“Guess it’s a bigger job than I should care to tender for,” put in the Yankee. “Say, the old planet lost some real hustlers when the Ayutis pegged out.”
“Nothing seems to have been too great for the beggars to tackle,” murmured Wilson admiringly. “If they’d been above ground, they would have built a staircase to the moon, or something of the sort.”
Mervyn smiled.
“They were a wonderful race,” he said reflectively; “it is a thousand pities they have become extinct. Thoroughly civilised, they would have become one of the first nations in the world. Think of it—with their great bodily strength, splendid courage—as evidenced by our friend the king here—their engineering skill, what would they not have accomplished? Of course we may take it for granted there were wastrels among them; there is no community without its ne’er-do-wells. But the majority, from what I can gather from Chenobi, appear to have been an intelligent and utterly fearless people. Of the fate which overtook them, wiping them out of existence, I can learn nothing. The king always avoids the subject when I approach it.”
“I expect it’s too painful a matter to talk about,” returned Seymour; “but, whatever the cause of their dying out, I can well imagine the wolf-men had a hand in it. If their former priests were as diabolically ingenious as Nordhu is, I fear no race could have withstood them long. Just imagine, if you can: five millions of the brutes—I think that’s the number you mentioned, Meryvn?—they would overwhelm a world, let alone a city!”
“The presence of the priests is a puzzle to me,” the scientist went on. “Obviously they are a different race from the savages they govern, yet they are certainly not Ayutis! It may be that they are half-breeds, the result of a union between the two races? The offspring, perhaps, of some criminal, who, banished from the city for his misdeeds, joined himself to the wolf-men and became their leader.”
“But how do you account for their speaking the same language as the islanders of Ayuti?” questioned Seymour.
“I have formed a theory to account for the coincidence,” was the scientist’s reply, “whether it is the correct one or not remains to be proved. When we reach the end of our present journey I shall be better able to decide. But, see, the king is preparing to move on again.”
“Come,” Chenobi cried, approaching the base of the cliff stairway.
Rising, his friends followed. With a sharp word of command to his steed and hounds, the Ayuti commenced the ascent. Allowing a few moments to elapse, Mervyn followed, then in turn came Wilson and the American, Seymour bringing up the rear. Upward they toiled, their eyes strained to catch the gleam from Chenobi’s jewel, their only guide amid the gloom.