with
his feet torn and bleeding, he threw himself to the ground, utterly
exhausted.

After a time, with returning strength, the Very Young Man began to think
more calmly. He was lost--lost in size--the one thing that the Doctor,
when they started down into the ring, had warned them against so
earnestly. What a fool he had been to run! He was miles away from them
now. He could not make himself large; and were they to get
smaller--small enough to see him, they might wander in this barren
wilderness for days and never chance to come upon him.

The Very Young Man cursed himself for a fool. Why hadn't he kept some of
the enlarging drug with him? And then abruptly, he realized something
additionally terrifying. The dose of the diminishing drug which he had
just taken so thoughtlessly, was the last that remained in that vial. He
was utterly helpless. Thousands of miles of rocky country surrounded
him--a wilderness devoid of vegetation, of water, and of life.

Lying prone upon the ground, which at last had stopped expanding, the
Very Young Man gave himself up to terrified reflection. So this was the
end--all the dangers they had passed through--their conquests--and the
journey out of the ring so near to a safe ending.... And then this!

For a time the Very Young Man abandoned hope. There was nothing to do,
of course. They could never find him--probably, with women and a child
among them they would not dare even to try. They would go safely back to
their own world--but he--Jack Bruce--would remain in the ring. He
laughed with bitter cynicism at the thought. Even the habitable world of
the ring itself, was denied him. Like a lost soul, poised between two
worlds, he was abandoned, waiting helpless, until hunger and thirst
would put an end to his sufferings.

Then the Very Young Man thought of Aura; and with the thought came a new
determination not to give up hope. He stood up and looked about him,
steeling himself against the flood of despair that again was almost
overwhelming. He must return as nearly as possible to the point where he
had parted from his friends. It was the only chance he had remaining--to
be close enough so if one, or all of them, had become small, they would
be able to see him.

There was little to choose of direction in the desolate waste around,
but dimly the Very Young Man recalled having a low line of hills behind
him when he was running. He faced that way now. He had come perhaps six
or seven miles