a fool. Dangling in his parachute harness when Paula
needed him.

The light in the sky behind him penetrated even the jungle growth as a
faint luminosity. Presently he writhed to a position in which he could
strike a match. A thick, matted mass of climbing vines swung from the
upper branches not a yard from his fingertips. Bell cursed again,
frantically, and clutched at it wildly. Presently his absurd kickings
set him to swaying. He redoubled his efforts and increased the arc in
which he swung. But it was a long time before his fingers closed upon
leaves which came away in his grasp, and longer still before he caught
hold of a wrist-thick liana which oozed sticky sap upon his hands.

But he clung desperately, and presently got his whole weight on it. He
unsnapped the parachute and partly let himself down, partly slid, and
partly tumbled to the solid earth below.

He had barely reached it when, muffled and many times reechoed among the
tree trunks, he heard two shots. He cursed, and sprang toward the sound,
plunging headlong into underbrush that strove to tear the flesh from his
bones. He fought madly, savagely, fiercely.

* * * * *

He heard two more shots. He fought the jungle in the darkness like a
madman, ploughing insanely through masses of creepers that should have
been parted by a machete, and which would have been much more easily
slipped through by separating them, but which he strove to penetrate by
sheer strength.

And then he heard two shots again.

Bell stopped short and swore disgustedly.

"What a fool I am!" he growled. "She's telling me where she is, and
I--"

He drew one of the weapons that seemed to bulge in every pocket of his
flying suit and fired two shots in the air in reply. A single one
answered him.

From that time Bell moved more sanely. The jungle is not designed,
apparently, for men to travel in. It is assuredly not intended for them
to travel in by night, and especially it is not planned, by whoever
planned it, for a man to penetrate without either machete or lights.

As nearly as he could estimate it afterward, it took Bell over an hour
to cover one mile in the blackness under the jungle roof. Once he
blundered into fire-ants. They were somnolent in the darkness, but one
hand stung as if in white-hot metal as he went on. And thorns tore at
him. The heavy flying suit protected him somewhat, but after the first
hundred yards he blundered on almost b