rd it. Laboriously because at every step
some almost insuperable hurdle barred their way. A fallen grass stalk
was a problem; sometimes they had to curve back on their tracks for
sixty or eighty feet in order to get around it. A dead leaf, drifted
there from the trees near at hand, was almost a calamity, necessitating
more circuitous maneuvering.

With every yard the realization of the stark peril that was now theirs
increased.

A grasshopper, blundering to the ground within a rod of them, nearly
crushed them with its several tons of weight. A bumblebee, as big as a
flying elephant and twice as deadly, roared around them for several
minutes as though debating whether or not to attack them, and finally
roared off leaving them shaken and pale. But the most startling and
narrow of their narrow escapes occurred an instant after that.

They had paused for an instant, alert but undecided, to stare at a
coldly glaring spider that was barring their path. It was a small
spider, barely more than waist-high. But something in its malevolent
eyes made the two men hesitate about attacking it. At the same time it
was squatting in the only clear path in sight, with tangles of stalks
and leaves on either side. A journey around the ferocious brute might be
a complicated, long-drawn-out affair.

Their problem was decided for them.

* * * * *

Overhead, suddenly roared out a sound such as might have been made by a
tri-motored Fokker. There was a flash of yellow. The roar increased to
an ear-shattering scream. Something swooped so breathlessly and at the
same time so ponderously that the men were knocked flat by the hurricane
of disturbed air.

A fleeting struggle ensued between some vast yellow body and the
unfortunate spider. Then the spider, suddenly as immobile as a lump of
stone, was drawn up into the heavens by the roaring yellow thing, and
disappeared. A wasp had struck, and had obtained another meal.

"Thank God that thing had a one-track mind, and was concentrating on the
spider," said Jim, with a rather humorless laugh.

Dennis was silent. He was beginning to realize that he knew too much
about insects for his peace of mind. To Jim, insects had always
heretofore been something to brush away or step on, as the circumstance
might indicate. He had no idea, for example, of exactly what fate it was
he had just missed. But Denny knew all about it.

He knew that if the wasp had chosen either of