The Secret Forest lay below the roaring, throbbing plane. It was enormous. The tops of the great trees stood close together, and not a gap could be seen. The plane roared low down over the trees.
“It’s mysterious!” said Nora, and she shivered. “It’s really mysterious. It looks so quiet — and dark — and lonely. Just as if really and truly nobody ever has set foot there, and never will!”
Hot Weather!
The aeroplane rose high again to clear the other side of the mountain ring. The forest dwindled smaller and smaller. “Go back again over the forest, Ranni, please do!” begged Jack. “It’s weird. So thick and silent and gloomy. It gives me a funny feeling!”
Ranni obligingly swung the big plane round and swooped down over the forest again. The trees seemed to rise up, and it almost looked as if the aeroplane was going to dive down into the thick green!
“Wouldn’t it be awful if our plane came down in the forest, and we were lost there, and could never, never find our way out and over the Killimooin mountains?” said Nora.
“What a horrid thought!” said Peggy. “Don’t say things like that! Ranni, let’s get over the mountains quickly! I’m afraid we might get lost here!”
Ranni laughed. He swooped upwards again, just as Jack spotted something that made him flatten his nose against the window and stare hard.
“What is it?” asked Nora.
“I don’t quite know,” said Jack. “It couldn’t be what I thought it was, of course.”