"Fat chance," growled the huge-shouldered scarred young Frog whose name was Dolan. "They attack and talk later." "Those are orders," said Masson firmly, his eyes boring into those of the other. "When you elected me leader of this expedition I took full control. Suggestions I will listen to, but you must follow orders!" Dolan's eyes wavered. "I didn't say nothing," he grunted. Two canoes slipped silently away to the left and the other two sped toward the right. Masson continued straight ahead toward the raft. Suddenly the mist parted. The foggy outlines of a half-dozen Frogs were revealed. And across the crudely plaited surface of the raft of buoyant thidin stalks lay the bound body of a young female Frog. Masson had time to see that the female wore a brief skirt and confining band of beaten vegetable fiber--a woman stolen from their own village of New Crayton--before the natives hurled their lumpy cudgels of nik-nik at him. He ducked. The clubs missed, only one of them thudding into the hide-bound gunwale beside him, and then the frog men had plunged into the familiar medium of the warm sea. They swam swiftly toward the two men in the boat, their bone knives in their powerful webbed fists. Masson hurled his spear at one of them. A gurgling cry of pain attested to the accuracy of his aim. He saw Ellis' spear leap forward and bury itself in the sea, and then his bow was in his hands and the bowstring swiftly nocking into the bone-tipped shaft of an arrow. But the frog men were upon them. The other canoes converged then. Arrows frothed the water around the swimming savages. Blood dyed the water with shifting red. And the ghastly coils of glistening snake-like things of the deep, attracted by the blood, fought for the bodies. The water boiled into frenzy as shark-like fish came also and battled with the coiling scavengers of the deep. The canoes rocked and threatened to swamp despite the frantic paddling of the men. All of the Frogs were dead, but their raft bobbed, unharmed, outward from the seething cauldron of fighting monsters. The bound woman watched with fearful eyes as Masson and Ellis paddled closer, and then she cried out with joy as she saw their weapons and the simple breech clouts. "Thank God," she gasped, as Masson stepped aboard and freed her bonds. She chafed gently at the swollen flesh where her gray-skinned legs and arms had been bound. * * * * * Masson swallowed. Hideous though she might have been by any Earthly standards, to him she was beautiful. Her body was firm and shapely and her eyes were soft and liquid. And in his body there coursed the blood of the Frog People. Already he was forgetting the standards of beauty back on Earth. Grace, strength, and the clean-cut planes of the body are the secret of loveliness. "I cannot blame them for stealing you," he said, thick-tongued. "I have not seen you before in New Crayton. Who are you?"