Xenora still seemed rather weak and tired from her terrible ordeal. After we had eaten, Sam and I conducted her over the ship, with a view to convincing her of the wonderful power of the machine and thus to quiet her fear of that mysterious menace. We started the engines and moved the machine a little. I fired the gun for her edification, to show how the monster had been killed, and Sam showed her how to blow the siren, and even let her pull the cord. Then we took her back to a stateroom, and turned it over to her. As she went into the room, Sam proposed that he and I go hunting. His real object, I think, was to get some fresh meat for the little winged plant, but we wished to learn as much as possible of the fauna and flora about us. I was not eager to leave the machine, but we were armed with the best of weapons, and there seemed to be little danger. Then, we intended to be gone only a few minutes. When we were ready to start I tapped on Xenora's door, to tell her that we were leaving, but she made no answer. I suppose that she was already asleep. We climbed up on deck, and closed the hatch behind us. CHAPTER XVIII Lost in the Purple Forest We walked off east through the level green meadows, beneath the scattered trees that were bright with purple blooms. For my own part, I was much more interested in the vegetation than in any game we might come upon. In fact, I would not have been greatly disappointed if our hunt had been in vain. The leaves of what I have called grass were really so wide and thick that it was hardly grass at all. The higher stems of it bore myriads of tiny, bright-red flowers. The great trees were, in shape and foliage, somewhat like the oak, though the rich profusion of the purple flowers almost concealed the leaves. They bore small fruits, in appearance a little like the date, which, as we were later to learn, were edible. But, in all the time I was in that strange world, I found no single plant that was exactly like any I had known above. Indeed that was a strange hunt, under a flaming scarlet sky, nine miles beneath the ocean, through forests of the purple trees that burdened the air with their unfamiliar fragrance, in search of we knew not what in the way of game. We tramped steadily eastward over the green meadows for perhaps half an hour, rewarded with the sight of no living thing. The Omnimobile had long been out of sight. We crossed a low greasy ridge and made our way out across another broad smooth valley. At last, as we looked from a screen of brush at the edge of a little meadow, we saw an odd-looking creature gazing unalarmed a hundred yards away. It was somewhat larger than a hog, with gray, hairless skin and long white tusks or horns. It had an oddly heavy, barrel-like body.