With a stout club I could have beaten them down in a few moments.
Their terrible legs and feet, however, were quite another thing.
One blow from the feet of a vigorous Umi-Loba would have laid me dead on the ground.
I have often seen these guards amuse themselves by striking deep holes in the ground or by breaking stone slabs an inch thick with a single blow of their heels.
I must choose a different mode of eluding such dangerous pursuers.
They must be drugged.
But how to accomplish it?
To offer them all food at the same moment would most surely arouse their suspicions.
Then again, they did not all eat together.
So too, it would be worse than folly to attempt to drug their drink.