ns.
"Now we'll lose them; hang them right up in the air and leave them
there."

Another steep climb and a valley beyond, and in the hollow a tumbling
stream. There was no need to tell Towahg what to do, for he led straight
for the water, and his thick legs churned through it as he headed down
stream; nor did he stop until they had covered many miles.

Chet had wondered how they would leave the water without trace, but
again Towahg was ready. A stone where the water splashed would show no
mark of bare feet. From it he leaped into the air toward a swaying vine.
He missed, tried again, and finally grasped it. And the rest was a
repetition of what had been done before.

* * * * *

He lowered a vine as Chet had taught him, pulled the slim figure of Chet
up to the dizzy heights of the jungle trees, then took Chet's one arm in
a grip of chilled steel and threw him across his back, while he swung
sickeningly from limb to limb, up through the branches of another
grotesque tree where its queerly distorted limbs sagged and swung them
to its fellow some fifty feet away.

It was a wild ride for the pilot. "I've driven everything that's made
with an engine in it," he told himself, "but this one-ape-power craft
has them all stopped for thrills."

And at last when even Towahg's chest that seemed ribbed with steel, was
rising and falling with his great breaths, Chet found himself set down
on the ground, and he patted the black on the shoulder in the gesture
that meant approval.

"Water and air," he said; "it'll bother them to trail us over that
route. Towahg, you're there when it comes to trapeze work. Now, if you
can find the way back again--!"

And Towahg could, as Chet admitted when, after a series of eventless
days, they came again to the big divide above the reaches of Happy
Valley.

And the grip of Harkness' hand, and the tears in Diane's eyes brought a
choke to his throat until the voluble apologies of a penitent Herr
Kreiss and the antics of a Towahg, recipient of many approving pats,
turned the emotion into the safer channel of laughter.

"But I think we switched them off for good," Chet said, in conclusion of
his recital; "I believe we are as safe as we ever were. And I've only
one big regret:

"If I could just have been around somewhere when friend Schwartzmann
found his scouts had led him up a blind alley, it would have been worth
the trip. He did pretty well when he started cuss