Cabot walked over the edge of the arena nearest the box and waved to Lilla. At this a sporadic cheer arose, which the king suppressed with an angry gesture. But there remained a tenseness in the air as though there were many others present who would like to cheer, but dared not.
Yuri was plainly annoyed, for it was evident that his victim, wretched and bearded though he was, had quite a following in the audience.
Cabot waved again to Lilla.
“Be of good cheer, my princess,” he called up to her. “My enemies have had me nearer to death than this before. But ‘they cannot kill a Minorian.’”
His supreme confidence reassured Lilla somewhat, and for a moment even Yuri’s brow darkened with uncertainty. But then the king smiled quizzically, as one who knows a very amusing secret.
At last the stands were full. Yuri arose, and spoke into the self-same broadcaster which the present victim, before his downfall, had rigged up for the use of the venerable King Kew.
“People of Cupia,” he declaimed, “behold Cabot the Minorian, the beast from another world. Long has he deceived you by disguising himself as a Cupian being; but now he stands before you in his true nature; hairy-faced, long-locked, filthy and bestial. It is he who brought war upon this peaceful planet. For that crime he is to die, to be torn to pieces by other creatures no lower than he. And, with his well-deserved death, peace and tranquillity will return upon Poros. Let his punishment be a lesson to those misguided Cupians to whom he taught the art of war. I have spoken.”
A tense silence met the king’s words. He paused a moment, expectantly awaiting the cheer that never came, then frowned and raised his hand as a signal. The iron gates at one end of the arena were pulled aside, and out trotted one woofus, then another, and another, and another.
Cabot strained his eyes for the appearance of the fifth woofus, his woofus, but it was nowhere to be seen. The iron gates swung shut; and the four beasts, each a match for ten Cupians, trotted out to do him battle.
Upon entering the arena, each woofus blinked its eyes for a few paraparths until it became accustomed to the glare; then stretched itself, and began to sniff and stare around and agitate its antennae.