se homeward journey he must
head off some way.

"We must go back, Anina--back where we came from--at once. Tell them--now!
Then I'll tell you why."

The girl's eyes widened, but she did as he directed, and the platform,
making a broad, sweeping turn, headed back toward the Twilight Country
shore.

"Anina, how far is it to Tao's city from where we landed?"

"The Lone City? A day, going fast."

"But they won't go fast, will they? Some of them are pretty badly hurt."

"Two days for them," the girl agreed.

Mercer then told her what an error we had made. She listened quietly, but
he knew she understood, not only his words, but the whole situation as he
viewed it then.

"Most bad," she said solemnly when he paused.

"That's what I want to tell you; it's bad," he declared. "We've got to
head them off some way; stop them somehow. I don't see how we're going to
capture them again--ten of them against me. But we've got to do
something."

Then he asked her about the lay of the country between the shore of the
sea and the Lone City.

Anina's English was put to severe test by her explanation; but she knew
far many more words than she had ever used, and now, with the interest of
what she had to say, she lost much of the diffidence which before had
restrained her.

She told him that the trail led back through the forest for some distance,
and then ran parallel with a swift flowing river. This river, she
explained, emptied into the Narrow Sea a few miles below the end of the
trail. It was the direct water route to the Lone City.

The trail, striking the river bank, followed it up into a mountainous
country--a metallic waste where few trees grew. There was a place still
farther up in a very wild, broken country, where the river ran through a
deep, narrow gorge, and the trail followed a narrow ledge part way up one
of its precipitous sides.

Anina's eyes sparkled with eagerness as she told of it.

"There, my friend Ollie, we stop them. Many loose stones there are, and
the path is very narrow."

Mercer saw her plan at once. They could bar the men's passage somewhere
along this rocky trail, and with stones drive them back. He realized with
satisfaction that he could throw a stone fully twice as large and twice as
far as any of the men, and thus, out of range, bombard them until they
would be glad enough to turn back.

His plan, then, was to land, and with Anina follow the men. The rest of
the girls he would send bac