The whole weird region was very still. The only sounds were the soft sighing of the wind in the trees, and the thrashing and rustling of our feet in the rank grass. The tiny scarlet flowers danced before the wind almost like little insects, and a few brilliant petals blew sometimes from one of the sparsely scattered trees. "Phew!" Sam whistled, stopping to mop his brow with the huge red bandanna he had tied around his neck. "This is beginning to feel like the Sahara! I'm glad I didn't happen to be a native of the place! You bet the machine will look good, when we find it!" "If we find it," I could not refrain from saying. In five minutes more we were far up the side of the little hill. The side of the eminence was bare of the great flowering trees, so the strange forest lay about us southward for many miles. Eagerly we looked in the direction that should have been southwest, for the Omnimobile. A vast stretch of the rolling plateau lay before our eyes, low verdant hills, and vast green meadows, scattered with the brilliant purple trees, singly and in groves. Far away, all across the southern horizon, stretched the black sea on which we had landed, glancing with the crimson light of the sky. But nowhere, in all that vast strange expanse, did we catch a glimpse of the machine. "It must be just in a low place," Sam said hopefully. "Or, I think I remember now that there was a little grove just north of it. We will see it in a minute, if we climb higher up." "I hope so," I said, raising my binoculars for a better look. "And we have compasses and instruments to guide ourselves around the world, if we'd just thought to bring them!" "It's no use!" I said. "Let's go on to the top." CHAPTER XIX The Hill of Horror We climbed up the last few yards to the summit, and gazed across toward the dim blue cliffs that rimmed this world on the north. We stood on a great divide. A vast valley lay before us, stretching away until it was veiled with a faint rosy haze. The curious checkered expanse of green plain and purple woodland sloped far, far away to the north. Perhaps twenty miles away was the vague outline of a great silver lake, dyed with the light of the crimson sky. Just back of the lake seemed to be a shore of low black cliffs. And beyond those ragged peaks, and beneath the towering and rugged columns of blue that threw themselves up to the bloody sky, was a strange sight indeed! There was a weird flicker of dancing lights in that far-flung crimson mist, as if it reflected strange infernal fires in a pit behind the low black wall. There were faint and moving gleams of violet--of pale violet flames that changed and rose and fell. Vague tongues of violet fire wove themselves throughout that distant rose-colored mist, with a writhing, rhythmic motion. They formed curious shapes of flame, that faded strangely and came again!