Laughing they raced up the trail from the crater's green depths to the high wall where the sentry stood guard. They stood beside him, breathless, for a moment. Then Masson's hand went out impulsively to the shoulder of the man.
"Gilroy, man!" he cried. "What is it?"
The guard's drooping shoulders straightened. Bitterly his webbed hand pointed.
A handful of Butrads, men from New Crayton by their arms and clothing, tramped wearily nearer. Masson counted them—thirty-three men. As he watched one of them dropped suddenly, an arrow in his back. Then for the first time did he see the misty shapes of the pursuers of this exhausted band.
They raced forward, hundreds of them, the naked froglike savages of the lower river villages. Another of the hunted men dropped and Masson jerked the gun from Gilroy's hands and trained it on the horde of charging Butrads.
He fired. The sound of the shot, rather than the bullet, arrested the enemy advance momentarily. From the harried little knot of men a faint cheer lifted and their pace quickened. A moment later Gilroy swung open the thick narrow gate and was helping the first of them through. Masson lobbed a grenade far out toward the island Frogs and they shrank yet farther away.
"Did our best." That was Reppart sobbing out his story. "Three hundred of us ... rest of them decided to live easy back on the island.... Maybe they wasn't too dumb either....
"Anyhow the Frogs hit us at the first waterfall.... Finished off most of the women and children there.... We fought them all along the river ... rest of the women died there.... Eighty of us reached the plateau."
"And thirty of you are left," finished Masson soberly. His round eyes blazed hot. "Fifty of us to conquer a watery jungle world. Fifty men against a planet."
He shook a knotted gray fist at the hostile natives. "There'll be no more contact with New Crayton," he said. "We cannot risk more of our manpower in futile warfare if we are to build a worthy civilization for our children. This crater must be our world for many years."