As I looked at her the man arose and made his way round the table toward us. For the first time my eyes took in Lugur. A few inches taller than the green dwarf, he was far broader, more filled with the suggestion of appalling strength.
The tremendous shoulders were four feet wide if an inch, tapering down to mighty thewed thighs. The muscles of his chest stood out beneath his tunic of red. Around his forehead shone a chaplet of bright-blue stones, sparkling among the thick curls of his silver-ash hair.
Upon his face pride and ambition were written large—and power still larger. All the mockery, the malice, the hint of callous indifference that I had noted in the other dwarfish men were there, too—but intensified, touched with the satanic.
The woman spoke again.
"Who are you strangers, and how came you here?" She turned to Rador. "Or is it that they do not understand our tongue?"
"One understands and speaks it—but very badly, O Yolara," answered the green dwarf.
"Speak, then, that one of you," she commanded.
But it was Marakinoff who found his voice first, and I marvelled at the fluency, so much greater than mine, with which he spoke.
"We came for different purposes. I to seek knowledge of a kind; he"—pointing to me "of another. This man"—he looked at Olaf—"to find a wife and child."
The grey-blue eyes had been regarding O'Keefe steadily and with plainly increasing interest.