The frog-men reached down, swung each a dead dwarf in his arms, and
filed, booming triumphantly away.
And then I remembered the cone of the _Keth_ which had slipped from
Yolara's hand; knew it had been that for which her wild eyes searched.
But look as closely as we might, search in every nook and corner as we
did, we could not find it. Had the dying hand of one of her men
clutched it and had it been borne away with them? With the thought
Larry and I raced after the scaled warriors, searched every body they
carried. It was not there. Perhaps the priestess had found it,
retrieved it swiftly without our seeing.
Whatever was true--the cone was gone. And what a weapon that one
little holder of the shaking death would have been for us!
CHAPTER XXVIII
In the Lair of the Dweller
It is with marked hesitation that I begin this chapter, because in it
I must deal with an experience so contrary to every known law of
physics as to seem impossible. Until this time, barring, of course,
the mystery of the Dweller, I had encountered nothing that was not
susceptible of naturalistic explanation; nothing, in a word, outside
the domain of science itself; nothing that I would have felt hesitancy
in reciting to my colleagues of the International Association of
Science.
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