It was only a sign, a motion of the leader’s hand—­but with it, quick as a lightning flash, Jimmie Dale was in action.  The limp arms tautened into steel as he wrenched them loose, and, whirling around, he whipped his fist to the chin of one of the two guards.

In an instant, with the blow, as the man staggered backward, the room was in pandemonium.  There was a rush from the door, and two, three, four leaping forms hurled themselves upon Jimmie Dale.  He shook them off—­and they came again.  There was no chance ultimately, he knew that; it was only the elemental within him that rose in fierce revolt at the thought of tame submission, that bade him sell his life as dearly as he could.  Panting, gasping for breath, dragging them by sheer strength as they clung to him, he got his back to the wall, fighting with the savage fury and abandon of a wild cat.

But it could not last.  Where one man went down before him, two remorselessly appeared—­the room seemed filled with men—­they poured in through the door—­he laughed at them in a half-demented way—­more and more of them came—­there was no play for his arms, no room to fight—­they seemed so close around him, so many of them upon him, that he could not breathe—­and he was bending, being crushed down as by an intolerable weight.  And then his feet were jerked from beneath him, he crashed to the floor, and, in another moment, bound hand and foot, he was tied into a chair beside that other chair whose grim occupant sat in such ghastly apathy of the scene.

The room cleared instantly of all but the original five.  His head was drawn suddenly, violently backward, and clamped in that position; and a metal instrument, forced into his mouth, while his lips bled in their resistance, pried jaws apart and held them open.

“One drop!” the leader ordered curtly.

The man with the full glass bent over him, and dipped a glass rod into the liquid.  The drop glistened a ruby red on the end of the rod—­and fell with a sharp, acrid, burning sensation upon Jimmie Dale’s tongue.

For a moment Jimmie Dale’s animation, mental and physical, seemed swept away from him in, as it were, a hiatus of hideous suspense.  What was it to be like this passing?  Why did it not act at once, as it had acted on the rabbit they had showed him in the other room?  Yes, he remembered!  It took more than one drop for a man; and besides, this was diluted.  One drop had no effect on a man; it required—­Good God, one drop even of this was enough?  He strained forward in the chair until the sweat in great beads sprang from his forehead, strained and fought and tore at his bonds in a paroxysm of madness to free himself while there still remained a little strength.  There was something filming before his eyes, a numbed feeling was creeping through his limbs, robbing them, sapping them of their vitality and power.  He felt himself slipping away into a state of utter weakness, and his brain began to grow confused.