In a short time the lizards were piled up around the entrance for several hundred yards, and were climbing over each other in a vain attempt to get to the soldiers. This enabled the Selinites to run out of the narrow corridor and join their companions, thus pushing the tide of battle back on the lizards, and piling them high around. While many of the Selinites were hurt, in two hours the entire army was inside of the Chamber of Horrors, and the battle was won.
Soon the great chamber was full of chlorine gas, and the ramphs were choking, snorting, snapping death (without knowing where it came from) while the Selinites were protected by their gas masks. Now Epworth commanded a company of soldiers to circle around the place, find the tunnel on the other side that led to the Cricket World, and bar it up with stones in order to keep the gas inside of the ramph chamber.
When this was accomplished the reptiles were driven from the walls and floors into the lake of black water. This lake, Epworth found out, was several miles long and over a mile wide but the water was shallow, and proved of little aid to the lizards. When the reptiles stuck their heads under the water they gained some respite but not understanding what was troubling them they lifted their heads immediately, again to be caught by the breath of chloroform. Then they sank never to rise.
When the dope had cleaned them out, the Selinites calmly plunged their spears into their eyes.
At the end of a day’s hard fighting the work was done. Not a single ramph was left to start another race of monsters, and Epworth, opening the tunnel on the opposite side, led his soldiers out of the terrifying place, and sealed it up again in order that the fumes should be confined to the area occupied by the lizards.
Then, after a long rest, he turned his face toward that nightmare of horror—the home of the crickets. Here he expected to meet Toplinsky armed with gun cotton, huge guns, and powerful explosives, an intelligent man leading a multiple host of soulless insects—insects that ate flesh of all kinds of men and animals.
While he was backed by an army of Selinites, Epworth felt as he came to a halt in front of a crude stone wall as if the lives of thousands of little children were in his hands. Under his leadership these little men could be brave and victorious. Without him he imagined that they would melt like snow before the onrush of the crickets, and the vicious Taunan dwarfs. To protect them he concluded to go ahead and reconnoiter.