"We hide here until night," Tis told them all as they gathered about him swimming. "No place to go ashore. Only swamp. We steal a boat tonight. Go on down river in it." "Yzaps on the island!" gasped Elko Sohm, looking like some befouled bladder-doll of the primitive Martian tribes. "They watch the battle," Tis clicked. Up to the low bank of the floating island they swam and then Tis and Thod started to slash an opening into the cheesy structure of the watery growth. For perhaps three feet they slashed with their knives and then broke through into a low, moist tunnel. "_Trak's_ burrow," Tis explained. "The floating islands and low rises of mud are honeycombed with them." * * * * * Tis and Thod cleared out the soggy passages that underlay the floating island and found a way that led to the upstream side. Five of the many-legged _traks_ they encountered and killed with the thrust of a shortened spear or a skilfully wielded knife, shoving the gruesome lizard carcasses into the gaping watery pits that opened along the low tunnels they traversed. Rurak left Elko to guard Nitha and crept on hands and knees after the two Yzaps. He came up with them just as they had pierced an eyehole through the living wall of the island's upper side. "Jokar Ged is being beaten!" Tis clicked. "More of the Swamp Dwellers are coming from the island and from the swamps. There are many of them. They kill the Yzaps of Jokar Ged with spears and fishing harpoons. "Jokar Ged is wounded! Blood, red blood, comes from his body! His boats are turning.... They paddle away up the river. Spears thrown by the Swamp People strike among them.... A boat overturns...." "Let me see, Tis," ordered Rurak. A glimpse of the fleeing knot of dugouts, five of them now, with the circling score or more bowl-boats closing in, was all that Rurak could see before the wedge-shaped arm of jungle just upstream blotted out vision. He saw Jokar Ged sagging weakly in one of the fleeing boats, the spear that had wounded him yet hanging in the wound. Then he saw the overturned dugout drifting toward the island. He turned to the Earthmen. "Could one of you swim out there and steer that boat around to the lower side of the island?" he demanded. "Yes, Nidan," clicked Thod and with a slash of his crude stone knife he made an opening and was gone. Rurak waited until he saw the derelict craft shift its drifting course and move away downriver and then he led the way back to the others. If they could sink the boat or conceal it under the bulk of the island until darkness came.... * * * * * "A close shave that," Elko Sohm growled as he paddled the boat along a salty watercourse parallel with the Great Sea, "if the Yzaps had come back before Thod reached us and we hid the boat we would all be dead. I'm thinking yet we should have remained on the hilltop. A foolhardy undertaking this."