The words and the savage challenge slipped as easily from the cultured tongue of Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones as though he had been born and reared in the most rocky and barren cave of this savage island, nor did they sound strange or unusual to him. It seemed that he had said the most natural and proper thing under the circumstances that there was to say. "Flatfoot is not here," said the old man, "nor is Nadara. She--" but here Waldo interrupted him. "Korth, then," he demanded. "Where is Korth? I can kill him first and Flatfoot when he returns." The old man looked at the speaker in unfeigned surprise. "Korth!" he exclaimed. "Korth is dead. Can it be that you do not know that he, whom you killed yesterday, was Korth?" Waldo's eyes opened as wide in surprise as had the old man's. Korth! He had killed the redoubtable Korth with his bare hands--Korth, who could crush the skull of a full-grown man with a single blow from his open palm. Clearly he recollected the very words in which Nadara had described this horrible brute that time she had harrowed his poor, coward nerves, as they approached the village of Flatfoot. And now he, Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones, had met and killed the creature from whom he had so fearfully fled a few months ago! And, wonder of wonders, he had not even thought to use the weapons upon which he had spent so many hours of handicraft and months of practise in preparation for just this occasion. Of a sudden he recalled the old man's statement that Nadara was not there. "Where is she--Nadara?" he cried, turning so suddenly upon the ancient one that the old fellow drew back in alarm. "I have done nothing to harm her," he cried. "I followed and would have brought her back, but I am old and could not find her. Once, when I was young, there was no better trailer or mighty warrior among my people than I, but----" "Yes, yes," exclaimed Waldo impatiently; "but Nadara! Where is she?" "I do not know," replied the old man. "She has gone, and I could not find her. Well do I remember how, years ago, when the trail of an enemy was faint or the signs of game hard to find, men would come to ask me to help them, but now----" "Of course," interrupted Waldo; "but Nadara. Do you not even know in what direction she has gone?" "No; but since Flatfoot has set forth upon her trail it should be easy to track the two of them." "Flatfoot set out after Nadara!" cried, Waldo. "Why?" "For many moons he has craved her for his mate, as has Korth," explained Nadara's father; "but I think that each feared the other, and because of that fact Nadara was saved from both; but at last Korth came upon us alone and away from the village, and then he grasped Nadara and would have taken her away, for Flatfoot was not about to prevent. "You came then, and the rest you know. If I had been younger neither Flatfoot nor Korth would have dared menace Nadara, for when I was a young man I was very terrible and the record of my kills was a----"