"What do we do--ride 'em like broomsticks?" jabbered the Scarecrow, as Jellia with shaking hands held out one of the sticks to the Wizard. "A good idea!" approved the little magician, watching with deep interest as the wings on the tip of the staff opened and spread. "Come along, Soldier, or the mob will get you yet!" With wildly beating hearts, Dorothy and Jellia watched the Wizard and the Soldier mount the flying stick and boldly leap from the cliff's edge. The Cowardly Lion let out a terrified howl as he was dragged after them, but Jellia, Dorothy and the Scarecrow, without further hesitation, mounted their own staff and hurled themselves into space, just as the Queen and her cohorts came panting into view. CHAPTER 12 The Flight to Oz Keeping the flying sticks in a more or less level position so they would not slip off, and at the same time pointing them downward, required no little skill. The Wizard, being used to magic appliances, mastered his in double quick time. But Jellia, who sat in front on the other staff soared up for seventy feet and across for fifty before she learned the trick of flying it. During the first twenty minutes of their flight, not a word was spoken. Each had enough to do to hold on, and the Cowardly Lion, hurtling through the air beside the Soldier with Green Whiskers, looked the picture of despair and discouragement. A dozen times Dorothy, after a glance downward, gave herself up for lost. But gradually the strangeness of their situation wore off. Passing out of the moist, clammy strata just below Strut's Kingdom into a dryer and less clouded area, the spirits of the little band of adventurers rose. The wings of each flying staff, though not large, were powerful as airplane propellers, and they flapped as rhythmically as the wings of a bird. "Not exactly like riding in an Ozoplane!" called the Wizard, waving cheerfully to Jellia! "Still--it's better than falling, eh?" Jellia, who had maneuvered her staff to a position close to his, nodded emphatically. "What worries me, is--the--altitude!" she called back presently. "Somewhere or other we lost our air helmets. Will the effects of those altitude pills wear off before we're out of the strat?" "No, we'll be all right," promised the Wizard. "My altitude pills condition one for the upper areas for several days at a time!" "Oh! Then everything's splendid!" sighed Jellia, pushing back her curly locks and smiling at Dorothy. "Unless we meet a meteor, and then our flight will soon be o'er," quavered the Scarecrow, waving his arm in a doleful circle.