Instantly there was a blinding glare, a stunning detonation, and a
violent air-wave which threw me clear off my feet and to the ground. I
sat up blindly with my vision full of opalescent lights and my ears
ringing, unable to hear, see, or think.

* * * * *

Slowly my senses came back; I saw Alice struggling upright in the
grass before me. She cast a quick glance toward the tree, then, still
on her knees, covered her face and shuddered. For a long time, it
seemed, I gazed toward the tree without sight conveying any mental
effect whatever. Quite aside from my dazed state, the thing was too
bizarre; it gave no foothold to experience for the erection of
understanding.

My brother's body lay, or hung, or rested--what term could describe
it?--with his stomach across the _under_ side of a large limb a few
feet above where he had stood. He was doubled up like a hairpin, his
abdomen pressed tightly up against this bough, and his arms, legs and
head extended stiffly, straightly, skyward.

Getting my scattered faculties and discoordinate limbs together, I
made my way to the tree, the gruesome thought entering my mind that
Tristan's body had been transfixed by some downward-pointing snag as
it was blown up against the limb, and that the strange stiffness of
his limbs was due to some ghastly sudden rigor mortis brought on by
electric shock. Dazed with horror and grief, I reached up to his
clothing and pulled gently, braced for the shock of the falling body.
It remained immovable against the bough. A harder tug brought no
results either. Gathering up all my courage against the vision of the
supposed snag tearing its rough length out of the poor flesh, I leaped
up, grasping the body about chest and hips, and hung. It came loose at
once, without any tearing resistance such as I had expected, but
manifesting a strong elastic pull upward, as though some one were
pulling it with a rope; as I dropped back to the ground with it, the
upward resistance remained unchanged. Nearly disorganized entirely by
this phenomenon, it occurred to me that his belt or some of his
clothing was still caught, and I jerked sidewise to pull it loose. It
did not loosen, but I found myself suddenly out from under the tree,
my brother dragging upward from my arms until my toes almost left the
ground. And there was obviously no connection between him and the
tree--or between him and anything else but myself, for that matter. At