islands in Polynesia that have been looked upon from time immemorial as
islands of the dead. These places are shunned by the islanders, and the
centuries have invested them with the same atmosphere of brooding
mystery that Professor Herndon and his party felt when they landed upon
the silent isle where the Wizards of the Centipede performed their weird
rites without interference from the outside world.

Nor is the Vermilion Pit created out of thin air. The savage has used
many startling methods to separate the born warrior from the coward, and
the author has seen a place just as wonderful as the pit, where the
young men of the tribe were tested in the same manner as that related
in this story. The cunning savage has always thought it inadvisable to
pick his fighting men till their courage had been thoroughly tested, and
in dull days of peace the headmen of the tribes racked their brains to
discover nerve-shaking ordeals to try the daring of the growing youth.
The safety of the tribe depended upon the valour of the fighting line,
and it would have been an inexcusable blunder to put the nervous ones in
the front rank.

The strange stone structures similar to the one upon which Holman and
Verslun narrowly escaped being offered up as sacrifices to the Centipede
are to be found in many islands of the Pacific at the present day. In
the Tongan, Caroline, and Cook groups these peculiar stone ruins remain
as evidence of the existence of an ancient people of superior
intelligence to the islanders of to-day. As to the meaning or use of
these structures we are entirely in the dark. The natives of these
groups know nothing concerning them, and the Polynesian builder in that
dark past was too busy clubbing and eating his neighbour to write
histories. Scientists are in doubt, as in the case of the great ruins at
Metalanim, whether they were built as sacrificial altars or as monuments