"Strike the earth!" roared the lion. "Well, good-bye, friends! I'll say it now—before I'm squashed and scattered to the four points of the compass!"
"Never mind, you'll make a lovely splatter!" teased the Scarecrow. "Better stamp your feet, girls, to keep from freezing!"
"Here, stand on my coat," offered the Wizard, gallantly. "Not YOU!" Indignantly he pushed the Soldier with Green Whiskers aside. "You can stand on your own coat!"
"But it's against regulations for a soldier to appear without his jacket," shivered Wantowin, piteously. "The manual of arms says—"
"How about the manual of feet?" snorted the Scarecrow, thankful he was stuffed with cotton and incapable of feeling the cold. "Say, Wiz, I guess this is about the oddest flying trip a band of explorers ever had?"
"Did those magic drops freeze the air into ice?" called Dorothy. "And how'd you grow the hedge so fast?"
"Yes, the drops froze the air," the Wizard bawled back, for the rush of air as they shot downward made it difficult to hold polite conversation, "And I just happened to have some of my instant sprouting saplings in that kit-bag."
To keep up their spirits they continued to shout back and forth as they fell. "I don't suppose we'll ever catch up with Strut and Nick Chopper now," screamed Jellia, hooking her arms securely through the hedge.
"Why not?" cried the Wizard. "As soon as we land, we can fly these flying sticks straight to the Emerald City, and be there before the Oztober arrives. Remember now, the first one up after we hit the earth is to snatch a winged staff."
"And how do you suppose we will be able to rise, after striking the earth at one hundred and forty miles an hour?" roared the lion, a trifle sarcastically.