“You have me in your power, yes,” Cabot countered, “but you have had me in your power before. You induced that ant man, whom I called Satan, to try and kill me at Wautoosa, but Doggo interfered. Because of your scheming, the Formians condemned me to the Valley of the Howling Rocks, from whose frightful din no person had ever escaped; but nevertheless I got away. You overcame me in the strap-duel in the mangool of Kuana, and your knife was about to enter my heart, when I thumbed your ulnar nerve and made you drop your weapon. You arrested me in the stadium the day you killed your uncle, King Kew; you had Trisp, the bar-mango, destroy my antennae; yet I escaped and rejoined my army. You fed me to the woofuses, but one of them turned on you instead. In just what way do you plan to fail this time?”
“This time there will be no slip-up,” Yuri replied grimly. Then, his curiosity getting the better of him, he asked: “But you haven’t yet told me why you are sorry for me.”
“I am sorry for you,” the earthman explained, “because you have missed your opportunities. You had the ability and the following to have led your country to victory over the ants. You would have been a hero and could have had anything that you wanted in the whole kingdom.”
“Not Lilla,” the prince interjected with a sneer.
“Yes, even Lilla,” Cabot soberly replied.
“Well, I shall have her now,” the other asserted. “And ‘what ends well, ends well,’ as Poblath would say.”
“You are incorrigible!” Cabot exclaimed. “And to quote another of Poblath’s proverbs, ‘The saddest thing about a fool is that he doesn’t realize he is one.’”
This irritated Prince Yuri, so he curtly ordered: “Swing to the left at the next crossroad.”
“But what is to prevent my stopping the car and turning you over to the pinqui if there is one stationed there?” Cabot asked.
“This revolver,” the other replied.