"Buck up, Olaf!" he said. "We've got a good fighting chance. Once we link up with Lakla and her crowd I'm betting that we get your wife--never doubt it! The baby--" he hesitated awkwardly. The Norseman's eyes filled; he stretched a hand to the O'Keefe. "The _Yndling_--she is of the _de Dode_," he half whispered, "of the blessed dead. For her I have no fear and for her vengeance will be given me. _Ja!_ But my Helma--she is of the dead-alive--like those we saw whirling like leaves in the light of the Shining Devil--and I would that she too were of _de Dode_--and at rest. I do not know how to fight the Shining Devil--no!" His bitter despair welled up in his voice. "Olaf," Larry's voice was gentle. "We'll come out on top--I know it. Remember one thing. All this stuff that seems so strange and--and, well, sort of supernatural, is just a lot of tricks we're not hep to as yet. Why, Olaf, suppose you took a Fijian when the war was on and set him suddenly down in London with autos rushing past, sirens blowing, Archies popping, a dozen enemy planes dropping bombs, and the searchlights shooting all over the sky--wouldn't he think he was among thirty-third degree devils in some exclusive circle of hell? Sure he would! And yet everything he saw would be natural--just as natural as all this is, once we get the answer to it. Not that we're Fijians, of course, but the principle is the same." The Norseman considered this; nodded gravely. "_Ja!_" he answered at last. "And at least we can fight. That is why I have turned to Thor of the battles, _Ja!_ And _one_ have I hope in for mine Helma--the white maiden. Since I have turned to the old gods it has been made clear to me that I shall slay Lugur and that the _Heks_, the evil witch Yolara, shall also die. But I would talk with the white maiden." "All right," said Larry, "but just don't be afraid of what you don't understand. There's another thing"--he hesitated, nervously--"there's another thing that may startle you a bit when we meet up with Lakla--her--er--frogs!" "Like the frog-woman we saw on the wall?" asked Olaf. "Yes," went on Larry, rapidly. "It's this way--I figure that the frogs grow rather large where she lives, and they're a bit different too. Well, Lakla's got a lot of 'em trained. Carry spears and clubs and all that junk--just like trained seals or monkeys or so on in the circus. Probably a custom of the place. Nothing queer about that, Olaf. Why people have all kinds of pets--armadillos and snakes and rabbits, kangaroos and elephants and tigers." Remembering how the frog-woman had stuck in Larry's mind from the outset, I wondered whether all this was not more to convince himself than Olaf. "Why, I remember a nice girl in Paris who had four pet pythons--" he went on. But I listened no more, for now I was sure of my surmise. The road had begun to thrust itself through high-flung, sharply pinnacled masses and rounded outcroppings of rock on which clung patches of the amber moss.