discover so wondrous a creature among the hideous inhabitants of the City of Human Skulls . For a moment the two looked at one another in unconcealed consternation, and then Bradley spoke, using to the best of his poor ability, the common tongue of Caspak.
'Who are you,' he asked, 'and from where do you come? Do not tell me that you are a Wieroo.'
'No,' she replied, 'I am no Wieroo.' And she shuddered slightly as she pronounced the word. 'I am a Galu; but who and what are you? I am sure that you are no Galu, from your garments; but you are like the Galus in other respects. I know that you are not of this frightful city, for I have been here for almost ten moons, and never have I seen a male Galu brought hither before, nor are there such as you and I, other than prisoners in the land of Oo-oh , and these are all females. Are you a prisoner, then?'
He told her briefly who and what he was, though he doubted if she understood, and from her he learned that she had been a prisoner there for many months; but for what purpose he did not then learn, as in the midst of their conversation the yellow door swung open and a Wieroo with a robe slashed with yellow entered.
At sight of Bradley the creature became furious. 'Whence came this reptile?' it demanded of the girl. 'How long has it been here with you?'
'It came through the doorway just ahead of you,' Bradley answered for the girl.
The Wieroo looked relieved. 'It is well for the girl that this is so,' it said, 'for now only you will have to die.' And stepping to the door the creature raised its voice in one of those uncanny, depressing wails.
The Englishman looked toward the girl. 'Shall I kill it?' he asked, half drawing his pistol. 'What is best to do?—I do not wish to endanger you.'
The Wieroo backed toward the door. 'Defiler!' it screamed. 'You dare to threaten one of the sacred chosen of Luata!'
'Do not kill him,' cried the girl, 'for then there could be no hope for you. That you are here, alive, shows that they may not intend to kill you at all, and so there is a chance for you if you do not anger them; but touch him in violence and your bleached skull will top the loftiest pedestal of Oo-oh.'
'And what of you?' asked Bradley.
'I am already doomed,' replied the girl; 'I am cos-ata-lo.'
'Cos-ata-lo! cos-ata-lu!' What did these phrases mean that they were so oft repeated by the denizens of Oo-oh? Lu and lo, Bradley knew to mean man and woman; ata; was employed variously to indicate life, eggs, young, reproduction and kindred subject; cos was a negative; but in combination they were meaningless to the European.
'Do you mean they will kill you?' asked Bradley.
'I but wish that they would,' replied the girl. 'My fate is to be worse than death—in just a few nights more, with the coming of the new moon.'
'Poor she-snake!' snapped the Wieroo. 'You are to become sacred above all other shes. He Who Speaks for Luata has chosen you for himself. Today you go to his temple—' the Wieroo used a phrase meaning literally High Place—'where you will receive the sacred commands.'
The girl shuddered and cast a sorrowful glance toward Bradley. 'Ah,' she sighed, 'if I could but see my beloved country once again!'
The man stepped suddenly close to her side before the Wieroo could interpose and in a low voice asked her if there was no way by which he might encompass her escape. She shook her head sorrowfully. 'Even if we escaped the city,' she replied, 'there is the big water between the island of Oo-oh and the Galu shore.'
'And what is beyond the city, if we could leave it?' pursued Bradley.
'I may only guess from what I have heard since I was brought here,' she answered; 'but by reports and chance remarks I take it to be a beautiful land in which there are but few wild beasts and no men, for only the Wieroos live upon this island and they dwell always in cities of which there are three, this being the largest. The others are at the far end of the island, which is about three marches from end to end and at its widest point about one march.'
From his own experience and from what the natives on the mainland had told him, Bradley knew that ten miles was a good day's march in Caspak, owing to the fact that at most points it was a trackless wilderness and at all times travelers were beset by hideous beasts and reptiles that greatly impeded rapid progress.
The two had spoken rapidly but were now interrupted by the advent through the opening in the roof of several Wieroos who had come in answer to the alarm it of the yellow slashing had uttered.
'This jaal-lu,' cried the offended one, 'has threatened me. Take its hatchet from it and make it fast where it can do no harm until He Who Speaks for Luata has said what shall be done with it. It is one of those strange creatures that Fosh-bal-soj discovered first above the Band-lu country and followed back toward the beginning. He Who Speaks for Luata sent Fosh-bal-soj to fetch him one of the creatures, and here it is. It is hoped that it may be from another world and hold the secret of the cos-ata-lus.'
The Wieroos approached boldly to take Bradley's 'hatchet' from him, their leader having indicated the pistol hanging in its holster at the Englishman's hip, but the first one went reeling backward against his fellows from the blow to the chin which Bradley followed up with a rush and the intention to clean up the room in record time; but he had reckoned without the opening in the roof. Two were down and a great wailing and moaning was arising when reinforcements appeared from above. Bradley did not see them; but the girl did, and though she cried out a warning, it came too late for him to avoid a large Wieroo who dived headforemost for him, striking him between the shoulders and bearing him to the floor. Instantly a dozen more were piling on top of him. His pistol was wrenched from its holster and he was securely pinioned down by the weight of numbers.
At a word from the Wieroo of the yellow slashing who evidently was a person of authority, one left and presently returned with fiber ropes with which Bradley was tightly bound.
'Now bear him to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls,' directed the chief Wieroo, 'and one take the word of all that has passed to Him Who Speaks for Luata.'
Each of the creatures raised a hand, the back against its face, as though in salute. One seized Bradley and carried him through the yellow doorway to the roof from whence it rose upon its wide-spread wings and flapped off across the roof-tops of Oo-oh with its heavy burden clutched in its long talons.
Below him Bradley could see the city stretching away to a distance on every hand. It was not as large as he had imagined, though he judged that it was at least three miles square. The houses were piled in indescribable heaps, sometimes to a height of a hundred feet. The streets and alleys were short and crooked and there were many areas where buildings had been wedged in so closely that no light could possibly reach the lowest tiers, the entire surface of the ground being packed solidly with them.
The colors were varied and startling, the architecture amazing. Many roofs were cup or saucer-shaped with a small hole in the center of each, as though they had been constructed to catch rain-water and conduct it to a reservoir beneath; but nearly all the others had the large opening in the top that Bradley had seen used by these flying men in lieu of doorways. At all levels were the myriad poles surmounted by grinning skulls; but the two most prominent features of the city were the round tower of human skulls that Bradley had noted earlier in the day and another and much larger edifice near the center of the city. As they approached it, Bradley saw that it was a huge building rising a hundred feet in height from the ground and that it stood alone in the center of what might have been called a plaza in some other part of the world. Its various parts, however, were set together with the same strange irregularity that marked the architecture of the city as a whole; and it was capped by an enormous saucer- shaped roof which projected far beyond the eaves, having the appearance of a colossal Chinese coolie hat, inverted.
The Wieroo bearing Bradley passed over one corner of the open space about the large building, revealing to the Englishman grass and trees and running water beneath. They passed the building and about five hundred yards beyond the creature alighted on the roof of a square, blue building surmounted by seven poles bearing seven skulls. This then, thought Bradley, is the Blue Place of Seven Skulls.
Over the opening in the roof was a grated covering, and this the Wieroo removed. The thing then tied a piece of fiber rope to one of Bradley's ankles and rolled him over the edge of the opening. All was dark below and for an instant the Englishman came as near to experiencing real terror as he had ever come in his life before. As he rolled off into the black abyss he felt the rope tighten about his ankle and an instant later he was stopped with a sudden jerk to swing pendulumlike, head downward. Then the creature lowered away until Bradley's head came in sudden and painful contact with the floor below, after which the Wieroo let loose of the rope entirely and the Englishman's body crashed to the wooden planking. He felt the free end of the rope dropped upon
