“Jon bless thee!” I told the old man.  “Ye have named both the trouble and the remedy.  I will attend to it at once.”

He sat thinking for some time longer.  “Has thought of any woman in special, Strokor?” said he.

I had not.  The idea was too new to me.  “The best in the world shall be mine, of course,” I told him.  “But as for which one—­hast any notion thyself?”

“Aye,” he quoth. “’Tis my own niece I have in mind.  Perchance ye remember her; a pretty child, who was with me when thou didst save my life up there on the mountainside.”

I recalled the chit fairly well.  “But she were not a vigorous woman, Maka.  Think you she is fit for me?”

“Aye, if any be,” he replied earnestly.  “Ave is not robust, true, but her muscles are as wires.  It is because of what lies in her head, however, that I commend her.  I have taught her all I know.”

“So!” I exclaimed, much pleased.  “Then she is indeed fit to be the empress.  And as I recall her, she were exceedingly good to look at.”

“Say no more.  Ave shall be the wife of Strokor!” And so it was arranged.

Well, and there ye have the story of Strokor, the mightiest man in the world, and the wisest.  More than this I shall not tell with my own lips; I shall have singers recite my deeds until half the compartments in the House of Words is filled with the records thereof.  But it were well that I should tell this much in mine own way.

My ambition is fulfilled.  Let the hand of Jon descend upon our world, if it may; I care not if presently the sun come nearer, and the water dry up, and the days grow longer and longer, till the day and the year become of the same length.  I care not; my people, such as be left of them, shall own what there is, and shall live as long as life is possible.

I shall leave behind no race of weaklings.  Every man shall be fit to live, and the fittest of them all shall live the longer.  And he, no matter how many cycles hence, shall look back to Strokor, and to Ave, his wife, and shall say: 

“I am what I am, the last man on the world, because Strokor was the fittest man of his time!”

Aye; my fame shall live as long as there be life.  Tonight, as I speak these things into the word machine, my heart is singing with the joy of it all.  Thank Jon, I were born a man, not a woman!

Tomorrow I go to fetch Ave.  I shall not send for her; I cannot trust her beauty to the hands of my crew.  The more I think of her, the more I see that mine whole life hath been devised for this one moment.  I see that, insignificant though she be, Ave is a needed link in the chain.  I have come to want her more than food; I am become a lovesick fool!

Aye!  I can afford to poke fun at myself.  I can afford anything in this world; for I be its greatest man.

Its greatest man!  Here is the place to stop.  There is no more I can say, the story is done; the story of Strokor, the greatest man in the whole world!