Then he sensed that the positions of his arms and legs were changed.  He struggled, blind and deaf and without feeling anywhere.  He knew that he was confined.  His arms were fastened somehow so that he could not move them.

And then gradually—­very gradually—­his senses returned.  He heard squeakings.  At first they were faint as the exhausted nerve ends in his ears only began to regain their function.  He began to regain the sense of touch, though he felt only furriness everywhere.

He was raised up.  It seemed to him that claws rather than fingers grasped him.  He stood erect, swaying.  His sense of balance had been lost without his realizing it.  It came back, very slowly.  But he saw nothing.  Clawlike hands—­or handlike claws—­pulled at him.  He felt himself turned and pushed.  He staggered.  He took steps out of the need to stay erect.  The pushings and pullings continued.  He found himself urged somewhere.  He realized that his arms were useless because they were wrapped with something like cord or rope.

Stumbling, he responded to the urging.  There was nothing else to do.  He found himself descending.  He was being led somewhere which could only be downward.  He was guided, not gently, but not brutally either.

He waited for sight to return to him.  It did not come.

It was then he realized that he could not see because he was blindfolded.

There were whistling squeaks very near him.  He began helplessly to descend the mountain, surrounded and guided and sometimes pulled by unseen creatures.

CHAPTER 3

It was a long descent, made longer by the blindfold and clumsier by his inability to move his arms.  More than once Lockley stumbled.  Twice he fell.  The clawlike hands or handlike claws lifted him and thrust him on the way that was being chosen for him.  There were whistling squeaks.  Presently he realized that some of them were directed at him.  A squeak or whistle in a warning tone told him that he must be especially careful just here.

He came to accept the warnings.  It occurred to him that the squeaks sounded very much like those button-shaped hollow whistles that children put in their mouths to make strident sounds of varying pitch.  Gradually, all his senses returned to normal.  Even his eyes under the blindfold ceased to report only glare blindness, and he saw those peculiar, dissolving grayish patterns that human eyes transmit from darkness.

More squeakings.  A long time later he moved over nearly level grassy ground.  He was led for possibly half a mile.  He had not tried to speak during all his descent.  It would have been useless.  If he was to be killed, he would be killed.  But trouble had been taken to bring him down alive from a remaining bit of crumbling crater wall.  His captors had evidently some use for him in mind.

They abruptly held him still for a long time—­perhaps as much as an hour.  It seemed that either instructions were hard to come by, or some preparation was being made.  Then the sound of something or someone approaching.  Squeaks.