Absolute silence. She examined the blue burning candle. It would last perhaps an hour. Then absolute night would join absolute silence. She pounded on the wall. The room roared. But when she had finished pounding, absolute silence returned,—that—and nothing more. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Unlike Isabelle, Gale knew the location of the door through which she had entered the main temple hall, but try as she might, she could not budge it. It was as if it were made of iron. And indeed iron has little resisting power that six inches of solid teakwood does not possess. After exhausting herself in a mad effort to escape, she resolved to conserve her energies for her battle with the fumes that rose from the nostrils of the two guardian apes. That there would be a struggle she did not doubt, for already the fumes were making her drowsy. Lying flat down on the floor with her face next to the door she tried to secure at least a little fresh air through the crack beneath the door. In this she partially succeeded. How long she could retain her senses she could not tell. “What an end for a soldier and the daughter of a soldier!” she thought, as a fit of wild desperation seized her. She wanted to get up and fight. “Fight what?” she asked herself. Then suddenly she knew—fight those incense burners! Fight those leering apes! At once she was on her knees. Bending low that she might avoid the fumes as much as possible, she crept toward the Buddha and the apes. As she came close to her goal the odor was all but overpowering. She wanted to sleep. “Sleep!” She clenched her fists tight. “I must not sleep!” At last her hands were on one of the black metal apes. She grasped its legs and pulled herself to a sitting position. The ape was solidly fastened to the floor. “There is a way to put incense into this burner,” she told herself. “I’ll find it, open up the burner and scatter the fire on the stone floor.” She felt the thing over, inch by inch, burning her fingers where the incense had heated the metal, but not a suggestion did she get regarding the manner in which the strange incense burner was opened. “I—I can do nothing.” She sank down upon the
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