reach it, he could
not get it open, for the handle would be far above him. The room was a
sealed arena. For a little while it would go on--a wild leaping and
dodging on the table, a hopeless evading of mammoth hands ... and
then, inevitably, would come a crushing grip on his body, followed by
experimentation and the agony of death in the black chamber.

Fearful, he waited, a perfect, living statuette, twelve inches
high....

A grunt preluded the giant's vicious charge. The American staggered
from the brush of a sweeping hand; then, twisting mightily, he dove
under it, like a mouse slipping under the paw of a cat. In doing so he
fell sprawling; and though he was up in a moment, his arm was held. A
hoarse, exultant rumble came to his ears.

"Caught, my friend!"

But Hagendorff spoke too soon. With a great wrench, Garth broke free,
and made a tigerish dash back along the table toward the window. And
even as the clumsy titan jumped to the side and grabbed again at him,
he hurled his tiny, heavy body against the pane, and went plunging
through a shower of glass into the cool dark night outside.

* * * * *

He fell five feet, and the wind was jarred out of him as he crashed
through the branches of a bush under the window into the sodden earth
beneath. Unhurt, save for a few lacerations from the glass, he
staggered to his feet, gasping for his breath, and started to run
across the clearing towards the fringe of dense forest growth that
ringed the cabin.

Then he heard thunderous footsteps and, a second later, the sound of
the front door being pulled open. Garth turned in his tracks, and
stumbled back beneath the cabin, thanking heaven that it was raised on
short stilts. But the ruse did not give him much of a start, and by
the time he had painfully threaded his way between the piles of timber
left underneath the cabin, Hagendorff had discovered the trick and was
scouting back.

Then, with the strength of the hunted, Garth was out from under the
other side and sprinting for the doubtful sanctuary of the forest.

His tiny feet, carrying the weight of a normal-sized man, sank ankle
high into the muddy ground, several times almost tripping him. Even as
he got to where a trail through the bush began, and passed from the
cold starlight into spaces black with clustered shadows, he heard a
bellow from behind, and, glancing back, saw a monstrous shape come
leaping on his tracks.

He had only