Cabot continued: “These are selective sending and receiving sets. Each one contains a wave trap, which silences the radiations of ordinary speech. You bees speak at a different wave length from the Cupians. Well, these boxes contain a wave length adjuster, which, by much the same principle, enables the officers to send to each other at different wave lengths, above the din of battle-cries.” “I get the general idea.” “Go then to Toron,” Myles directed. “Speak to him, and point with your paw to his selective set. Perhaps that will suggest to him to tune the instrument to your wave length, and perhaps your wave length is within the range of that instrument. At all events, it is our only chance.” At this point, noticing that Doggo was frantically agitating his antennae, the radio man tuned back to Doggo’s wave length just in time to hear him say: “Come, my friend, reply to my offer. Will you, or will you not, surrender?” “I surrender,” replied Cabot, “but on one condition, namely, that you spare the life of my faithful bee.” “Granted,” said Doggo. “From henceforth you are my prisoner.” XVI THE BEASTS OF KUANA And so, Portheris, the whistling bee, returned to headquarters with his message. And so Cabot, the earth-man, returned southward in a few parths to the city from which he had wearily journeyed but a short while ago. He had departed a fugitive; he returned a prisoner. On the trip back in the ant airplane, he and Doggo conversed freely, out of antennae shot of the pilot. “I bear you no malice, my old friend,” said the ant man, “for I blame Prince Yuri for the unhappy condition of my country, more than I blame you. Had it not been for his treachery, our two nations would still be living at peace, as they were when you first set foot on this planet. Were it not for his recent machinations, what is left of Formia would still be living unmolested within the restricted borders to which the ‘War of Liberation’ reduced us. In such a position, we could win our way back by our mental superiority, our greater industry and our culture; instead of risking, in the scales of war, what little we have left. “Prince Yuri cares not to reestablish Formia. He is merely using us as means to his own ends, and will turn against us when it suits his private purpose. You and I may yet live to fight side by side against the usurper. But, for the present, he is the official ally of Formia, and I am fighting for my country.” “As is just and right,” Cabot added. “But, tell me how will Yuri and Formia relish your bringing me back alive, instead of dead?”