Yet was she not the daughter of Doggo his only friend among the ants? And would not her victory mean the speedy return of Myles to his own continent?
As the earth-man jabbed to right and left among the supporters of his enemy Yuri there came to his human ears the sound of rifle fire. It might prove a godsend or an added menace, according to whose paw held the rifle. But no chances must be taken on the life of the queen. So Myles made frantic signs to Doggo of impending danger.
The queen and her supporters, outnumbered, were fighting with their backs to one of the walls of the room. A short distance along this wall on the side where Cabot stood was a door; so he now began edging his way along the wall to this door. This was not difficult, as the ant-men, having only their mandibles to fight with, greatly respected his pike.
He gained the door and passed by, but not through it. The shots came nearer and nearer. Then Doggo opened the door and slipped through with Formis and the rest of her immediate supporters; the door closed, and Myles Cabot stood guarding the exit with his pike—alone against the hordes of antdom.
He had no difficulty in defending himself from those in front of him, but the ants who began to close in on him from each side were a different matter.
He received several bad scratches on his shoulders and hips, and his toga was ripped and torn; but fortunately he was able to ward off their paralyzing bites. Nevertheless, his enemies pressed so close that it was difficult for him to manipulate his long weapon. In fact, it was only the jamming of the ants upon one another and upon the dead bodies of their slain comrades that kept them from him.
He now was holding his pike by the middle, with both hands, using one end as a club and the other as a dagger. The black circle of the ants was steadily closing in on him. A pair of mandibles from the left snapped angrily within a few inches of his throat. Instantly he drove the point of his lance home between horrid jaws. But at the same instant its butt was seized by a pair of jaws to his right. He could not pull it free.
At last he was weaponless, and not only that, but pinned to the wall by the shaft of his own pike as well.
And then to his surprise the ants before him separated as at a command. The butt of his lance was dropped. As Myles wrenched the point loose from the dead body of the Formian in which it had been stuck, and gazed expectant down the long aisle which had opened before him, he saw confronting him at the other end an ant-man armed with the peculiar type of claw-operated rifle which the Formians had adapted from those which Myles himself had built for Cupian use in the first war of liberation.
Briefly the two surveyed each other. Then slowly the rifle was raised until its aim settled squarely upon the earth-man’s chest.