s flight. To run on would
be futile. The reptile would overtake him any moment; even now he knew
that with a sudden spring it could land upon him.

A cross rift at right angles in the wall came into sight--a break in the
rock as though it had been riven apart by some gigantic wedge. It was as
deep as the gully itself and just wide enough to admit the passage of
the Very Young Man's body. He darted into it; and heard behind him the
spring of the reptile as it landed at the entrance to the rift into
which its huge size barred it from advancing.

The Very Young Man stopped--panting for breath. He could just turn about
between the enclosing walls. Behind him, outside in the gully, the
lizard lay baffled. And then, seemingly without further interest, it
moved away.

The Very Young Man rested. The danger was past. He could get out of the
rift, doubtless, further ahead, without reentering the gully. And, if he
kept well away from the reptile, probably it would not bother him.

Exultation filled the Very Young Man. And then again he remembered his
situation--lost in size, helpless, without the power to rejoin his
friends. He had escaped death in one form only to confront it again in
another--worse perhaps, since it was the more lingering.

Ahead of him, the rift seemed ascending and opening up. He followed it,
and in a few hundred yards was again on the broken plateau above, level
now with the top of the gully.

The winding gully itself, the Very Young Man could see plainly. Its
nearest point to him was some six hundred feet away; and in its bottom
he knew that hideous reptile lurked. He shuddered and turned away,
instinctively walking quietly, fearing to make some noise that might
again attract its attention to him.

And then came a sound that drove the blood from his face and turned him
cold all over. From the depths of the gully, in another of its bends
nearby, the sound of an anxious girl's voice floated upward.

"Jack! Oh Jack!" And again:

"Jack--my friend Jack!"

It was Aura, his own size perhaps, in the gully searching for him!

With frantic, horrified haste, the Very Young Man ran towards the top of
the gully. He shouted warningly, as he ran.

Aura must have heard him, for her voice changed from anxiety to a glad
cry of relief. He reached the top of the gully; at its bottom--forty
feet below down its precipitous side--stood Aura, looking up, radiant,
to greet him.

"I took the drug," she cried. "I took