raft? Slowly the outline took to itself the form of a boat.

"Have you a pair of glasses here?" asked Swift, all of a quiver.

The professor shoved one of Steward's field-glasses in his hand.

"There's a body in that boat!" cried Swift, after a prolonged
examination. "No--Great God! It's alive! It moves! It's a _woman_!"

The professor took a long look.

"I guess you're right. She's a female!"

"But she must be saved," insisted Swift. "We must save her."

"Yes, Professor Ariel," said Mr. Statis Ticks, sententiously and with
trembling dignity; "being a woman, she demands our attention, and,
besides, as a survivor she can give us the information and suggest the
figures we need."

"I'll do my best, gentlemen," said the professor, shaking, his head,
"but it's mighty ticklish business. Supposing we drift into the deadly
air. I don't know what that vapor means, but it evidently means the
'Sweet By and By.' Even the _High Tariff_ wouldn't save us then!"

"Look here, professor," jerked out Swift, peremptorily, "it's got to be
done. Now dry up!"

"All right, it's a go. I can stand it if you can."

So the valve was opened cautiously, and the balloon with majestic
slowness, obedient to its master's hand, descended toward the Great
Gopher lake, and hovered over the cockle-shell upon its malignant
bosom.

As the _High Tariff_ approached the little boat, Mr. Ticks looked at it
eagerly.

"She's alive and unmarried," said the oracle, slowly.

"Why unmarried?" asked Swift, with a vague flutter of the heart. He had
watched the figure of the woman attentively with the spyglass. It was
rounded and supple. Masses of dark-brown hair hid her shoulders and
face.

"Because," answered Mr. Ticks, "she is under eighteen. The statistics of
this section of the West show that no female over eighteen years of age
remains single."

The balloon had now descended to within three hundred feet of the boat.
The girl in it did not stir. She lay with her head propped in the bow,
so stiffly and so still that to all appearance she was a dead woman. But
the three men agreed they had seen her move. Had her rescuers arrived
too late?

"Let down the ladder!" cried Swift. "I'll go down and pick her up!"
Ignorant how hard it is even for an experienced hand to climb up and
down a rope ladder swinging in space, he clambered over the side of the
car.

"Hold, young fellow!" Professor Ariel spoke sharply. By this time they
were within two hundred