Hank? I saw reports of such ships in the papers, no one got close enough
to see _that_ much. Newspapers called them illusions!"

"They're not our kind of men; they are something very different. I don't
know just how to tell you, besides I couldn't be sure. But they seem to
be a people--" He stopped. "I'd rather you'd see it yourself. You
wouldn't believe me."

Noldi came out of the tent where Barto was still snoring. He came over
and squatted across the fire, eyeing me strangely.

"What happened to the big jerk, Carl?" he asked, a little tremor of
anger in his voice.

"I've got to tell you fellows we're in trouble," I began. I did not
believe that the girl's people would ignore Jake's attack upon her.

Hank looked at the slender man from New York's East Side. "What's the
matter with Barto?"

"S'got a bruise on his jaw the size of a goose-egg. Like a mule kicked
him. Scratched up quite a bit. I just wondered. He's unconscious, too; I
couldn't wake him up."

"We may be in for it," I went on. "When I got back to camp, Hank had a
girl. He'd thrown her down, was struggling with her. I had to put him
asleep to stop it. Didn't want trouble with her people."

Noldi glanced at the torn place in the soft sod where the scuffle had
taken place. I had unconsciously nodded toward it. He got up, walked
over, picked something out of the grass.

"Some girl, wearing this kind of stuff!"

He handed the glittering bauble to Polter. It was a necklace of
emeralds, with a pendant of gold in which was set a big blue stone that
I couldn't recognize, maybe a diamond, maybe something else. It looked
almighty valuable, each stone was as big as a man's thumbnail. It had
snapped, lain there unnoticed by either of us.

Noldi looked at me a little venomously.

"Looks as if you were a little premature, letting her go. We should have
found out where she gets this kind of sparkle first!"

"Seemed the safest thing to do. We are only four, how could we handle
her friends?"

"Bah, they wouldn't have known where she was. We could have kept her
till we were good and ready to let her go."

I stood up, took out my pipe and filled it.

"What about this ship you saw, and the people around it. That's
important, not this girl and her jewelry."

"We couldn't see much except that it was a ship and that it landed in
the trees where it couldn't be seen from the sky. It's pretty big, and
there are men moving around it. That's all."

"That's plen