shrieked like a
wounded woman and went to his knees, blood
spurting, and the Elamites closed with the raging
slave. Shem sought to seize his wrist, but the
other Elamlte and Sula whirled into a deadly embrace, 
plying their knives which were in an instant
red to the hilt.

	Eyes glaring, froth on their lips. they rolled
and tumbled, slashing and stabbing. Shem, seeking
to catch Sula's wrist, was struck by the hurtling
bodies and knocked violently aside. He lost his
footing and sprawled against Kane's couch.

	Before he could move, the chained Englishman
was on him like a great cat. At last the moment he
had waited for had come! Shem was within his
reach, and even as he sought to rise Kane's knee
smote him in the breast, breaking his ribs. Kane's
iron fingers locked in his - throat. Solomon was
scarcely aware of the terrible,  wild-beast
struggles of the Elamite who sought in vain to
break that grasp. A red mist veiled the English-
man's sight and through it he saw horror growing
in Shem's inhuman eyes — saw them distend and
turn bloodshot -- saw the mouth gape and the
tongue protrude as the shaven head was bent back
at a horrible angle; then Shem's neck snapped like
a heavy branch and the straining body went limp in
Kane's hands.

	The Englishman snatched at the key in the
dead man's girdle, and an instant later stood up
free, feeling a wild surge of exultation sweep over
him as he flexed his unhampered limbs. He
glanced about the chamber. Yamen was gurgling
out his life on the tiles, and Sula and the other
Elamite lay dead. locked in each others' iron
arms, literally slashed to pieces.

	Kane ran swiftly from the chamber. He had no
plan except to escape from the temple he had
grown to hate as a man hates Hell. He ran down
the winding galleries, meeting no one. Evidently
the servants of the temple had been massed on the
walls watching the battle. But on the lower tier he
came face to face with one of the temple guards.
The man gaped at him stupidly — and Kane's fist
crashed against his black-bearded jowl, stretching
him senseless. Kane snatched up his heavy javelin.
A thought had come to him that perhaps me streets
would be deserted as the people watched the
battle, and he could make his way, across the city
and scale the wall on the side next the lake.

	He ran through the pillar-forested temple and
out the mighty portal. There a scattering of people
shrieked and fled at the sight of the strange figure
emerging from the grim temple. Kane hurried
down the street in the direction of the opposite
gate, seeing but few people. Then as he turned
into a side street, thinking to shorten his route,
he heard a thunderous roar.

	Ahead of him he saw four slaves bearing a
richly ornamented litter such as nobles rode in.
The occupant was. a young girl whose jewel-
bedecked garments showed her importance and
wealth. And now around the corner came roaring
a great, tawny shape. A lion, loose in the city
streets!

	The slaves dropped the litter and fled,
shrieking, while the people on the housetops
screamed. The girl cried out once, scrambling up
in the very path of me charging monster. She
stood facing it, frozen with terror.

	Solomon Kane, at the first roar of the beast,
experienced a fierce satisfaction. So hateful had
Ninn become to him that the thought of a wild
beast raging through its streets and devouring its
cruel inhabitants had given the Puritan an indisputable 
satisfaction. But now, as he saw the
pitiful figure of the girl facing the man-eater, he
felt a pang of pity for her, and acted.

	As the lion launched himself through the air,
Kane hurled the javelin with all the power of his
iron frame. Just behind the mighty shoulder it
struck, transfixing the tawny body. A deafening
roar burst from the beast which spun side wise in
mid-air, as though it had encountered a solid wall
and instead of the rending claws, it was the heavy,
shaggy shoulder that smote the frail figure of its
victim, hurling her aside as the great beast
crashed to the earth.                

Kane, forgetful of his own position, sprang
forward and lifted the girl, trying to ascertain if
she were injured. This was an easy task, since
her garments, like the garments of most of the
Assyrian noble women, were so scanty as to consist 
more of ornaments than of covering. Kane
assured himself that she was only bruised, and
badly frightened.

He helped her to her feet, aware that a throng
of curious onlookers surrounded him. He turned
to press through them, and they made no effort to
stop him. Suddenly a priest appeared and yelled
something, pointing at him. The people instantly
fell back, but half a dozen armoured soldiers came
forward, javelins ready. Kane faced the priest,
fury seething in his soul. He was ready to leap
among them and do what damage he could with his
naked hands before he died, when down the stones
of the street sounded the tramp of marching men.
A company of warriors swung into view, their
spears red from recent strife.

The girl cried out and ran forward to fling
her arms about the stalwart neck of the young
officer in command. There followed a rapid fire
of conversation which Kane naturally could not
understand. Then the officer spoke curtly to the
guards who drew back. He advanced toward Kane,
his empty hands outstretched, a smile on his lips.

His manner was friendly in the extreme, and the
Englishman realized that he was trying to express
his gratitude for the rescue of the girl, who was
no doubt either his sister or his sweetheart. The
priest frothed and cursed, but the young noble
answered him shortly, and made motions for Kane
to accompany him. Then as the Englishman hesitated, 
suspicious, he drew his own sword and
extended it to Kane, hilt foremost. Kane took me
weapon; it might have been the form of courtesy to
have refused it, but Kane was unwilling to take
chances, and he felt much more secure with a
weapon in his hand.