It had apparently been drawn, then, from above, by the wall, in the darkness.

The gate bolt on the cage drawn, the bottom of the cage dropped downward on its hinges, opening the cage. There had been a rattle of metal and a creaking of chain, the cage swinging, emptied of its occupant, and the sound of a body suddenly caught short of its fall. We spun about and saw the Lady Ilene, her small ankles tied together, her hand tied behind her back, a rope under her arms, swinging over the dark waters of the urt pool. She twisted wildly. She bend her legs at the knees, trying to pull her feet up. We saw her eyes, now that she was lower, over what seemed to be her veil. They were hysterically wild. She spun about on the rope, squirming helplessly. We could now hear tiny, helpless, terrified sounds from her. Her veil, it seemed, had been used to gag her. One did not know if she would have remained prudentially silent, daring not to mix in the business of men, daring not to call attention to herself, a female, or not, but the option had not been granted to her. Urts began to knife instantly toward the vicinity of the pool over which the Lady Ilene was suspended.

“Look to the wall! Look to the wall!” screamed the lieutenant. “It is only a diversion!”

“Ai!” cried a man.

The body of Herminius seemed to rise on the rope, and stand for a moment erect, in the air, and then it seemed to fly outward from the wall. It struck into the water, over the railing, opposite the portal. It would be bloody.

“There, there he is!” cried the lieutenant. “There! Fire!”

I, too, saw for a moment, in the shadows, a huge shape. It had hurled Herminius from the wall as easily as the pit master might have thrown a joint of meat into the pool.

Titus, the black-tunicked fellow whom Fecha and I had shielded, was, I think, a man of suspicious and subtle instincts, of wary caution. He had dallied in moving with us about the walkway. He had let others move first. He had remained back, like a coiled spring, ready to fire. He must have seen the black shadow, too. He had turned back, after the cage had opened, before any of us, before even the lieutenant had called out. His bow was the first realigned with the wall. That must have marked him out as next to die. He pitched back, over the railing, the fins of a quarrel half hidden in his tunic.

“He has fired!” cried the lieutenant, elatedly. “Find him! Find him! Fire! Fire!”

But suddenly, from a place high on the wall, now feet from where the body of Herminius had been thrown, on one of the ropes which were intended to control the movements of the cage, a dark figure swung over the urt pool. There was a quiver and bow strung at its back, a sword dangling behind it.

“Tensius to the left, Abnik to the right!” screamed the lieutenant. “You have him now. He has no time to reload.”

The figure had alighted on the opposite side of the walkway, before the middle gate of the three gates on the side of the pool.

I thought the prisoner might have time to reload, but he, surely would not have time to fire twice.

“Run! Run!” screamed the lieutenant.

One man, Tensius, sped to the left. It was he who had been the first of the two men who had refrained from attacking the sleen, and had later been bloodied, separating the urts. The other man, Abnik, limping, hurried to the right. He it was whose foot had been injured yesterday in the cell, in the stirrup of the crossbow. He had been the man with the lieutenant, in the investigation of the gates.

The prisoner would not have time to fire twice.

“You have him!” cried the lieutenant.

Only a few feet below me urts were tearing at the bodies of Herminius and Titus. The water of the pool was scarlet. The Lady Ilene, out of the cage, tied to it by a rope fastened under her arms, bound hand and foot, gagged, dangled over the urt pool. But she seemed of no interest now to the urts. None circled beneath her. None tried to leap up to seize a foot or leg. Readier meat lay within their province now. I did not know, but I thought that the urts would not be able to reach her. It was a risk, of course, which the peasant had been willing to take. I wondered what thoughts went through her head. She had figured, but a bit ago, as a diversion. Now she had another role to play, I suspected, one which had doubtless been projected for her earlier, one independent of the entry of the determined, tenacious black-tunicked men onto the walkway, the role of a dangling lure, one which might serve, for some purpose, as a distraction to urts. Certainly she had figured at least once in the plans of a man. Perhaps she understood herself better now as a female, and what might be done with her. Surely to the collar would now be but a short step for her. To be sure, she now seemed, as things had turned out, of little current interest to the urts. They, feeding eagerly, had been drawn away from her, to the blood and bodies below the railing. The peasant, presumably, would not have been able to count on that development, it was, presumably, a fortunate one for the Lady Ilene, particularly if the peasant had underestimated the capacity of the urts to leap from the water.

Tensius, from the left, Abnik, from the right, hurried toward the peasant.

But he did not load the bow, for a last shot. Rather, to my horror, he took a quarrel between his teeth and, bow in hand, leapt over the railing, into the urt pool itself.

“He is insane!” cried the officer of Treve.

Almost at the same moment Tensius had come to the place on the walkway from which the peasant had dived into the pool. He looked into the water, in consternation. Abnik, a moment later, came to the same place.

“Fire! Fire!” cried the lieutenant.

Uncertain, Tensius and Abnik, judging as they could the likely path beneath the water of the peasant, loosed their quarrels. They hissed down into the water. “Reload!” cried the lieutenant. He himself bent down and picked up the bow which had been that of Herminius. Its quarrel had become dislodged but, in a moment, it was again fitted in the guide. I did not doubt but what, at one time or another, the lieutenant had been quite practiced with such a weapon. It, like the dagger, would doubtless be familiar to the wearers of the dark habiliments.

“Illuminate the pool!” cried the lieutenant.

We all, then, save the pit master, with his torch, brought our lamps or torches to the railing.

The light reflected up from the surface of the pool. Below me the urts were still feeding.

The lieutenant scanned the water tensely.

No body surfaced, penetrated with quarrels.

There seemed no sign of the peasant.

Then Tensius and Abnik had reset their bows.

“Where is he!” cried the lieutenant, his bow in hand.

But he received no answer.

We waited, about the railing. The urts continued to feed. The remains of the bodies rolled about in the water, under the stress of the feeding. Sometimes they were tugged under, and then, again, in a moment, surfaced. They were pulled back and forth.

They light of the torches and the lamps shone, reflected, from the water.

“He must have drowned,” called Tensius, from across the pool.

Certainly one would have expected the peasant to surface by now, if he were still alive. It was, of course, dark in the pool, and the light was uncertain.

“Urts have taken him, under the water,” called Abnik.

“Is there an exit from the pool!” demanded the lieutenant of the pit master, standing behind him, his torch lifted. “Of course,” said the pit master, “that through which the urts enter it, through their nest.”

“Where is the exit?” demanded the lieutenant.

“There, under the water, at the side,” said the pit master, indicating an area of the pool to our right, as we faced the pool, we near the portal through which we had entered the pool area, the point indicated rather opposite where the cage dangled.