chest and twisting his powerful limbs, snapped his bonds. The two men sat on him and tied him down with heavier cord, then squatting one on each side began to curse him.
Davidson well knew the versatility of his companions in this respect. Their voices rose into a veritable chant of malediction. He let them rave, for they had earned the right, and it would have been cruelty to strong men to have restrained them.
When both men were finally satisfied and sat wiping the blood of conflict from their naked bodies, Davidson spoke. "We will now return to the planet-plane, after first disposing of this native."
"You see him yourself, corporal," said Bailee.
"I do," nodded Davidson.
"He climbed into the plane from the water, of his own free will and sweet accord, like a butterfly into a blossom."
"It seems we didn't drag him aboard."
"You propose to run up about a thousand meters and drop him back into the water? Gentle, like a mother with her first born."
"Hardly," Davidson frowned. "He's alive and half-human."
Hal-Al and Bailee sighed. "But he belongs in the water," said the latter. "The crisp, bright water."
"Scarcely," replied Davidson. "I think rather he escaped from one of those spheres that rolled into the river."
Again the other men sighed.
"Then you propose to keep him for a butler on the planet-plane," said Bailee.
"And give him a blue suit with big gilt buttons," nodded Hal-Al.
"It would be better to land and drop him off here, where he can pick up his companions."
Again Hal-Al and Bailee sighed in unison and looked at one another.
"He'd make a fine corpse," said the latter.
"May I kiss him good-by for you, corporal?" said the other man.
Davidson sensed the dangerous rage of his companions under their banter. "Why this vindictiveness?" he asked. "I never knew you to hold a grudge against an enemy who put up a man-size fight."
"Pah!" spat Hal-Al. "First he made us blind, then he paralyzed us. That's no man's fight, that's a dirty disease!"
"And before that," said Bailee, "he came out with only a breech-cloth on him and ordered the girls back into the big pink machine."
"Girls!" exclaimed Davidson.
The younger men exchanged glances. "It was this way, corporal," said Bailee, at a nod from Hal-Al. "We hadn't gone far on our radiocycles when we came to the clearest stream we ever saw, with the water so cool and crisp that we looked about for St. Peter and the big admission gate. Then we heard laughter."
"Tell him about that," nodded Hal-Al.
"You couldn't tell of it! You could just fight for it! Sweet, like a bubbling fountain of honey!"
"With rainbows in it," said Hal-Al soberly.
"With rainbows in it," agreed Bailee. "We left our machines leaning against a tree and stole ahead and peeked through some tall, feathery, sweet-smelling fern, and there—"
"Were seven of them," said Hal-Al.
"Just seven," nodded Bailee.
"Seven what?"
"Girls!" replied Bailee. "Seven girls a-splashing in the water and laughing."
"Handsome?" questioned Davidson.
Bailee shaded his eyes with his hand and looked off as if he saw visions. "I'm content to live here, and fight here, and die here!"
"There are better and stronger words for the same idea," said Hal-Al. "But let these pass for my sentiments."
"Seven of them," continued Bailee. "And we couldn't have stood there seven minutes—only a minute to a girl, corporal, when a life-time wouldn't have been long enough for the first good look at one of them!—when up glides a big pink ball as big as a house, and this dirty fish," he nodded towards the captive.
"This filthy hog!" snarled Hal-Al.
"This rotten mackerel," continued Bailee, "came from the pink ball and ordered the girls inside."
Hal-Al groaned. "And they went!"
"They went," resumed Bailee, "like honey back into the comb, like butterflies back into the chrysalis! Then he shut the port door on them and the big pink sphere glided away, and he got into a big gray marble that came along with the pink marble—the one you blew into the river—and followed the pink marble."
"And you followed them both," laughed Davidson.
"So we did, corporal," replied Bailee. "We left our machines and hiked after the spheres on foot a little ways, forgetting everything but the girls and planning to rescue them."
"But did they need rescuing?"
"Pretty girls always need rescuing," grinned Bailee. "Then this deficiency fish here must have seen us following, for he whipped the big gray marble about and blinded and paralyzed us with a black ray, and, while we were helpless, stripped and took us into his marble. Here he put us inside a cage with ropes for bars, and then turned some kind of juice into the ropes that made them white hot, so that we couldn't crawl out."
He displayed his right hand with a nasty burn across the palm, evidently caused by grasping a very hot wire. "Twice the juice went off the ropes and we made a break and got out. The first time he got us back by paralyzing us with that dirty black ray; but the second time—"
"Here we are," growled Hal-Al, shaking his own burnt palm at the prisoner roped to the plane.
"And here he is, waiting for the judgment day!"
"And the three of us his judgment day," said Bailee.
After a brief silence Hal-Al inquired,
"You didn't chance to see what became of the big pink marble. We couldn't get a look out of our caboose."
"I didn't see any pink sphere," replied Davidson. "It must have left you before I arrived."
