ed to towering forest giants. The underbrush
rose up over our heads. We had taken a taste of the diminishing drug.
Glora showed us how to touch it to our tongue several times, to adjust
our size as we became smaller. It took us no more than a minute to
diminish. We could hear the roar of the crowd, and Polter's voice
shouting. We ran forward through the great forest. It was a fair
distance out to the starlit road. We saw it as a wide shining esplanade.
The people now were giants twice our height! Polter, himself towering
with a seeming fifty-foot stature, was standing by the gigantic canopy
of the dock. He had dispersed the crowd. There was an open space on the
esplanade--a run for us of about a hundred feet.

"We've got to chance it," I murmured. "Make a run for it--now."

We darted across. In the confusion, with all eyes centered on Polter, we
escaped discovery. It was dim under the dock canopy. Polter had backed
from the road and was walking to the barge. It lay like the length of an
ocean liner, its sail looming an enormous spread above it. The gunwale
was level with the dock. A dozen or more fifty-foot men were greeting
Polter. They were amidships.

I realize now that in those moments as we scurried aboard like wharf
rats, we took wild chances. We made for the stern which momentarily was
unoccupied. To Polter and his men we were eight or nine inches tall. We
dropped over the gunwale, slid down the thirty or forty-foot incline of
the interior and landed on the bottom of the boat.

There were many places where we could safely hide. A litter of gigantic
rope-strands was around us. We could see the bottom of a crossbench
looming over head, and the great curving sides of the vessel with the
gunwales outlined against the starlight.

The boat left the dock in a moment; the sail bellied out, enormous over
us. Ten feet forward from us the towering figure of a man sat on a bench
with the steering mechanism before him. Further on, the other men were
dispersed, with one or two in the distant bow. Polter reclined on a
cushioned couch amidships. Looking along the dark widely level bottom
of the boat there were only the feet and legs of men visible.

Alan whispered, "Let's get closer."

We were insects soundlessly scuttling unnoticed in the dimness. It was
noisy down here--the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and
surge of the water against the hull; the voices of the men.

We passed the boots of the seated helms