this I went weak; my arms relaxed despite my will, and an incredible
fact happened: I found the body sliding skyward through my futile
grasp. Desperately I got my hands clasped together about his wrist,
this last grip almost lifting me from the earth; his legs and
remaining arm streamed fantastically skyward. Through the haze which
seemed to be finally drowning my amazed and tortured soul, I knew that
my fingers were slipping through one another, and that in another
instant my brother would be gone. Gone--where? Why and how?

* * * * *

There was a sudden shriek, and the impact of a frantic body against
mine, as Alice, whom I had quite forgotten, made a skyward running
jump and clasped the arm frantically to her bosom with both her own.
With vast relief, I loosed my cramped fingers--only to feel her silken
garments begin to slide skyward against my cheek. It was more instinct
than sense which made me clutch at her legs. God, had I not done that!
As it was, I held both forms anchored with only a slight pull, waiting
dumbly for the next move--quite _non compos_ by this time, I think.

"Quick, Jim!" she shrieked. "Quick, under the tree! I can't hold him
long!"

Very glad indeed to be told what to do, I obeyed. Under her direction
we got the body under a low limb and wedged up against it, where with
our feet both now on the ground, we balanced it with little effort.
Feverishly, once more at her initiative, we took off our belts and
strapped it firmly; whereupon we collapsed in one another's arms,
shuddering, beneath it.

The blase reader may consider that we here manifested the characters
of sensitive weaklings. But let him undergo the like! The
supernatural, or seemingly so, has always had power to chill the
hottest blood. And here was an invisible horror reaching out of the
sky for its prey, without any of the ameliorating trite features which
would temper an encounter with the alleged phenomena of ghostland.

For a time we sat under that fatal tree listening to the dreary drench
of rain pouring off the leaves, quivering nerve-shaken to the
thunderclaps. Lacking one another, we had gone mad; it was the
beginning of a mutual dependence in the face of the unprecedented,
which was to grow to something greater during the bizarre days to
follow.

There was no need of words for each of us to know that the other was
struggling frantically for a little rational light on the _outre_
catastro