Two weeks later the yacht was scudding along under a twenty-mile-an-hour wind. It was high noon, and everybody except the helmsmen, Amra and Miran was eating. They were lunching on steaks carved from a _hoober_ which Green had shot from the deck and which had been cooked on the fireplace placed under a hood immediately aft of the small foredeck. There was no lack of food despite the fact that the yacht had not been stocked. Fortunately the savages who'd owned it had not bothered to remove the several pistols and the keg of powder and sack of balls from its locker. With this Green killed enough deer and _hoobers_ to keep everybody well fed. Amra supplemented their protein diet with grass which her culinary art turned into a halfway decent salad. At times, when they neared a grove of trees, Green would stop the yacht. They would go foraging for berries and for a large plant which could be beaten until soft, mixed with water, kneaded and baked into a kind of bread. Once, a grass cat dashed out from behind a tree, making straight for Inzax. Green and Miran, both firing at the same time, crumpled it within ten yards of the little blonde. The grass cats, big cheetah-like creatures with long slim legs built for running, were only a peril when the party left the yacht. Though fully capable of leaping aboard when the 'roller was in movement, they never did. Sometimes they might pace it for a mile or so, then they would contemptuously walk away. Green wished he could say the same for the dire dogs. These were almost as large as the grass cats and ran in packs of from six to twelve. Sinister-looking with their gray-and-black spotted coats, pointed wolfish ears and massive jaws, they would run up to the very wheels, howling and snapping with their monstrous yellow fangs. Then one would be inspired with the idea of leaping aboard and finding out how the occupants tasted. Up he would come, easily sailing over the railing. Usually the occupants would discourage him with a well-placed thrust from a spear or an amputating swing of a cutlass. Sometimes they missed, and he would land on the deck, which enabled the sailors to try again, with better success. Back over the rail his body would go, back to his fellows, many of whom would stop the chase to devour their dead comrade. Those who persisted in the hunt would then try their luck, bounding upon the yacht, snarling hideously, trying to scare their quarry into a complete paralysis and sometimes succeeding. No lives were lost to the dire dogs, but almost everybody bore scars. Only Lady Luck managed to stay unscathed. Every time she heard their distant howling she scaled the mast and would not come down until the danger was over.