We crouched there on that upper ledge, staring down through the green water of the cave, and listened to Og as he harangued that pallid, puffy-faced throng. His words came up to us clear—words which, as I have said, were not Marinoid but a corruption of them sufficiently close to the original to be intelligible to us. We listened, breathless. What we heard made the past plain to us; and made our own future—the danger hanging over all the Marinoids—equally plain. For a moment we forgot our own position there on the ledge—forgot even Nona whom we had come to rescue and who was sitting behind Og on the platform, arms bound at her sides, with scorn on her beautiful face and her eyes flashing fire at her captors. For Og, with vehement, enthusiastic words, was explaining to these, his own people, how he would soon lead them into battle against the Marinoids! Rax and its sister cities would be captured; the Marinoid men killed or reduced to slavery; and all the beautiful, peaceful Marinoid domain turned over to the rule and the enjoyment of Og and his people! It made us shudder; but we held ourselves quiet. Caan, older than Prince Atar and I, pulled us back when in our eagerness to hear Og’s every word we would have pressed thoughtlessly forward and risked discovery from below. These people called themselves Maagogs—two long, very harsh syllables. Down here under the Water of Wild Things, hidden away in caves, mud-holes and subterranean tunnels, there were doubtless thousands of them—dragging out a furtive existence, menaced on every hand by monsters of the deep. To them, Nature herself must have seemed an inexorable enemy, as though their very being were against her laws, her wishes. For centuries they had apathetically struggled on. And then, as though to blot them out entirely, Nature had turned on them still further. Of recent years the pallid, dull-eyed Maagog women had borne but one female to three males. The Maagog women were dying out; soon the race would become extinct. With this dearth of women of their kind, Maagog men of the more prepossessing appearance (a generation before) had smuggled themselves into the Marinoid race. Their children—half-breeds—were living there now, with their Maagog heritage unsuspected by the trusting, simple-minded Marinoids. All this and more, Og explained to the throng of Maagogs he had assembled before him, as he outlined his plans of what he now proposed to do. “Quiet!” murmured Caan to Atar and me. Og’s voice went on. He had left Rax and come back to the Water of Wild Things because he loved his own people. It had been his idea that they steal the Marinoid women. The Maagog race must go on—on to conquest, to victory! A cheer rolled out as he said it. But we who listened knew it was Og’s own personal advancement—and not love of his people—which actuated him. And his very next words made that plain.