worthless.  My sword fell for a moment from my hand, retained only by the wrist-knot, as I placed her gently and tenderly on the ground, resting against the stone which had enabled her to effect the sacrifice I as little desired as deserved.  Then, grasping my weapon again, and shouting instinctively the war-cry of another world, I sprang into the midst of the enemy.  At the same moment, “Ent an Clazinta” (To me the Zinta), cried the Chief behind; and having rallied the broken ranks, even before the sight of Eveena’s fall had inspired reckless fury in the place of panic confusion, he led on the Zveltau, the spear in hand elevated over their heads, and pointed at the unprotected faces of the enemy.  Exposed to the cold steel or its Martial equivalent, the latter, as I had predicted, broke at once.  My sword did its part in the fray.  They scarcely fought, neither did they fling down their weapons.  But in that moment neither force nor surrender would have availed them.  We gave no quarter to wounded or unwounded foe.  When, for lack of objects, I dropped the point of my streaming sword, I saw Endo Zampta alive and unwounded in the hands of the victors.

“Coward, scoundrel, murderer!” I cried.  “You shall die a more terrible death than that which your own savage law prescribes for crimes like yours.  Bind him; he shall hang from my vessel in the air till I see fit to let him fall!  For the rest, see that none are left alive to boast what they have done this day.”

Struggling and screaming, the Regent was dragged to the summit, and hung by the waist, as I had threatened, from the entrance window of the Astronaut.  Esmo’s body and those of the other slain among the Zveltau had been raised, and our comrades were about to carry them to the carriages and remove them homeward.  From the wardrobe of the Astronaut, furnished anew for our voyage, I brought a long soft therne-cloak, intended for Eveena’s comfort; and wrapped in it all that was left to us of the loveliest form and the noblest heart that in two worlds ever belonged to woman.  I shred one long soft tress of mingled gold and brown from those with which my hand had played; I kissed for the last time the lips that had so often counselled, pleaded, soothed, and never spoken a word that had better been left unsaid.  Then, veiling face and form in the soft down, I called around me again the brethren who had fallen back out of sight of my last farewell, and gave the corpse into their charge.  Turning with restless eagerness from the agony, which even the sudden shock that rendered me half insensible could not deaden into endurable pain, to the passion of revenge, I led two or three of our party to the foot of the ladder beneath the entrance window of my vessel, and was about in their presence to explain his fate more fully to the struggling, howling victim, half mad with protracted terror.  But at that moment my purpose was arrested.  I had often repeated to Eveena passages from those Terrestrial