o him, shuddering with awe.

"Courage!" cried Grom, lifting his head and dashing his great hand
across his eyes. "We _must_ get through. We _must_ find air."

Shaking off the deadly sloth, they ran on again at full speed, peering
through the stems in every direction. The effort made their brains
throb fiercely. And still there was nothing before them and about them
but the endless succession of slender gray stems and the downpour of
that sinister rosy light. At last A-ya's steps began to lag, as if she
were growing sleepy.

"Wake up!" shouted Grom, and dragged so fiercely at her arm that she
cried out. But the pain aroused her to a new effort. She sprang
forward, sobbing. The next moment, she was jerked violently to the
left. "This way!" panted Grom, the sweat pouring down his livid face;
and there, through the stems to the left, her dazed eyes perceived
that the hated rosy glow was paling into the whiteness of the natural
day.

It was a big white rock, an island thrust up through the sea of
treacherous bloom. With fumbling, nerveless fingers they scaled its
bare sides, flung themselves down among the scant but wholesome
herbage, which clothed its top, and filled their lungs with the clean,
reviving air. Dimly they heard a blessed buzzing of insects, and
several great flies, with barred wings, lit upon them and bit them
sharply. They lay with closed eyes, while slowly the throbbing in
their brains died away and strength flowed back into their unstrung
limbs.

Then, after perhaps an hour, Grom sat up and looked about him. On
every side outspread the fatal flood of the rose-red oleanders,
unbroken except toward the north-west. In that quarter, however, a
spur of the giant forest, of growths too mighty to feel the spell of
the envenomed blooms, was thrust deep into the crimson tide. Its tip
came to within a couple of hundred yards of the rock. Having fully
recovered, Grom and A-ya swung down, with loathing, into the pink
gloom, fled through it almost without drawing breath, and found
themselves once more in the rank green shadows of the jungle. They
went on till they came to a thicket of plantains. Then, loading
themselves with ripe fruit, they climbed high into a tree, and wove
themselves a safe resting-place among the branches.

For the next few days their journey was without adventure, save for
the frequent eluding of the monsters of that teeming world. Grom had
his club, A-ya her broken spear; but they were avo