nger.

I know he could not have been hungry; we had found plenty to eat and
had not been sparing in helping ourselves. But they seemed somewhat
impressed; and after a murmured consultation they produced from their
pockets certain little packages, and with the utmost ease and accuracy
tossed them into our hands.

Jeff was most appreciative of this; and Terry made extravagant gestures
of admiration, which seemed to set them off, boy-fashion, to show their
skill. While we ate the excellent biscuits they had thrown us, and while
Ellador kept a watchful eye on our movements, Celis ran off to some
distance, and set up a sort of "duck-on-a-rock" arrangement, a big
yellow nut on top of three balanced sticks; Alima, meanwhile, gathering
stones.

They urged us to throw at it, and we did, but the thing was a long way
off, and it was only after a number of failures, at which those elvish
damsels laughed delightedly, that Jeff succeeded in bringing the whole
structure to the ground. It took me still longer, and Terry, to his
intense annoyance, came third.

Then Celis set up the little tripod again, and looked back at us,
knocking it down, pointing at it, and shaking her short curls severely.
"No," she said. "Bad--wrong!" We were quite able to follow her.

Then she set it up once more, put the fat nut on top, and returned
to the others; and there those aggravating girls sat and took turns
throwing little stones at that thing, while one stayed by as a
setter-up; and they just popped that nut off, two times out of three,
without upsetting the sticks. Pleased as Punch they were, too, and we
pretended to be, but weren't.

We got very friendly over this game, but I told Terry we'd be sorry if
we didn't get off while we could, and then we begged for knives. It was
easy to show what we wanted to do, and they each proudly produced a sort
of strong clasp-knife from their pockets.

"Yes," we said eagerly, "that's it! Please--" We had learned quite a
bit of their language, you see. And we just begged for those knives, but
they would not give them to us. If we came a step too near they backed
off, standing light and eager for flight.

"It's no sort of use," I said. "Come on--let's get a sharp stone or
something--we must get this thing off."

So we hunted about and found what edged fragments we could, and hacked
away, but it was like trying to cut sailcloth with a clamshell.

Terry hacked and dug, but said to us under his breath. "Boy