If there were new worlds to conquer he would invade them, fearless, determined and confident. He reckoned not on man, the unknown, and had he known it is not improbable but that he should have acted exactly as he did. For, what is all life but a game of chance? And what is chance but a disguise for opportunity? The first steps toward the fire had been taken. The die had been cast. Fate had stepped into Warruk's life and while luring him onward, baited with the promise of adventure the hard path that lay ahead. Daylight was just breaking when the black Jaguar reached the vicinity of the blaze. The fire, replenished throughout the hours of darkness, had guided him unerringly on his way; but with the coming of dawn it had been allowed to dwindle down until nothing remained but a bed of embers and even these died when the sun shot over the horizon. The place reeked of an uncommon though not unknown odor and the sand was trodden into paths by long, broad feet. Once before he had come upon the same tracks and scent; and it came to him in a flash that it had been along the border of the marsh and near the stream flowing out of it where the dead egrets lay in heaps and rows, their feathers ruffled by the wind. And the recollection also came of the illness he had suffered as the result of eating of the birds. The creatures that could work such havoc among the shy egrets and the after-effects of whose presence was violent sickness, were not to be taken too lightly and Warruk felt a distrust of the insidious power they must possess. He circled the place, once, twice, in search of further clues to the strange inhabitants. They were not lacking in the form of heaps of turtle shells, bones, feathers, fish scales and numerous other objects. But, of the creatures themselves he saw nothing. His keen ears, however caught the sound of deep breathing that came from a group of leaf-thatched shelters dotting the sand. Warruk lingered about the encampment until the sun was well above the treetops. Then he entered the edge of the thick cover bordering the flat stretch where the strange creatures dwelt and which was the beginning of the forest. The wind, blowing the sand before it in rippling waves, soon filled the imprints of his massive feet and obliterated all trace of his visit. And this was on the very night following the gathering of the Indians when Choflo, headman, had announced that the wrath of Tumwah, God of Drought, was about to descend upon the land. * * * * *