"I knew that you were a language shark, Dottie, with five or six different ones to your credit, but I didn't suppose you could learn to talk this stuff in one day."
"I can't," she replied, "but I've picked up a few words of it. I can understand very little of what they are trying to tell me."
The woman spoke rapidly to the man standing behind Seaton, and as soon as the table had been carried away, he asked permission to speak to Dorothy. Fairly running across to her, he made a slight obeisance and in eager tones poured forth such a stream of language that she held up her hand to silence him.
"Go slower, please," she said, and added a couple of words in his own tongue.
There ensued a strange dialogue, with many repetitions and much use of signs. She turned to Seaton, with a puzzled look.
"I can't make out all he says, Dick, but he wants you to take him into another room of the palace here, to get back something or other that they took from him when they captured him. He can't go alone--I think he says he will be killed if he goes anywhere without you. And he says that when you get there, you must be sure not to let the guards come inside."
"All right, let's go!" and Seaton motioned the man to precede him. As Seaton started for the door, Dorothy fell into step beside him.
"Better stay back, Dottie, I'll be back in a minute," he said at the door.
"I will not stay back. Wherever you go, I go," she replied in a voice inaudible to the others. "I simply will not stay away from you a single minute that I don't have to."
"All right, little girl," he replied in the same tone. "I don't want to be away from you, either, and I don't think that we're in any danger here."
Preceded by the chief slave and followed by half a dozen others, they went out into the hall. No opposition was made to their progress, but a full half-company of armed guards fell in around them as an escort, regarding Seaton with looks composed of equal parts of reverence and fear. The slave led the way rapidly to a room in a distant wing of the palace and opened the door. As Seaton stepped in, he saw that it was evidently an audience-chamber or court-room, and that it was now entirely empty. As the guard approached the door, Seaton waved them back. All retreated across the hall except the officer in charge, who refused to move. Seaton, the personification of offended dignity, first stared at the offender, who returned the stare, and stepped up to him insolently, then pushed him back roughly, forgetting that his strength, great upon Earth, would be gigantic upon this smaller world. The officer spun across the corridor, knocking down three of his men in his flight. Picking himself up, he drew his sword and rushed, while his men fled in panic to the extreme end of the corridor. Seaton did not wait for him, but in one bound leaped half-way across the intervening space to meet him. With the vastly superior agility of his earthly muscles he dodged the falling broadsword and drove his left fist full against the fellow's chin, with all the force of his mighty arm and all the momentum of his rapidly moving body behind the blow. The crack of breaking bones was distinctly audible as the officer's head snapped back. The force of the blow lifted him high into the air, and after turning a complete somersault, he brought up with a crash against the opposite wall, dropping to the floor stone dead. As several of his men, braver than the others, lifted their peculiar rifles, Seaton drew and fired in one incredibly swift motion, the X-plosive bullet obliterating the entire group of men and demolishing that end of the palace.