Yet, neither the athlete nor the surgeon seemed to see anything peculiar in the fact. Instead, they looked at one another as much as to say, "Well, time to go, isn't it?"
Then Fort stared up at the mysterious roof. There was another clearing there, a little to one side; which accounted for Billie's overlooking it at first. Fort led the way over opposite.
"Shall we try it?" he dared Mona.
"You first," she replied, indifferently.
Whereupon the athlete, without another word, pulled his cap down tight, made sure his pockets were buttoned, cleared the shrubbery away from his feet and—leaped! Leaped straight into the air, and as he went up, he flipped his body as only an acrobat can, so that he turned a mid air somersault.
But he did not come back to where he jumped from. Instead, his jump took him five yards, which separated the ground from the roof; and when he landed HIS FEET WERE RESTING ON THE ROOF, AND HIS HEAD WAS POINTING DOWNWARD, TOWARD MONA.
"It's easy," he remarked, craning his neck so that he could look at the girl. "Come on; I'll catch you!"
And then Billie's senses whirled as the surgeon duplicated the feat. Next second Mona was standing beside Fort, five yards above the spot she had just left; and in that second everything had become precisely reversed; the two were now looking up! Looking up, to behold their machines, apparently upside down, just over their heads!
As though this were not enough, Mona picked a leaf from a shrub and threw it some seven or eight feet up. It remained motionless in mid air!
It was too much for Billie. She felt that she could not contemplate the thing any longer with safety to her sanity. She exerted her will, and broke the connection with Mona; so that a few minutes later her three friends on the earth were listening to her account.