started back along the path. "The food you
eat helps your body. The food I eat helps my body _and_ my brain. If
you'd only eat more, maybe some of the nourishment would have a chance
to get up that high! I say! I didn't half realize that it was this
dark."

"Yeah," Dawson agreed as he stumbled over a root. "A good thing that
talking box of yours ran out of words, or Major Parker would have to
send out a searching party. I--Hey, Freddy! What's the matter?"

Dawson shouted the last because young Farmer, some ten or fifteen feet
ahead of him in the gloom, had suddenly buckled at the knees and had
fallen slowly to the ground. Dave leaped forward toward his prostrate
pal and had started to kneel down beside him when suddenly there was a
rustling sound in the sugar cane to his right. He turned his head and
caught a fleeting glimpse of bare feet and trousers. Then the Trinidad
sky seemed to fall on top of his head with a thunderous roar of sound,
and a great shower of red, yellow, orange and purple sparks.

"Hey! What--"

From a million miles away he heard the hoarse whisper of his own voice.
Then the hands of an invisible giant seemed to grab hold of him, lift
him high, and fling him spinning head over heels out across a world
composed of booming sound and flashing light.

CHAPTER EIGHT

_Eagles Can Take It_

A death-like stillness was everywhere. In that total absence of sound,
Dawson was aware of a throbbing, pounding pain in his head that made him
feel as though somebody were chopping it apart. Silence, darkness, and
somebody chopping his head to pieces. These three things Dawson's
sluggish brain could grasp, or at least grasp for a moment at a time.
All else, though, was just a great big blank. He didn't know where he
was, or what had happened. He scarcely remembered who he was.

Suddenly a prickly pain all over his face seemed to speed up the
functioning of his brain. That, and the dull realization that he could
barely breathe because something was clamped hard against his nose and
mouth. Realization, yes; but there was not yet enough strength in his
body to do anything about it. For that matter, he felt as if he had no
body. He was aware of nothing but the pain in his head. Maybe his body
was gone, and only his head was living on. Did such things happen? Was
it possible for--

"Dave! Dave, old man! Oh--_Dave_!"

Sound? Yes, that was the sound of a voice! But whose voice? Dave
couldn't see anything b