off into a million tiny particles--breaking up under the
effects of the deadly speed and the action of the new moon-forces.
Immense, invisible arms, half-silver and half-shadow, grew out of the
white disc and drew him downwards upon her surface. He was being merged
into the life of the moon.

There was a pause. For a moment his wings stopped dead. Their vain
fluttering was all but over....

Hark! Was that a voice borne on the wings of some lost wind? Why should
his heart beat so tumultuously all at once?

He turned and stared into the ocean of black air overhead till it turned
him dizzy. A violent trembling ran through his tired being from head to
foot. He had heard a voice--a voice that he knew and loved--a voice of
help and deliverance. It rang in shrill syllables up the empty spaces,
and it reached new centres of force within him that touched his last
store of courage and strength.

"Jimbo, hold on!" it cried, like a faint, thin, pricking current of
sound almost unable to reach him through the seas of distance. "I'm
coming; hold on a little longer!"

It was the governess. She was true to the end. Jimbo felt his heart
swell within him. She was mounting, mounting behind him with incredible
swiftness. The sound of his own name in these terrible regions recalled
to him some degree of concentration, and he strove hard to fight
against the drawing power that was seeking his destruction.

He struggled frantically with his wings. But between him and the
governess there was still the power of Fright to be overcome--the very
Power she had long ago invoked. It was following him still, preventing
his turning back, and driving him ever forward to his death.

Again the voice sounded in the night; and this time it was closer. He
could not quite distinguish the words. They buzzed oddly in his ears ...
other voices mingled with them ... the hideous children began to shriek
somewhere underneath him ... wings with eyes among their burning
feathers flashed past him.

His own wings folded close over his little body, drooping like dead
things. His eyes closed, and he turned on his side. A huge face that was
one-half the governess and the other half the head gardener at home,
thrust itself close against his own, and blew upon his eyelids till he
opened them. Already he was falling, sinking, tumbling headlong through
a space that offered no resistance.

"Jimbo!" shrieked a voice that instantly died away into a wail behind
him.