Herland | Page 7

dye--as well as we do."

"That would mean a considerable civilization, Van. There
couldn't be such a place--and not known about."

"Oh, well, I don't know. What's that old republic up in the
Pyrenees somewhere--Andorra? Precious few people know anything
about that, and it's been minding its own business for a thousand
years. Then there's Montenegro--splendid little state--you could
lose a dozen Montenegroes up and down these great ranges."

We discussed it hotly all the way back to camp. We discussed
it with care and privacy on the voyage home. We discussed it after that,
still only among ourselves, while Terry was making his arrangements.

He was hot about it. Lucky he had so much money--we
might have had to beg and advertise for years to start the thing,
and then it would have been a matter of public amusement--just
sport for the papers.

But T. O. Nicholson could fix up his big steam yacht, load his
specially-made big motorboat aboard, and tuck in a "dissembled"
biplane without any more notice than a snip in the society column.

We had provisions and preventives and all manner of supplies.
His previous experience stood him in good stead there. It was
a very complete little outfit.

We were to leave the yacht at the nearest safe port and go up
that endless river in our motorboat, just the three of us and a pilot;
then drop the pilot when we got to that last stopping place of the
previous party, and hunt up that clear water stream ourselves.

The motorboat we were going to leave at anchor in that wide
shallow lake. It had a special covering of fitted armor, thin but
strong, shut up like a clamshell.

"Those natives can't get into it, or hurt it, or move it," Terry
explained proudly. "We'll start our flier from the lake and leave
the boat as a base to come back to."

"If we come back," I suggested cheerfully.

"`Fraid the ladies will eat you?" he scoffed.

"We're not so sure about those ladies, you know," drawled
Jeff. "There may be a contingent of gentlemen with poisoned
arrows or something."

"You don't need to go if you don't want to," Terry remarked drily.

"Go? You'll have to get an injunction to stop me!" Both Jeff
and I were sure about that.

But we did have differences of opinion, all the long way.

An ocean voyage is an excellent time for discussion. Now we
had no eavesdroppers, we could loll and loaf in our deck chairs
and talk and talk--there was nothing else to do. Our absolute
lack of facts only made the field of discussion wider.

"We'll leave papers with our consul where the yacht stays,"
Terry planned. "If we don't come back in--say a month--they
can send a relief party after us."

"A punitive expedition," I urged. "If the ladies do eat us we
must make reprisals."

"They can locate that last stopping place easy enough, and
I've made a sort of chart of that lake and cliff and waterfall."

"Yes, but how will they get up?" asked Jeff.

"Same way we do, of course. If three valuable American
citizens are lost up there, they will follow somehow--to say
nothing of the glittering attractions of that fair land--let's call it
`Feminisia,'" he broke off.

"You're right, Terry. Once the story gets out, the river will
crawl with expeditions and the airships rise like