ly handsome."

The smiles that he saw interchanged between the four filled the poor
Skeezer with embarrassment, so he fell silent and attended to eating
his supper, leaving the others to do the talking. The three Adepts
frankly told Reera who they were, how they became fishes and how they
had planned secretly to induce the Yookoohoo to transform them. They
admitted that they had feared, had they asked her to help, that she
would have refused them.

"You were quite right," returned the Yookoohoo. "I make it my rule
never to perform magic to assist others, for if I did there would
always be crowd at my cottage demanding help and I hate crowds and want
to be left alone."

"However, now that you are restored to your proper shapes, I do not
regret my action and I hope you will be of use in saving the Skeezer
people by raising their island to the surface of the lake, where it
really belongs. But you must promise me that after you go away you will
never come here again, nor tell anyone what I have done for you."

The three Adepts and Ervic thanked the Yookoohoo warmly. They promised
to remember her wish that they should not come to her cottage again and
so, with a good-bye, took their departure.

Chapter Twenty

A Puzzling Problem

Glinda the Good, having decided to try her sorcery upon the abandoned
submarine, so that it would obey her commands, asked all of her party,
including the Skeezers, to withdraw from the shore of the take to the
line of palm trees. She kept with her only the little Wizard of Oz, who
was her pupil and knew how to assist her in her magic rites. When they
two were alone beside the stranded boat, Glinda said to the Wizard:

"I shall first try my magic recipe No. 1163, which is intended to make
inanimate objects move at my command. Have you a skeropythrope with
you?"

"Yes, I always carry one in my bag," replied the Wizard. He opened his
black bag of magic tools and took out a brightly polished
skeropythrope, which he handed to the Sorceress. Glinda had also
brought a small wicker bag, containing various requirements of sorcery,
and from this she took a parcel of powder and a vial of liquid. She
poured the liquid into the skeropythrope and added the powder. At once
the skeropythrope began to sputter and emit sparks of a violet color,
which spread in all directions. The Sorceress instantly stepped into
the middle of the boat and held the instrument so that the sparks fell
all around her