“How else could I get down? I had no wings! I was afraid to get off till some one came, but the jerk has given the lung a scrape; I shall be glad to lie down, for the trees are spinning, and you are all upside——” and notwithstanding his bravery he had fainted. They strapped him up tightly till his breathing became easier, and then restored him. “How do you feel now, old fellow?” inquired Rutherford. “As fit as a fiddle,” was the answer; “but it did hurt to lie across the boughs! I’d buttoned my things up as tight as I could, but it wasn’t like this.” “Then not another word!” said Godfrey. “Dalton and Field will stay by you for company, but if you talk, they’ll gag you straight away. Rutherford and I will search through the wood, although what we shall do if we meet the herd, I don’t know! If danger comes, telepath to us, and we’ll come back at once.” “Right!” replied Dalton. “We’ll telepath to the ship, any way, and rig up a stretcher. Come back as soon as you can.” “I’m right enough!” expostulated Ingle, “I don’t want a stretcher.” “If he says another word, you two gag him!” ejaculated Godfrey, bluntly, and he and Rutherford left, whilst Dalton and Field placed Ingle in the undergrowth off the main avenue, lest the herd should return, and prepared to make a stretcher. “We can’t telepath,” said Ingle, faintly. “I tried all the time I was in the tree. Now I’ll not say any more.” “You’d better not, with a chest like that,” warned Field, “we’ll try.” The two remained in close concentration of thought for a few minutes, but it was as though an extinguisher was on their mind, and no reply came. “That’s strange!” exclaimed Dalton. “I never knew a failure before!” “Marvellous!” agreed Field. “We’ve ‘waved’ from the sun to Earth, and the others have ‘waved’ from Jupiter to Earth, and we can telepath all over our world and yet here we can’t send a message half a mile.” “It may be that we have no power outside the solar system,” suggested Dalton. “I never thought of that,” said Field. “We must look into it.” While they were discussing this discovery, their two companions passed through the small forest for about two miles, when they came to water, which they found as buoyant as that first seen. Finding no other way out of the forest, except the avenue, they retraced their steps, and each taking a corner of the stretcher which had been improvised by taking two long boughs, plaiting the intervening branches together and filling it with leaves, they brought their burden to the edge of the forest where they had first alighted, and rested there to wait for the ship, which was out of sight.