"First I shot over a mountain, and now I'm shooting through one!" moaned the distracted Goat Girl, trying to collect her spinning thoughts and faculties. "Oh, my—y, we're going to pot for sure. Oh, this time we are really done for!"
Then all at once Handy's good common sense began to assert itself. And as their strange chariot with a sudden increase of speed and power again dashed down into the darkness, she snatched the precious blue flower from her pocket and at the exact moment the silver car turned over and flung them into space, Handy began pulling the petals from the flower and letting them drift down ahead of her own rapidly falling body. It was just light enough for her to see Nox, with bristling horns and quivering nostrils, fall past, when she herself started to turn so many and such dizzy somersaults she lost all count of time and distance.
CHAPTER 12
Prisoners of the Wizard
What seemed to be hours later, though in reality it was only a few moments, the two luckless prisoners found themselves side by side on a heap of soft blue flower petals. They were in a small circular pit with one amethyst burning dimly in the grating that covered the top. The Goat Girl had no recollection of her final landing and gazing up at the grilled ceiling wondered dully how they had come through without being cut to pieces.
"It tilted," wheezed the Royal Ox, answering the unspoken question in Handy's eyes, "just tilted and slid us down. A fortunate thing you kept that magic flower, m'lass. Ha—rumph!" Weakly and still trembling in every limb, Nox tried to rise, but his legs gave way beneath him and for a good fifteen minutes he and the Goat Girl rested on the flower petals saying never a word. The tapping of footsteps in the corridor brought Handy quickly to her feet and as Nox managed to heave himself upright, the blue petals vanished, leaving only a tiny flower on the floor. Handy had just time to stuff it into her pocket when an invisible door in the side of the pit opened and twelve depressed workmen in silver cloth caps and overalls stepped inside. They carried brooms, mops and dust pans and stood staring in dismay at the seven-armed Goat Girl and angry-looking Ox.
"We—we were sent to brush up!" stuttered the first workman, touching his cap uneasily. "But—there—seems—"