He spoke to them for a moment in a low tone, and as he was talking Waldo recognized him as the old man who had accompanied Nadara on the previous day at the battle in the glade. When he had finished speaking one of the cave men assented to whatever proposal the decrepit one had made, and Waldo saw that each of the others nodded his head in approval.

Then the old man advanced slowly toward Waldo. When he had come quite close he spoke.

"I am an old man," he said. "Thandar would not kill an old man?"

"Of course not; but how know you that my name is Thandar?" replied Waldo.

"Nadara, she who is my daughter, has spoken of you often. Yesterday we saw you as you battled with that son of Nagoola—Nadara told me then that it was you. What would Thandar among the people of Flatfoot?"

"I come as a friend," replied Waldo, "among the friends of Nadara. For Flatfoot I care nothing. He is no friend of Nadara, whose friends are Thandar's friends, and whose enemies are Thandar's enemies. Where is Nadara—but first, where is Flatfoot? I have come to kill him."

The words and the savage challenge slipped as easily from the cultured tongue of Waldo Emerson[Pg 106] Smith-Jones as though he had been born and reared in the most rocky and barren cave of this savage island, nor did they sound strange or unusual to him. It seemed that he had said the most natural and proper thing under the circumstances that there was to say.

[Pg 106]

"Flatfoot is not here," said the old man, "nor is Nadara. She—" but here Waldo interrupted him.

"Korth, then," he demanded. "Where is Korth? I can kill him first and Flatfoot when he returns."

The old man looked at the speaker in unfeigned surprise.

"Korth!" he exclaimed. "Korth is dead. Can it be that you do not know that he, whom you killed yesterday, was Korth?"

Waldo's eyes opened as wide in surprise as had the old man's.

Korth! He had killed the redoubtable Korth with his bare hands—Korth, who could crush the skull of a full-grown man with a single blow from his open palm.

Clearly he recollected the very words in which Nadara had described this horrible brute that time she had harrowed 

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