seconds in which to find refuge; he could not stick to the
trail. Thick bush, dank and heavy from recent rains, was on either
side, fugitive streaks of pale light from above painting it eerily.
Garth plunged into the matted growth, dropped to hands and knees and
wormed forward away from the trail. Earth-jarring footbeats sounded
close. With frantic haste he wrenched though the scratching tendrils
and came to a miniature clearing.

* * * * *

He saw the tilted shape of a rotted tree-stump, its roots half washed
away and exposing a narrow crevice between them. Gasping, the nude,
foot-high figure tumbled down into it, and lay there, trying to hush
his labored breathing.

He was a mere twenty feet from the trail; and though to him the bush
was a jungle, to his pursuer it was only chest-high. A towering shadow
moved along the trail. The thud of heavy footbeats came more slowly to
the listening midget. Hagendorff was searching, puzzled by the vague
shadows, for where Garth had left the path.

Silence fell.

Garth's heart was pounding like a trip-hammer. He held himself alert,
ready, if need be, to struggle up from the moist crevice and dart on
further into the bush. He could not see the giant, but could picture
his huge, sullen face all too clearly. Still no sound came. Risking
all, he gripped a root and hauled himself up slightly. Then he peered
around the stump.

Hagendorff was standing in the thick of the bush. He was not ten feet
away, striving in the gloom to discern the other's tell-tale tracks.
Garth drew his head back, hardly daring to breathe. Shivering, his
naked body miserably cold, he waited, pressed down in the soggy earth.
His betraying tracks were there; the shadows alone befriended him.

The silence was drawn so fine that the faint cheep of a night-bird
sounded startlingly loud. But then came thunder that sent the bird
winging away in fright, and the night and the forest echoed with the
roar of a wrathful, impatient human voice.

"You hear me, wherever you are! And hear this: I leave you now, but in
ten minutes I have you! You little fool--you think you can get free?
It is only by minutes you delay me!"

Snarling a curse, the treacherous giant turned and crashed through the
bush and took his huge form striding back towards the cabin.

* * * * *

Garth was thinking of many things as he scrambled back wearily from
his refuge to the trai