olent gusts; and as they
went down, the suction of air almost swept him over the brink of the
precipice. He flung himself prone, clinging desperately to hold his
position.

The lizard threshed and squirmed. A swish of its enormous tail struck
the gully wall and brought down an avalanche of loose, golden rock. But
the giant bird held its grip; its bill--so large that the Very Young
Man's body could easily have lain within it--pecked ferociously at the
lizard's head.

It was a struggle to the death--an unequal struggle, though it raged for
many minutes with an uncanny fury. At last, dragging its adversary to
where the gully was wider, the bird flapped its wings with freedom of
movement and laboriously rose into the air.

And a moment later the Very Young Man, looking upward, saw through the
magic diminishing glass of distance, a little sparrow of his own world,
with a tiny, helpless lizard struggling in its grasp.

* * * * *

"Aura! Don't cry, Aura! Gosh, I don't want you to cry--everything's all
right now."

The Very Young Man sat awkwardly beside the frightened girl, who,
overcome by the strain of what she had been through, was crying
silently. It was strange to see Aura crying; she had always been such a
Spartan, so different from any other girl he had ever known. It confused
him.

"Don't cry, Aura," he repeated. He tried clumsily to soothe her. He
wanted to thank her for what she had done in risking her life to find
him. He wanted to tell her a thousand tender things that sprang into his
heart as he sat there beside her. But when she raised her tear-stained
face and smiled at him bravely, all he said was:

"Gosh, that was some fight, wasn't it? It was great of you to come down
after me, Aura. Are they waiting for us up there?" And then when she
nodded:

"We'd better hurry, Aura. How can we ever find them? We must have come
miles from where they are."

She smiled at him quizzically through her tears.

"You forget, Jack, how small we are. They are waiting on the little
ledge for us--and all this country--" She spread her arms toward the
vast wilderness that surrounded them--"this is all only a very small
part of that same ledge on which they are standing."

It was true; and the Very Young Man realized it at once.

Aura had both drugs with her. They took the one to increase their size,
and without mishap or moving from where they were, rejoined those on the
little ledge wh