s under the wheels. He vaulted up into place. And slowly
and clumsily the trim little ship came lurching and rolling out of the
shed.

* * * * *

The landing field was not large, but Bell took the plane to its edge.
He faced it about, and bent below the cockpit combing to avoid the
slip stream and look at his maps again, brought from the big
amphibian. Something caught his eye. Another radio receiving set.

"Amphibian planes," he muttered, "for landing on earth or water. And
radios. I wonder if he has directional for a guide? It would seem
sensible, and if a plane went down the rest of them would know about
where to look."

Paula reached about and touched his shoulder. She pointed. There was a
movement at the edge of the jungle and a puff of smoke. A bullet went
through the fusilage of the plane, inches behind Bell. He frowned,
grasped the stick, and gave the motor the gun.

It lifted heavily, like all amphibians, but it soared over the group
of buildings some twenty or thirty feet above the top of the wireless
mast and went on, rising steadily, to clear even the topmost trees on
the farther side of the stream by a hundred feet or more.

It went on and on, roaring upward, and the jungle receded ever farther
below it. The horizon drew back and back. At two thousand feet the
earth began to have the appearance of a shallow platter. At three
thousand it was a steep sided bowl, and Bell could look down and trace
the meandering of the stream on which he had landed the night before.
Not too far downstream--some fifteen miles, perhaps--were the squalid,
toy sized structures of a town of the far interior of Brazil. He never
learned its name, but even in his preoccupation with the management
of the plane and a search for landmarks, he wondered very grimly
indeed what would be the state of things in that town. If in Rio,
where civilization held sway, Ribiera exercised such despotic though
secret power, in a squalid and forgotten little village like this the
rule of a sub-deputy of The Master could be bestial and horrible
beyond belief.

* * * * *

Eastward. Bell had overshot the mark the night before. Before he had
located himself he was quite fifty miles beyond the spot Paula had
suggested as a hiding place. Now he retraced his way. A peak jutting
up from far beyond the horizon was a guiding mark. He set the plane's
nose for it, and relaxed.

The motor thun