left Xea," growled Hal-Al. "And then she took a piece out of your wrist with her teeth. I'm getting soured on the situation and I'll smash it shortly, if there isn't a change. This is all pursuit and no attainment. Never were more beautiful girls but never were they more unattainable!
He was in a rebellious mood and attempted to fight Bailee amidst the branches. Both were in danger of falling into the strange flood of geometrically solidified air below them, which might have proved their grave. The little corporal now began to crack such a lash of vituperation about their ears that they ceased their fight to listen, and being but great children at heart they quickly forgot their differences, and when he ceased they begged him to continue to curse them.
There was still sufficient heat in Davidson to carry some distance further along the same line of endeavor and he continued to flay them with the cat-o'-nine-tails in his mouth.
"Oh man!" sighed Bailee, after he had ceased. "What great gifts some little men are given! A little corporal no higher than bub, but he can curse like Beelzebub! And here I am, a real man, six feet high, leading a little one-foot curse around by the hand and bragging about my wonderful child of vituperation. I must get my curse a pair of stilts."
"We had best be planning some way out of our difficulty," warned Davidson. "As soon as this flood subsides and it is found we are not quashed, we may be attacked in another manner, and one even more dangerous."
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(Illustration by Paul)
There came a soft far-flung swish as of muffled fire behind them. . . they plunged under cover of the shallow water.
He suggested that they attempt to advance from tree to tree, until they should reach the end of the flood, or come over a place where it seemed less dangerous to descend. Their progress proved slow, as the trees were not close together, and they found that all but the heavier branches were too brittle to sustain their weight. Suddenly a limb snapped and Bailee plunged into the strange flood beneath, but he came quickly to his feet and thrashed his way through the geometric crystallizations to the trunk of the tree from which he had fallen.
"The devil take it!" he spluttered. "I feel like I had swallowed a polygon."
"Swallow a cone for an antidote," advised Hal-Al. "Didn't you know that limb you jumped for wouldn't support the missing link between an uncensored odor and a smell?"
"I saw you leave it alone," retorted Bailee, clinging to the tree trunk with one hand and rubbing his stomach with the other. "I tell you, I swallowed a polygon and an isosceles triangle, and I can feel the isosceles getting in its disgusting self-determination."
He attempted to climb the trunk of the tree but sank back with a groan. Davidson quickly swung down and gave him a helping hand, and got him to a lower branch, where he had an evil time in the region of his stomach. But whether he had actually swallowed one of the smaller crystallizations, or whether he had struck his stomach on a larger one, was a question. The little corporal poured a few drops in the palm of his hand of the spirits of zac[1] from a small vial he carried, and after Bailee had swallowed this he quickly improved, and fell to cursing the flood and its perpetrators so heartily that the others knew he was a well man again.
"The dirty scientific dogs!" he raged. "Turn a flood of poisoned geometric figures on a man! If that triangle hadn't melted with the heat of my
- ↑ An oil found on the planet of Xea possessing wonderful curative properties.
