In the vast arena there was a handful of yellow-clad guards surrounding the pool of boiling lava. All the other Ogrum had left the temple.
"Blast them!" Craig grimly ordered.
Machine guns thundered in what was probably the first temple of the sun ever built on earth! Hot lead screamed down at the guards around the lava pool. When the sailors saw the human, bound, ready to be offered as a living sacrifice to the hideous white beast that was always hungry, the priests of the temple lost what little chance they ever had of being taken alive.
The sacrifice had been prepared. The sailors had arrived at the last possible moment.
Two minutes after the sailors had entered the temple, there was not a yellow-clad priest left alive in the vast open arena in the center of the building. Craig was knocking bars from the cage where the prisoners were penned. Captain Stinky Higgins was standing behind those bars. Margy Sharp was standing beside the captain. Higgins had a strange look on his face.
"By the Lord, Craig—" was all he said when the bars went down. Craig felt his knuckles pop as the captain shook his hand.
The girl's face was paste white but she had her nerves under control. "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" she said, looking at Craig. Then, as silently as a falling shadow, she collapsed.
"No, no, she's all right," Higgins said, in answer to Craig's frantic questions. "She has only fainted. She—all of us—have been through hell. Those damned beasts came in here and grabbed one of the men. We watched them—get ready to toss him into that pool of lava. Craig, how did you get here?"
Captain Higgins was dazed. Behind him the captives were pouring out of their prison cell.
"No time to talk," Craig said hastily. "We've got to get the hell out of here. Each of us brought an extra gun and as many grenades as we could carry. We'll have to fight our way back to the mountains—"