It all happened so quickly that Tanar scarcely knew the sequence of events, but what he did know was that the powder failed to ignite, and then he laughed. “You had better wait until I have taught you how to make powder that will burn before you try to murder me, Bohar,” he said. The Bloody One scrambled to his feet and Tanar stood ready to receive the expected charge, but the girl stepped between them with an imperious gesture. “Enough of this!” she cried. “It is The Cid’s wish that this man live. Would you like to have The Cid know that you tried to pistol him, Bohar?” The Bloody One stood glaring at Tanar for several seconds, then he wheeled and strode away without a word. “It would seem that Bohar does not like me,” said Tanar, smiling. “He dislikes nearly every one,” said Stellara, “but he hates you—now.” “Because I knocked him down, I suppose. I cannot blame him.” “That is not the real reason,” said the girl. “What is, then?” She hesitated and then she laughed. “He is jealous. Bohar wants me for his mate.” “But why should he be jealous of me?” Stellara looked Tanar up and down and then she laughed again. “I do not know,” she said. “You are not much of a man beside our huge Korsars—with your beardless face and your small waist. It would take two of you to make one of them.” To Tanar her tone implied thinly veiled contempt and it piqued him, but why it should he did not know and that annoyed him, too. What was she but the savage daughter of a savage, boorish Korsar? When he had first learned from Bohar’s lips that she was the daughter and not the mate of The Cid he had felt an unaccountable relief, half unconsciously and without at all attempting to analyze his reaction. Perhaps it was the girl’s beauty that had made such a relationship with The Cid seem repulsive, perhaps it was her lesser ruthlessness, which seemed superlative gentleness by contrast with the brutality of Bohar and The Cid, but now she seemed capable of a refined cruelty, which was, after all, what he might have expected to find in one form or another in the daughter of the Chief of the Korsars. As one will, when piqued, and just at random, Tanar loosed a bolt in the hope that it might annoy her. “Bohar knows you better than I,” he said; “perhaps he knew that he had cause for jealousy.” “Perhaps,” she replied, enigmatically, “but no one will ever know, for Bohar will kill you—I know _him_ well enough to know that.” II DISASTER Upon the timeless seas of Pellucidar a voyage may last for an hour or a year—that depends not upon its duration, but upon the important occurrences which mark its course.