two of them, one day, were catching the unclassified and unnamed
little black fish, an inch long, half-eel and half-scaled, rotund
with salmon-golden roe, that frequented the fresh water, and that
were esteemed, raw and whole, fresh or putrid, a perfect delicacy.
Prone in the muck of the decaying jungle-floor, Balatta threw
herself, clutching his ankles with her hands kissing his feet and
making slubbery noises that chilled his backbone up and down again.
She begged him to kill her rather than exact this ultimate love-
payment. She told him of the penalty of breaking the taboo of the
Red One--a week of torture, living, the details of which she
yammered out from her face in the mire until he realized that he
was yet a tyro in knowledge of the frightfulness the human was
capable of wreaking on the human.

Yet did Bassett insist on having his man's will satisfied, at the
woman's risk, that he might solve the mystery of the Red One's
singing, though she should die long and horribly and screaming.
And Balatta, being mere woman, yielded. She led him into the
forbidden quadrant. An abrupt mountain, shouldering in from the
north to meet a similar intrusion from the south, tormented the
stream in which they had fished into a deep and gloomy gorge.
After a mile along the gorge, the way plunged sharply upward until
they crossed a saddle of raw limestone which attracted his
geologist's eye. Still climbing, although he paused often from
sheer physical weakness, they scaled forest-clad heights until they
emerged on a naked mesa or tableland. Bassett recognized the stuff
of its composition as black volcanic sand, and knew that a pocket
magnet could have captured a full load of the sharply angular
grains he trod upon.