“As we neared these buildings, a jaguar, or tigre, as the natives term it, came racing down the valley, and behind it poured a hideous mob that hid the ground from sight beneath a palpitant, undulating surface that made my skin crawl to watch. He staggered nearer as though he sought the protection of man, and I saw that his tongue hung out as he panted in the last throes of exhaustion. On the beast’s back rode a large spider, which urged the poor animal on to death, and as they reached the nearest building, sank its poison into the beast’s spine, and El Tigre dropped like a stone.

“Now we saw a forecast of our own fate. It was plain that we had been brought to this gathering place to be butchered. Meat on the hoof, less troublesome to bring than if it were dead!

“A wave of frightened animals dashed up, a chattering monkey or two, many hares, snakes that writhed in agony, half crippled by bites and dragged along by their captors, lizards that hissed with mouths wide open. The lizards were the only ones that fought.

“Then from the western valley wall, another herd poured down, a great anaconda coiling beside a cluster of peccaries closely bunched together and squealing with terror, and behind all a swarm of hunters.

“Never before had I seen so many different breeds of spiders dwelling in amity with one another, and again I had the impression that these were intelligent, reasoning beings hunting together for the good of the many.

“Now we were gathered in a cluster about the stone huts, hunters and hunted, a motley crew herded from all points of the compass over a twenty-mile radius, and the spiders set up a vast clacking of mandibles and emitted little hungry yearning cries.

“In answer, I heard thuds on the low roofs as the trapdoors fell back, and from each structure crawled a creature that dwarfed our captors into insignificance. It was a disgusting, heart-stopping sight, and our stomachs retched as we saw eight enormous spiders, each the size of a horse. But it was not their incredible size and filthiness, nor their bloated bodies which betokened an unthinkable age, that so horrified our souls! It was the look of an incredible, superhuman knowledge within their eyes, a knowledge not of this earth or era, a look as they saw us that might shine in the eyes of Lucifer, conscious of a kingdom or a world that had been gained, ruled and lost! And I knew that they looked upon us as an upstart race, born to serve, that had by a freakish accident turned the tables on our masters.

“This, I say, I read in their eyes, but my memory may be colored by the things I later knew.