The fire still blazed on the rocky platform above; its uncertain light reached the figure of a running man who was making madly for the opening in the wall. As he ran he screamed over and over, in a voice hoarse and horrible like one seized in the fright of a fearful dream: "Diane! Diane, wait! For God's sake, Diane, don't go!"
And the driven clouds were torn apart for a space to let through a clear golden light. The great lantern of Earth was flashing down through space to light a grassy opening in a jungle of another world, where, stark and rigid, a girl was walking toward the shadow-world beyond, while before her went a black shape, huge and powerful, in whose head were eyes like burning lights, and whose arms were rigidly extended as if to draw the stricken girl on and on.
The running figure overtook them. Chet saw him checked in mid-spring, and Harkness, too, stood rigid as if carved from stone, then followed as did Diane, where the ape-thing led.... From the far side of the clearing, where Schwartzmann's men had gone, came a great shout of laughter that jarred Chet from the stupor that bound him.
"The messenger!" he said aloud. "God help them; it's the messenger—and he's taking them to the pyramid!"
Then the torn clouds closed that the greater darkness might cover those who vanished in the shadowed fringe of a stormy, wind-whipped jungle....
CHAPTER XX
On to the Pyramid
It was like Walt Harkness to rush impetuously after where Diane was being drawn away; but who, under the same circumstances, would have done otherwise? Yet it was like Chet, too, to keep a sane and level head, to check the first wild impulse to dash to their rescue, to realize that he would be throwing himself away by doing it and helping them not at all. It was like Chet to stop and think when thinking was desperately needed, though what it would lead to he could not have told. There were many factors that entered into his calculations.
Half-consciously he had walked to the barricade that he might stare into the blackness beyond. The worst of the storm had passed, and the strong Earth-light forced its way through the thinning clouds in a cold, gray glow. It served to show the great gateway to the jungle, empty and black, until Chet saw more of the man-beasts he had called messengers.