ing, for then
we made an attempt to get through again--and couldn't."

I was hardly listening. Ventnor had certainly advanced a theory of our
unusual symptoms that had not occurred to me. That hollow might indeed
be a pocket into which a gas flowed; just as in the mines the deadly
coal damp collects in pits, flows like a stream along the passages. It
might be that--some odorless, colorless gas of unknown qualities; and
yet--

"Did you try respirators?" asked Dick.

"Surely," said Ventnor. "First off the go. But they weren't of any use.
The gas, if it is gas, seems to operate as well through the skin as
through the nose and mouth. We just couldn't make it--and that's all
there is to it. But if you made it--could we try it now, do you think?"
he asked eagerly.

I felt myself go white.

"Not--not for a little while," I stammered.

He nodded, understandingly.

"I see," he said. "Well, we'll wait a bit, then."

"But why are you staying here? Why didn't you make for the road up the
mountain? What are you watching for, anyway?" asked Drake.

"Go to it, Ruth," Ventnor grinned. "Tell 'em. After all--it was YOUR
party you know."

"Mart!" she cried, blushing.

"Well--it wasn't ME they admired," he laughed.

"Martin!" she cried again, and stamped her foot.

"Shoot," he said. "I'm busy. I've got to watch."

"Well"--Ruth's voice was uncertain--"we'd been hunting up in Kashmir.
Martin wanted to come over somewhere here. So we crossed the passes.
That was about a month ago. The fourth day out we ran across what looked
like a road running south.

"We thought we'd take it. It looked sort of old and lost--but it was
going the way we wanted to go. It took us first into a country of little
hills; then to the very base of the great range itself; finally into the
mountains--and then it ran blank."

"Bing!" interjected Ventnor, looking around for a moment. "Bing--just
like that. Slap dash against a prodigious fall of rock. We couldn't get
over it."

"So we cast about to find another road," went on Ruth. "All we could
strike were--just strikes."

"No fish on the end of 'em," said Ventnor. "God! But I'm glad to see
you, Walter Goodwin. Believe me, I am. However--go on, Ruth."

"At the end of the second week," she said, "we knew we were lost. We
were deep in the heart of the range. All around us was a forest of
enormous, snow-topped peaks. The gorges, the canyons, the valleys that
we tried led us east and west, north and