“Yet my dummy body high aloft looked so natural from the ground, that I was sure that the enemy would try to ascend, and would finally resort to chopping, or even gnawing it down, in order to capture me. They had landed to the north of my position, for the evident purpose of cutting off any further advance on my part, so I set out as nearly due west as I could, lining up one tree after another to keep from traveling in a circle, until finally I came to the main highway which runs north from Kuana.” “But what good did it do you?” interrupted Cabot. “You were stark naked, weren’t you?” “Naked as the day I was born,” Toron replied. “A dainty situation for a prince of the royal house to be in! But I had scarcely reached the road when night fell. The dense Porovian darkness would serve as my toga for the present, and also would enable me to avoid any approaching kerkools by virtue of the warning radiance cast by their headlights, even before those lights themselves became visible. You see, Cabot, I cannot hear a kerkool, as I could an airplane, for kerkools have trophil engines, which do not radiate, and I do not possess those funny cups on the side of my head, with which you exercise that uncanny earth-sense that enables you to hear things which make no sound. So it is only at night that I could be safe from approaching cars. “Of course, travel by night was most difficult. I fell off the road many times and bruised myself considerably. Yet there was nothing for me to do but press on to the northward.” Cabot smiled reminiscently at the word. “And so,” the young prince continued, “I kept on. I remember figuring out, during one period of rest after a particularly severe fall from the road, that it would take me at least ninety days to reach Lake Luno at the rate at which I was going. But still I pressed on, for there was no alternative. “Just before daybreak I reached a town, and started to skirt around its edges; but I became terribly involved in some outlying lanes and alleys. Soon I found myself hemmed-in in a narrow street. By groping my way from one side to the other, I discovered that there were high fences on each side, therefore I continued on down this alley. It twisted and turned so that I kept bumping against the fences, and finally had no very clear idea of direction. And then, to add to my discomfiture, a dull glow gradually diffused the air behind me, thus showing that a kerkool was slowly picking its way down the same street. Naturally I started to run, and equally naturally I hadn’t gone far when I collided head-on with a fence. The shock hurled me to the ground, and supplied me with plenty of light for a few moments, only it was light which didn’t do me much of any good. “But just as the kerkool rounded the turn behind me, I groped my way to my feet, and luckily in so doing I found a door in the fence against which I had just run. It was unlocked. In another instant I was through, with the door carefully shut.