ness which had little to excuse it but youth and hot blood. Much as he liked both of them and needed their society, he proposed that they should not play the barbarians except with barbarians. He abhorred a kill-sport, but this sport seemed to him all one-sided, which is not sport, but the very contrary, for the soul of sport is mutual consent.
Suddenly through his binoculars he espied the two men come from behind the bloom-laden shrubbery and dash towards the wood where the radiocycle was concealed. Each bore a slender, captive in his arms and bore her so lightly that he judged their excitement had given them unnatural strength, or else the ladies of this Forbidden City were slight as earth girls of twelve.
It is a difficult position to be placed suddenly on a footing of moral opposition against a comrade, and on such a footing Davidson was placed upon seeing Hal-Al and Bailee approaching with their all too human-like burdens. They would have fought off ten furies to have protected their burdens from danger, all but from the danger of themselves.
Davidson had decided to cross their too ardent wooing, and now descended from the tree, sliding, jumping, falling, any way to get down quickly and safely. He landed on both feet and getting from the wood raced towards his companions. He proposed to tell them that the wood was beset by enemies and they must drop their burdens and run at top speed toward a distant wood to the left, where their pursuers might not follow. He knew that it would be as useless to plead with them to return the girls as to plead with fire not to burn.
Then there befell the three men an experience that would have passed their belief had it been told of others.
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(Illustration by Paul)
The no-man shot out of the corporal's hands, like an arrow from a bow and raced with astounding speed for the sphere.
Chapter XV.
A Prison of Bubbles
As Hal-Al and Bailee hurried forward towards the wood, bearing their precious burdens, and the little corporal raced towards them, a tremendous wave of exquisitely bright bubbles, of every dimension from a boy's marble to the size of a push-ball at an athletic meet, swept down upon them, shutting out every view but that of their own amazed faces and the lovely faces of the two ladies kidnapped from the Forbidden City.
For a minute Davidson was confused, fancying that they were beset by a million varied spheres, each containing some manner of pigmy engineer, but on smashing at a bubble with his automatic butt and witnessing it burst into thin air, he grasped the situation more definitely. The Forbidden City had buried them in an avalanche of harmless bubbles, to shut off their view and surround and attack them.
The two younger men dropped to their knees and glared about in rage at the flood of bubbles overwhelming them and delaying their flight, with their lovely captives. They could breathe as well as ever and move about freely, and when the bubbles burst, as they jabbed at them with their automatics, they did not give forth any dangerous gas, but a delightful fragrance. They could but plunge on—into the hands of the enemy, or some trap. Or by great good luck into the shelter of the wood, where perhaps they could climb above the bubbles.
