es
of a curious greenish grey and the black hair curling over his head
like that on some old Greek statue.

Dwarfed though he was, there was no suggestion of deformity about him.
The gigantic shoulders were covered with a loose green tunic that
looked like fine linen. It was caught in at the waist by a broad
girdle studded with what seemed to be amazonites. In it was thrust a
long curved poniard resembling the Malaysian kris. His legs were
swathed in the same green cloth as the upper garment. His feet were
sandalled.

My gaze returned to his face, and in it I found something subtly
disturbing; an expression of half-malicious gaiety that underlay the
wholly prepossessing features like a vague threat; a mocking deviltry
that hinted at entire callousness to suffering or sorrow; something of
the spirit that was vaguely alien and disquieting.

He spoke--and, to my surprise, enough of the words were familiar to
enable me clearly to catch the meaning of the whole. They were
Polynesian, the Polynesian of the Samoans which is its most ancient
form, but in some indefinable way--archaic. Later I was to know that
the tongue bore the same relation to the Polynesian of today as does
_not_ that of Chaucer, but of the Venerable Bede, to modern English.
Nor was this to be so astonishing, when with the knowledge came the
certainty that it was from it the language we call Polynesian sprang.

"From whence do you come, strangers--and how found you your way here?"
said the green dwarf.

I waved my hand toward the cliff behind us. His eyes narrowed
incredulously; he glanced at its drop, upon which even a mountain goat
could not have made its way, and laughed.

"We came through the rock," I answered his thought. "And we come in
peace," I added.

"And may peace walk with you," he said half-derisively--"if the
Shining One wills it!"

He considered us again.

"Show me, strangers, where you came through the rock," he commanded.
We led the way to where we had emerged from the well of the stairway.

"It was here," I said, tapping the cliff.

"But I see no opening," he said suavely.

"It closed behind us," I answered; and then, for the first time,
realized how incredible the explanation sounded. The derisive gleam
passed through his eyes again. But he drew his poniard and gravely
sounded the rock.

"You give a strange turn to our speech," he said. "It sounds
strangely, indeed--as strange as your answers." He looked at us
quizzica