Finally they all turned in for the night. The earth-man slept fitfully, and dreamed of encounters in which, with his back to the wall, he fought with a wooden sword alone against Prince Yuri, and ant-men, and Vairkings, and Cupians, and whistling bees, in defense of Lilla and her son.
Yet such is the strange alchemy of dreams that sometimes Lilla’s face seemed to be covered with golden fur.
With the first red flush of morning Cabot and Doggo bestirred themselves, and informed their campmates that they intended to do a bit of prospecting before breakfast. Then they set out into the interior of the wood, the ant-man leading the way. At last they came to a small clearing and beyond it a thicket, which Doggo indicated with one paw as being the spot which they sought. There was to be the plane!
Parting the foliage, they looked inside. But the thicket was empty!
On the farther side the bushes had been recently chopped down, and thence there lay a wide swath of cut trees clear out of the woods. It was only too evident that the precious plane had been stolen!
XVI
AFTERTHOUGHTS
There could be no doubt of it. Doggo’s plane was gone, and with it had vanished all hopes of a speedy return to Cupia. Sadly the two returned to camp, and gave directions to start back to Vairkingi.
But Myles Cabot was not a man to despair or he would have yielded to fate many times in the past during his radio adventures on the silver planet. Already, as the porters were loading the carts, his agile mind was busy seeking some way whereby to snatch victory from defeat.
So when the expedition was ready to start he led it around the woods until he picked up the trail of the stolen airship. Quite evidently the theft had not been made by ant-men, for they would have flown the machine away, upon clearing the woods. No, it had obviously been taken by either Roies or Vairkings, who had wheeled or dragged it away. If he and Doggo could follow its path, they might yet be able to locate and recover the stolen property.
The trail led north until it struck, at right angles, a broad and much-rutted road which ran from Vairkingi to the northeast territory of the Vairkings. And at this point the trail completely vanished.