red forest rang with their young voices.

* * * * *

Prissy had fallen into a doze, and Janet lay close to her for warmth.
But Clara and Pip-Emma talked softly to each other.

"We gotter do something," Pip-Emma said.

"I bet I could find the way," Clara whispered back, "if you'll come
with me."

"Sure. You bet," Pip-Emma said.

They stood up cautiously. The Penguins roused themselves from their
half-frozen torpor to look at them. Clara made an authoritative
gesture, silencing them. After all, she was still top Penguin.

"We're going for help," she whispered.

The two slipped out of the clearing. They held hands. They knew that
if they let go of each other they would be lost. They had only two
ideas--to keep together and to keep going down, hoping that at the
bottom they'd strike some familiar landmark. It wasn't much of a hope.
They were like blind children, picking their way. Things hit them in
the face and clutched at them. And when they stopped, breathless and
shivering, they heard soft dreadful sounds. Their clothes were torn.
Their hands and faces, though they did not know it, were scratched and
bleeding.

"You awfully scared, Clara?" Pip-Emma asked.

"Not awfully--not with you, Pip."

Hell's Kitchen and Park Avenue pushed on together.

And at daybreak the forest ranger opened the door of his cabin to
them. He and his wife had been up two nights with a sick child, and he
was half-asleep and not at all sure that he wasn't seeing things.

"We're Happy Warriors," Pip-Emma said, "and we're all lost."

It wasn't anyone's fault that the forest ranger's child had the
measles and that the Penguins who had never had the chance to catch
anything went down with it like ninepins. The Penguin Circle was
quarantined, and at night Pip-Emma sat alone by the campfire. The
doctor had said: "She'll be all right. She's been exposed probably to
every germ known to man. She's a survival of the fittest." So Pip-Emma
was allowed to help nurse the Penguins and sit on their beds when they
were convalescing and tell them hair-raising stories of Hell's
Kitchen. She made up some of them. And the adventures of the
mounted-cop uncle grew gorier and gorier. The Penguins seemed to like
them gory.

Little Janet was sicker than any of them. But when Pip-Emma held her
small feverish hand, she'd fall contentedly asleep.

Except for Janet's feeling so bad it was kind of fun. At night
Pip-Emma and one of the Pelicans lighted the Pen