He seemed in no hurry to devote his attention to the cage set forth for his delectation. The black eyes rolled beneath their lashes, staring now at the Duca in his robes, and again at the huddled ape-people. But after ghastly seconds, Quetzalcoatl at last had seen enough.
Again the moonlight glinted against simitar teeth as the great, white, puffy mouth yawned in its silent snarl. Quetzalcoatl reared his head a little higher, slid further from his hole, and then looked up at the dangling cage of barked withes.
In Kirby’s mind stirred cloudily a remembrance of moments in the past: the feel of Naida’s first kiss, her look as they advanced to the altar in the temple. Then he saw things as they were now, with Naida surrounded by all the tribes of the apes, and with Quetzalcoatl staring from beneath heavily lidded lashes at the whiteness of her.
Suddenly Kirby stirred to free his shoulder of Ivana’s supine weight against it, and he made himself look down his rifle. He let the breath half out of his lungs, and nursed the trigger.
But he did not fire.
All at once he started so violently that he almost hurtled from the tree. Suddenly, trembling, he lowered his rifle.
“Oh, thank God!” he yelped in the silence of the night.
The idea which had transformed him was perhaps the conception of a lunatic. But it was still an idea, and offered a chance.
Again Kirby peered down his rifle. But he no longer aimed at Naida. As Quetzalcoatl lifted white fangs, Kirby aimed deliberately at him, and turned loose his fire.