The pleasant nature of these reflections had kept our four rooted to the spot. In the triumphant performance of one duty they failed to remember the duty that should have followed. They stood there rejoicing in their victory, when by all the rules of the Service they should have rushed back to the armory for fresh weapons. The omission was fatal. Even as they stood there rejoicing in their cleverness and boldness and in the helpless anger of the enemy, something thin and string-like spread itself around them—their feet caught in string, their fingers caught in string, string tweaked their ears and flattened their noses—string confined their elbows and confused their legs. The Lobster-guarded doorway seemed farther off—and farther, and farther.... They turned their heads; they were following backward, and against their will, a retreating enemy. “Oh, why didn’t we do what she said?” breathed Cathay. “Something’s happened!” “I should think it had,” said Bernard. “We’re caught—in a net.” They were. And a tall Infantryman of the Under Folk was towing them away from Merland as swiftly and as easily as a running child tows a captive air balloon. CHAPTER TEN _The Under Folk_ THOSE OF US who have had the misfortune to be caught in a net in the execution of our military duty, and to be dragged away by the enemy with all the helpless buoyancy of captive balloons, will be able to appreciate the sensations of the four children to whom this gloomy catastrophe had occurred. The net was very strong—made of twisted fibrous filaments of seaweed. All efforts to break it were vain, and they had, unfortunately, nothing to cut it with. They had not even their oyster shells, the rough edges of which might have done something to help, or at least would have been useful weapons, and the discomfort of their position was extreme. They were, as Cathay put it, “all mixed up with each other’s arms and legs,” and it was very difficult and painful to sort themselves out without hurting each other. “Let’s do it, one at a time,” said Mavis, after some minutes of severe and unsuccessful struggle. “France first. Get right away, France, and see if you can’t sit down on a piece of the net that isn’t covered with _us_, and then Cathay can try.” It was excellent advice and when all four had followed it, it was found possible to sit side by side on what may be called the floor of the net, only the squeezing of the net walls tended to jerk one up from one’s place if one wasn’t very careful.