“Not alone, O King,” he replied with a meaning all his own, then raised his eyes reverently to Heaven. An angry rustle arose from the stands, like leaves before an approaching storm. Evidently Cabot still had a following in Kuana.
There he stood alone, a stranger from another world, bearded, long-haired, disheveled, and unkempt. A pitiable sight indeed! And yet there was something heroic in his bearing, so that a large section of the populace, remembering his past deeds, were still glad to acclaim him as their leader.
But what good would this following do, for the purple beasts were now nearly upon him in their slow and stealthy approach.
At this moment a crash resounded throughout the stadium, but it was heard by the ears of the earth-man alone. The iron gates gave way, and out bounded a fifth woofus, larger than any of the rest. The woofus shrieked, and Lilla and Yuri both shuddered, but each for a different cause: Lilla because she thought that it was a new menace to her husband; Yuri because it represented the one eventuality which he had felt sure he had guarded against. Cabot thrilled.
“Not alone,” he repeated, but with a new meaning now. “Look well, O King!”
Like a purple streak of lightning, the newcomer shot across the arena with a long-drawn crescendo howl!
The sound of a woofus is indescribable. Myles Cabot has tried many times to describe it to me, but has failed. The nearest that he can come to it is to say that it resembles the noise obtained by placing the receiver of a telephone-set over the mouthpiece, when one wishes to get even with the girl at Central for being particularly and unusually ornery. It was to prevent this that French phones were invented.
But, to go on with the story. As the fifth woofus charged across the sands, the other four heard his battle-cry, and, pausing in their approach toward Cabot, turned and faced the newcomer, who at once stopped in his onrush.
For a few paraparths, the five beasts, four on one side and one on the other, confronted each other with bristling antennae.
Then “Sic ’em!” shouted the earth-man.