d the immense vault
overhead and sounded almost familiarly in his ears--

"Give it him the moment he wakes."

"Bring the ice-bag ... quick!"

"Put the hot bottle to his feet IMMEDIATELY!"

The voices shrieked all round him, turning suddenly into soft whispers
that died away somewhere among his feathers. The soles of his feet began
to glow, and he felt a gigantic hand laid upon his throat and head.
Almost it seemed as if he were lying somewhere on his back, and people
were bending over him, shouting and whispering.

"Why hangs the moon so red?" cried a voice that was instantly drowned in
a chorus of unintelligible whispering.

"The black cow must be killed," whispered some one deep within the sky.

"Why drips the rain so cold?" yelled one of the hideous children close
behind him. And a third called with a distant laughter from behind a
star--

"Why sings the wind so shrill?"

"QUIET!" roared an appalling voice below, as if all the rivers of the
world had suddenly turned loose into the sky. "QUIET!"

Instantly a star, that had been hovering for some time on the edge of a
fantastic dance, dropped down close in front of his face. It had a
glaring disc, with mouth and eyes. An icy hand seemed laid on his head,
and the star rushed back into its place in the sky, leaving a trail of
red flame behind it. A little voice seemed to go with it, growing
fainter and fainter in the distance--

"We dance with phantoms and with shadows play."

But, regardless of everything, Jimbo flew onwards and upwards, terrified
and helpless though he was. His thoughts turned without ceasing to the
governess, and he felt sure that she would yet turn up in time to save
him from being caught by the Fright that pursued, or lost among the
fearful spaces that lay beyond the stars.

For a long time, however, his wings had been growing more and more
tired, and the prospect of being destroyed from sheer exhaustion now
presented itself to the boy vaguely as a possible alternative--vaguely
only, because he was no longer able to think, properly speaking, and
things came to him more by way of dull feeling than anything else.

It was all the more with something of a positive shock, therefore, that
he realised the change. For a change had come. He was now sudden by
conscious of an influx of new power--greater than anything he had ever
known before in any of his flights. His wings now suddenly worked as if
by magic. Never had the motion been so easy