However, the other would immediately take them up and try again. Neither man had a tenth the deftness that is common to adults on the earth. In size and strength alone they were men; otherwise—it cannot too often be repeated—they were mere children. All told, it was over two hours before the punk began to smolder.
"By Mownoth!" swore the herdsman, staring reverently at the smoke. "We have done a miracle, Dulnop—ye and I! Be ye sure this is no dream?"
Quite in human fashion, Dulnop seriously reached out and pinched the herdsman's tremendous arm. Corrus winced, but was too well pleased with the result to take revenge, although the nature of these men was such as to call for it.
"It be no dream!" he declared, still awestruck.
"Nay," agreed Dulnop. "And now—to make the flower grow!"
It was Corrus's lungs which really did the work. His prodigious chest was better than a small pair of bellows, and he blew just as he had been told in the vision. Presently a small flame appeared in the tinder, and leaped eagerly upward. Both men jumped back, and for lack of enough air the flame went out.
"Never mind!" exclaimed Dulnop at Corrus's crestfallen look. "I remember that we must be ready with leaves, and the like, as soon as the blossom appears. Blow, ye great wind-maker, and I shall feed the flower!"
And thus it came about that two men of Sanus, for the first time in the history of the planet, looked upon fire itself. And when they had got it to burning well, each of them stared at his hands, and from his hands to the little heap of "flowers"; from hands to fire they looked, again and again; and then gazed at one another in awe.