BUT Kirby did not give himself up to silent observation any longer.
"Will you finish telling me," he asked of Naida, "about the task I am to perform for you here?"
Naida, walking with lithe strides along a path jungle-hemmed on both sides, smiled at him.
"You are to be our leader."
"Yes?"
Now both Naida and the other girls became sober.
"You will lead us in a revolt."
"Ah!" Kirby whistled softly.
"In a revolt against the caciques—the wise men—whose kind have governed the People of the Temple since the beginning."
Her statement was received with acclaim by the whole troop, who crowded close around, the while they smiled at Kirby.
"You mean I am to lead a revolt," he asked, "against these same caciques whom we are going now to face?"
Naida nodded emphatically.
"Yes, if revolt proves necessary. And it probably will."
"Hum." Kirby scratched behind his ear. "You'd better tell me what you can about it."
THEN, as they hurried on, Naida spoke rapidly.
The situation before the People of the Temple was that for a long time now, the only children to be born had been girls. Worse still, not even a girl had been born during a period equal to sixteen upper-world years. The only remaining members of a race which had flourished in this underground land for countless thousands of years, consisted of the caciques, a handful of aged people, and the thirty-four girls, including Naida, who accompanied Kirby now.
On one hand was promised extinction through lack of reproduction. On the other, even swifter and more terrible extinction at the hands of the ape-men, whom Naida called the Worshippers of Xlotli, the Rabbit God, the God of all bestiality and drunkenness.
It was the menace of the ape-men, rather than the less appalling one of lack of reproduction, which was making the most trouble now. Ages ago, when the People of the Temple had flourished as a race, they had been untroubled by the Worshippers of Xlotli. But now the ape-men were by far the stronger; and they desired the girls who had been born as the last generation of an ancient race. The battle of this morning had been only one of many.
Dissension between the caciques, who ruled the People of the Temple, and their girl subjects, had arisen on the subject of the best way of dealing with the ape-man menace.
SOME time ago, Naida, heading a council of all the girls, had proposed to the caciques that support be sought amongst the people of the upper world. This would be done judiciously, by bringing to the lower realm a few men who were wise and strong, men who would make good husbands, and who could fight the ape-men.
This proposal the priests had promptly quashed. They would never receive, they said, any members of the teeming outer races from whom the People of the Temple had so long been hidden. Those few who had blundered into the Valley of the Geyser during the centuries, and who had never escaped, were enough. Better, said the caciques, that a compromise be arranged with the subjects of the Rabbit God.
Flatly then, the priests had proposed that some of the girls, the number to be specified later, should be given to the ape-men, and peace won. During the time of reprieve which would thus be afforded, prayers and sacrifices could be offered the Lords of the Sun and Moon, and to Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent. In answer to these prayers, the Gods would surely send the aged people who alone were left as prospective parents, a generation of sons.
