them with your hand."
     But Valya, in spite of this, only moved  farther  and farther away. The
Professor smiling, went up to her, patted her on the shoulder and said:
     "Don't be  frightened!  don't be  frightened, little one! They will all
crawl on in a minute. We are quite useless to them. They are hunting for the
young pine  shoots.  It is only  some sort of  greenery that'll do for these
hairy vegetarians. I know them well! I wrote a book about them once."
     "A book about caterpillars?" marvelled Valya.
     "What  is  there surprising  about  that?"  The Professor  shrugged his
shoulders. "These caterpillars actually are like locusts of the forest. They
assemble in  uncountable swarms and devour the green shoots of the  trees in
the same way as locusts eat up the crops. I once saw a forest which had been
visited by a  swarm of pine moth caterpillars like  this. It  was completely
stripped by the greedy things. I rode for miles and miles but there wasn't a
green shoot to be seen, just bare twigs everywhere."
     At  that moment  the Professor  looked upwards and  smiled as if he had
seen  one of  his  best friends.  "Why,  there is a Microgasta nemorum!"  he
announced. "Welcome! welcome!"
     "Where is it? What is it you have seen?"
     "You don't mean to say you can't see it?"
     The children started to scratch their heads. Like a squadron of gliders
right  above  the  silkworms,  huge creatures  with  thin  bodies  and  long
transparent wings were noiselessly swooping.
     "Midges!" shouted Valya.
     ''''Microgasta nemorum!'' announced  the Professor.  '' Ichneumon flies
or - as we Russians commonly call them - Horsemen-flies!
     The friends  of  forest and field. Watch, children, what'll happen now!
There are many scientists who would envy  us now. Watch! Got it!" He started
counting. "That's number one' Got it! Another! Excellent! Got it! That's the
third! Brave boys! Watch! watch!"
     The  winged  'horsemen-flies' swooped  down on  the  caterpillars  like
vultures on their prey and landed on their backs.
     "They  are riding on them, they are riding on  them," exclaimed  Valya.
"They are proper horsemen!"
     It was like one of those comic turns at a circus where dogs ride on the
backs of  horses or mice on the backs of cats.  The children  clapped  their
hands. But,  suddenly, Valya dropped her hands, looked towards the Professor
and asked with alarm:
     "These . . . micro . . . whatever are they doing?"
     She  had seen that the 'horsemen-flies' lift their bodies  up and stick
the  sharp  sword they carried in  their tails  hard into the backs  of  the
caterpillars. Having jabbed the caterpillars, they at once flew upwards.
     "They are fighting," Valya announced, "fighting and not riding!"
     "They  are neither  fighting  nor riding,"  replied  their  guide. "The
Ichneumon  flies pierce  the skin  of  the  caterpillars  with  their  sharp
egg-layer and lay their eggs. After some time, their larvas come out  of the
eggs  and  proceed  to  devour the  caterpillars. They eat  the caterpillars
before they change into butterflies. If it was  not for the 'horsemen-flies'
the  pine  moth caterpillar would eat  the  whole forest, but the microgasta
does not allow it to multiply. That is why we can consider this fly our very
best forest guard."
     "But  isn't  it  possible to  rear  these  microjesters  artificially?"
demanded Karik.
     "Microgastae? . . . it is possible," said the Professor.
     "Then why are they not reared?"
     "It  has been tried but the attempts have not always been  successful,"
the Professor replied. "Unfortunately, another  'horseman-fly' lays its eggs
in the larvae of  these 'horsemen-flies'. Naturally they are very tiny,  but
these eggs kill the microgasta."
     "There are parasites for you!  But isn't  it possible to destroy  these
small fry?"
     "Yes,  it's possible. These  tiny  'horsemen-flies'  have in turn their
enemies, also 'horsemen-flies'. These are quite teeny."
     "Well! Those are the ones to rear," said Karik.
     "Yes, indeed, that  is, of course,  the intelligent thing," agreed  the
Professor, "but there are  even 'horsemen-flies' that lay their eggs  in the
larvae of these useful teenies."
     Karik waved his  hands  in  disgust. "Oh, this  is just like the  fable
about the white ox. There is a beginning but there is simply no end."
     "Exactly like  it,  exactly like  it!" replied their guide. "There is a
time  when you  think  you  have at last  found the end and know  absolutely
everything about one or  the  other  creature,  but you have only to  poke a
little deeper and a little more earnestly into the essential points when you
become convinced that it is not the end  you have in your hands but only the
beginning of a new and fascinating chapter of investigation."
     The Professor forgot  that he was standing on a small piece of bark. He
jumped about and started to lecture on how  scientists were like Christopher
Columbus  travelling every  day in  unknown lands  and how they were  always
discovering new and yet newer continents.
     Meanwhile, the pine moth caterpillars were crawling up the bark just as
if it was  a  broad  country lane, down which  to meet them  there were  now
coming some sort of beetle. Above  the pine tree lane there fluttered winged
creatures.  The  Professor,  without  the  slightest ceremony,  bumped  into
caterpillars who were making  their way laboriously  upwards. He also nearly
knocked a large black beetle off  its legs, but he simply  went  on talking,
talking, talking. . . .
     How long their learned guide would  have stood on the piece of  bark as
if it was  a classroom platform  no one could  say. It is quite  possible he
would have continued his lecture until nightfall.
     But it was suddenly interrupted by some sort of winged beast.
     The creature  dropped  right down beside the Professor like a stone and
knocked him  down with  its wing. Then having raised its body,  which had  a
long sharp sword at the end of it, the beast with a short powerful jab drove
it into the bark just by the Professor's head. The sword  buried itself deep
in the bark.
     The  children had  not  had time to  cry out  before the  creature  had
withdrawn its sword and had disappeared in the same lightning-like manner as
it had arrived.
     Karik  and  Valya  clung to the red crag-like bark. They were pale with
fright, and were breathing heavily.
     "Well, that's that!" The  Professor sat up. "I am afraid  I was talking
rather a lot. And  we must get  ourselves  down  to the  ground before night
comes." He looked at Karik, at Valya, and said: "It's nothing dangerous!  It
was   a   very   ordinary   Thalessa  or,   in  simple   language,   another
'horseman-fly'."
     "Did it lay its eggs in the bark?"
     "Why  in  the bark?" replied  the Professor. "It laid its  eggs in  the
larva of one of the enemies of the pine tree."
     "In the larva?" Karik looked around. "Where is it?"
     "Under the bark!"
     "How can you see it there?"
     "I haven't seen it  but I am prepared to  bet  anything  you  like that
under us, under a layer of bark, there is wriggling the  larva of some  sort
of 'Long-horned' beetle."
     "This means that the 'horseman-fly' can see through bark?"
     "No. It also is unable  to see the  larva but it can sense it. . . . We
don't understand this. On the whole we know very little about  the character
and life of insects. Much concerning the lives of these amazing creations is
completely unknown  to  us.  We do not really know,  for  instance, what the
insects need their feelers for," their guide continued, and then he stood up
and wound the end  of the rope around his hand. "Now  get up,  my dears!  We
must get on our way."
     Thus, once again they  started the dangerous  and exhausting climb down
the  bark  cliff. From time to time the Professor  and  the children, having
found  a suitable place  for  a rest,  lay  silently against  the red cliff.
Rubbing their stiffening arms and legs, they looked to see if  the  rope was
damaged  or the  knots frayed, then they got up again and once again started
on their way, jumping like goats from rock to rock.
     At one of their halts  the travellers stayed a fairly long time. It was
quite near the  ground. The Professor and the children, after a short  rest,
were preparing to climb down again when suddenly there was a sound of  wings
above  their  heads. Their  guide looked  upwards  and turned  pale. Quickly
seizing the children by the arms he plunged with them into a narrow cleft.
     "Sit quite quiet," he whispered.
     A striped  creature with  a long  narrow  waist  was  flying  past. Its
protruding body  was covered with  yellow and black stripes  like a  tiger's
skin.  Cutting  through  the air  with its  transparent  wings, the creature
swooped, pressing something to its  belly, something  wriggling, very like a
snake.
     "Eumenina," whispered the Professor. "The 'Pottery' wasp."
     The  wasp  flew  up  to  the basket from which the  Professor  and  the
children  had just escaped, threw its  prey into  it  and  climbed  into the
basket itself.
     "Is that what carried us?" Valya asked.
     "That's it," their guide  nodded. "I expect, my dears, that the Pottery
wasp took us for caterpillars. But watch what it is doing."
     The wasp crawled out of the basket, swooped rapidly down to the  ground
and  immediately  flew up again.  Fanning the travellers with a wind  like a
whirlwind, it flew past them and  having  described a  circle landed  on the
basket.  Restlessly crawling around the opening it picked  at it deftly with
its feet  and energetically tapped the basket with its head.  Then  the wasp
flew away.
     The  travellers  could see  that the  entrance to  the  basket was  now
completely covered up with something grey in colour.
     In the centre of this, like a cork, a sharp stone was protruding.
     "You see," said the Professor, "how the wasp seals up its basket. Well,
my dears,  if we had not got out of  it in time, we should have perished  of
hunger."
     "But surely it is possible to break the wall down?"
     "No! The wasp makes such a strong cement out of dust and its own saliva
that even big people can hardly break it."
     "All the same,  I don't understand it," said Karik. "You see, it caught
us, then it shoved us in its basket . . . but what for? Why didn't it eat us
at once?"
     "For the very reason that it did not capture us to eat us," replied the
Professor.  "The Eumenina wasp  feeds on the juice of flowers,  but  catches
caterpillars  for  its offspring, its future  children. In that  connection,
notice that it does not  kill  its prey. The jab of its sting only paralyses
the  caterpillars,  preserves  them  .  .  .  makes a  living  'ham' of  the
caterpillars."
     "Why then didn't the wasp paralyse us?" asked Valya.
     "I don't know," their guide shrugged his shoulders. "I don't understand
it at all. It may have been that its sting  could not penetrate the spider's
webbing of our jackets properly, or maybe its poison doesn't affect us. I do
not know. Yes, the whole business is very amazing. .  . . I do  not know why
it  could confuse us  with  caterpillars . . . usually wasps do not make any
such mistakes. This is a complete mystery from a scientific point of view."
     "But who makes the basket for it?" demanded Valya.
     "The wasp makes it itself," replied the Professor, "out of dust and its
own saliva.  .  .  .  Behind these  protective  walls the  larva can grow up
without the danger  that something will gobble  it up or squash it. There is
food already prepared enough and plenty. When the larva comes out of the egg
it  drops down a little spiderlike thread and  falls  on to the caterpillars
and  begins to eat them.  And  what a feed! For weeks it gnaws  away at  its
victim but to the  very last day the caterpillar remains alive and its flesh
remains fresh.  To  begin with,  the larva feeds  only on the  blood of  the
caterpillar, then  it  eats  the  fat and then the muscles. The  caterpillar
remains alive  without blood, fat or  muscles  and still provides fresh meat
for the  larva.  In the end, the larva eats it all up, becomes  a cocoon and
after a short time the cocoon bursts and out flies a male or female Eumenina
wasp. A male wasp should fly out of ours, but now. . . ."
     "You don't know it is definitely a male?"
     "I do  know!" asserted their guide. "The  wasp caught us three and then
brought  one more victim - the caterpillar. Four caterpillars -  that is the
supply of food for a future male. For an egg from  which a female will  come
out  the wasp  leaves an even  ten caterpillars.  Then this is  quite  to be
understood. The  future female Pottery  wasp is  bigger  than  the  male and
therefore it is necessary to leave more food for it."
     "Does this mean that wasps can,-count up to ten?" asked Valya.
     "I do not know  whether they can actually count up to two," replied the
Professor, smiling. "You will remember that the wasp crawled into the basket
after we had got out of it. That's true, isn't it?"
     "Certainly it climbed in."
     "But it climbed in  to lay the egg.  It  must therefore have  seen that
instead of four caterpillars in the  basket there  was only one. But all the
same  it never entered its head to fetch  another three caterpillars, but it
just sealed the basket as it was and now, of course, the larva will perish."
     The Professor went out  of the cleft, looked to  right and to left, and
said:
     "It has  flown away.  We can now proceed in peace." The  ground was not
far off and the travellers soon got safely down.
     To the left, a grass forest  appeared blue in the  distance. Above  the
forest, like  a  straw, the  pole landmark was sticking  out with a tiny red
flag,  ever  so far off. The travellers started on their way. The  whole day
they travelled over sand, through forest and over mountains. They made their
way across ravines, they forded rivers.
     Towards  evening,  tired  and  hungry, they stopped  at  the  bank of a
rushing river.  To get across the  river was beyond the present strength  of
the children.
     Valya stretched herself on the bank and said:
     "I can't go any farther."
     The dusk was falling. The sky had grown dark. Purple clouds were heaped
up over the forest. Above, over their heads, a flock  of birds stretched out
in noisy flight.
     Their guide said, "Well, there is nothing for it but to spend the night
here."
     "On the bank?"
     "We'll try and find a crevice or some sort of den."
     After  a short search,  Karik came upon an egg as big as a haystack and
brown. At the  side in the solid  wall of  the giant egg a round hole showed
darkly.
     Karik started to look inside and shouted:
     "Do come here! I think I have found some sort of house."
     The  Professor  went  up to the  egg, inspected  it from all sides  and
having thought a bit, said:
     "An empty nutshell. The  discarded home of a  larva of the nut  weevil.
Climb in, children. It's a tolerable hotel all right."
     It had already become dark. The children could not keep their eyes open
with tiredness. Their  legs were aching. Quickly clambering through the hole
in the nutshell, Karik and Valya threw themselves on the rough floor  and at
once fell dead asleep.
     Meanwhile,  the  Professor  wandered,  sighing,  around  the  nut.  The
entrance  hole was  so small  that he could only  get his head into it.  His
shoulders would not pass.
     "What a nuisance!" he muttered.
     Grunting angrily, he once  more  peered into the  nut, heard how evenly
the children were breathing in  their sleep, and wandered off then to find a
night's lodging for himself.
     Not  far  away from the nut, he found in a little hollow the shell of a
snail.  He examined  it. The shell was  empty.  The  Professor, grunting and
sighing, clambered into it. The sloping floor of the shell was hard and cold
but  the  Professor, wearied  by the journeyings, didn't even  notice  this.
Putting his fist  under his head, he  stretched out full length  and at once
fell asleep.
     About midnight, something started humming in  the air. The Professor in
a confused way heard this in his sleep. It was probably the wind getting up.
     Waking from  the cold, he opened his eyes. The sky  was cloudy  and the
moon  was swimming  amongst the clouds.  The Professor  shrunk into himself,
tucked his  legs up under  him  and  departed into dreamland  again, turning
restlessly in his sleep.
     Outside the  walls  of the  shell a cold  tearing wind  was rising to a
frenzy. Dust, grass, petals were being carried along spinning.
     The nut shook with  the  gusts of  wind  and  at last rocked violently,
rolled over and in the grip of the gale started to slide down slowly towards
the  river. A fresh  gust of wind  drove the nut into  the water. It started
dancing on the waves and floated away on the stream.
     In their dreams, the children felt that they were being rocked as if in
a cradle. Pressing close to  each other, they  slept on,  smiling  in  their
sleep. But the river was hurrying the nut away,  carrying the children  ever
farther and farther from the Professor.
     The moon shone down. It covered the river with sparkling silver scales,
lit up the quiet, deserted bank  and the curled top of the  snail shell from
which were resounding the snores  of the professor, mighty though miniature.
Had he awoken and looked out, he would have seen,  away  along the river, as
if on some silver road, a black shape moving farther and  farther away until
it vanished round a dark bend in the distance. The nut was out of sight.


        CHAPTER XIII

     The landing  at an unknown harbour - In captivity again - The Professor
"sees"  things  -  A "lion"  which breathes  with  its tail  - An unexpected
discovery


     BEFORE THE DAWN A STRONG  WIND AROSE. The nut plunging in the waves was
now scudding along  on their high crests and  now lost in the white  boiling
foam. The  waves broke  over it noisily, tossing  and  heaving on all sides.
Cold spray came sprinkling from above through the hole which fortunately was
on top like  a hatchway, and fell on to Karik and Valya. But the children at
first  only turned over  restlessly in their sleep, covered their  faces and
necks with their hands and arms and moved further from the hatch. They  were
so tired out  and exhausted  that even this  icy shower  bath could not wake
them.
     However,  the strong current then started to turn  the nut as if it was
in a whirlpool. The nut rocked sharply and listed over
     on one  side.  Karik rolled  right  over his  sister and  hit his  head
painfully against the wall.
     "Oh! What's happened?" he jerked out as he awoke.
     He tried to get up but the nut again rocked and Karik again fell on the
floor.
     Clutching on to the rough wall  of the nut he somehow managed to get up
again and yelled out:
     "Valya,  something's happened! Get up!  Something is  dragging  our nut
away!"
     Rubbing  her  sleepy  eyes  with  her  hands, Valya gazed confusedly at
Karik.
     "Maybe some sort of  wild  animal  has  pounced on us. We must wake the
Professor quickly. Professor!" shouted Valya, struggling to get up.
     But no  sooner  than  she  had  straightened herself up than  the floor
beneath her feet lurched  and she was hurled  against the wall. She collided
with Karik and with him fell in a heap on the rough floor.
     It  was quite dark all around them and it was  only  from above through
the round hatchway that the blue light of the night penetrated.
     Clutching the wall  of the nut, Karik crawled up  to the hole and poked
his head out of it. A wave lashed his face.
     The wind was sweeping across the water raising steep foaming rollers.
     Waves raged around them and the water bubbled as if it were boiling.
     Karik shouted:
     "Valya! Quickly! See what's happened! Look, we are afloat!"
     Valya made her way up to  the hatch with some difficulty and held on to
the edge with her hands.
     "We are sailing!" said Valya, with fear in her voice.
     "Sailing - but where to?"
     The nut was rolling just as if the children were on the ocean itself.
     Valya looked around  herself then  gazed at Karik,  then looked  around
again and grew pale:
     "But where is the Professor?"
     "I don't know.  . . .  It may  be  he is somewhere quite near," replied
Karik, uncertainly.
     "What do  you mean quite near?" cried out Valya. "We are in the nut. Do
you realise, in a nut? All around us is water."
     A powerful  blow dislodged the  children from the  hatchway.  The floor
twisted and lurched beneath them.
     Karik and Valya fell down again.
     The wind  was blowing in angry gusts over the river. All around them it
howled  and  whistled.  Waves  broke  into the hatch  and  the children were
drenched  from head to  foot with cold water. Soaking and shivering they sat
on the floor  tightly holding each  other and  gazing  frightenedly  at  the
hatch.
     Above the hatch across the troubled sky  black clouds were chasing each
other.
     The nut heeled over and then  foaming  rollers seemed  to be leaping at
the  hole, but it  heeled again and once again clouds appeared - being swept
across  the  hatchway and in and out  of  the clouds  there plunged the pale
moon. With each fresh lurch the children were flung apart, but Valya at once
crawled hastily  back  to her brother and  clutched  hold of him firmly. The
poor  children  could  not  understand  what  had  happened: Where  had  the
Professor got to, how the nut got into the river, where the river was taking
them to? ...
     But  the nut whirled  on and on, now riding on the crests of the waves,
now burying itself in the trough.
     Then at length it seemed as if the storm had started  to abate. The nut
no  longer was thrown about and no  longer  lurched but  just  rocked like a
cradle.
     The children got up.
     "It  looks  as if  the worst is over," said Karik. He climbed up to the
hatchway and looked out.
     Quite close the banks of the river clad in forest seemed to be floating
past. The waves were now quietly lapping below him.
     Then the nut suddenly stopped. Black masses of earth rose up before the
very  hatchway  like  walls. The shore  was so close that it was possible to
stretch out and touch it.
     The nut  had come  alongside  some unknown jetty. "Well, we have got to
somewhere," said Valya, quietly. "Climb up quickly!" ordered Karik, gripping
the edge of the hatch with his hands.
     Helping each other, Karik and  Valya made their way out of the nut  and
jumped ashore.

     * * * * * *


     It was early morning.
     In the grey twilight before the dawn a hill stood  gaunt and silent. On
the far horizon a pink edge was barely noticeable.
     The nut floated black and wet in a silent bay right beside the bank.
     Beyond, the  river swirled noisily past, the  current carrying  in  its
waves poles, branches and  petals.  Some  of these were carried into the bay
and  forced against  the bank.  They spun around and  floating past  the nut
jostled it as if they were trying to move it on.
     The  whole bay was covered as it  were with a husk in the form of dried
fin.  The  children climbed  up  a hillock and  stopped  undecidedly  there.
Shivering with cold they stood looking at each other, half dazed.
     In which direction should they go?
     What should they do?
     Oh! if only the Professor was there; just there beside them!
     "Can he have got lost?" sighed Valya.
     "We'll find him!"  said Karik, with decision.  "He is here. He  must be
somewhere here. . . ."
     He put the palms  of his hands together as a trumpet, stood on tip-toes
and shouted as loud as ever he could.
     "Pro-fess-ess-or!"
     Somewhere behind, away behind the dark hills, leaves rustled.
     The children listened.
     Steps?
     No. It was the wind. That was what stirred the trees.
     Valya again sighed deeply.
     "Don't  worry, don't  worry!  We'll find  him. You just see.  He  won't
desert us."
     Karik took his sister by the hand along the bank of the river.
     Every five or six steps they stopped and yelled loudly:
     "Pro-fess-ess-or."
     But there was no answering shout from the Professor.
     "Do you know  what?" said Karik. "I'll go  along the bank and  you go a
little further inland. Over there - you see? - -there is some sort of a wood
beyond the hills. There it is! You  go to this wood and shout, only  louder.
First I'll shout, then you, then I again, and then you. O.K.?"
     "O.K."
     "Only don't go far away, and look around you carefully. Be careful now.
Go on!"
     Karik went  along  the shore  and Valya set out for the dark wood. From
time to time the children stopped, shouted and once again moved on.
     Valya got to the wood.
     In the wood it was dark and very  forbidding. Black angular  trunks  of
trees  lifted up bent,  crooked branches, broad leaves hung down to the very
ground.
     "Eh, Va-ly-ya!" came floating from somewhere near the river.
     "Aha!" replied Valya, "I am here. Got to the wood!"
     She went up to a dark tree with lots of branches. A pleasant appetising
smell came from the tree.
     Very odd - the smell  was just like fresh almond slices, just as it was
before a holiday  at  home when mother took  the  trays out  of the oven and
delicious  smells of vanilla, of almonds and of  hot  dough filled the whole
flat.
     Valya  at once remembered that she had had nothing to eat since the day
before.
     "I must see what it is that smells so delicious," she thought, and went
resolutely up to the tree. "I'll climb up and look."
     "Hey! Karik!" she shouted. "I am going to climb a tree. I'll shout from
the tree. Do you hear?"
     "Climb  away and  shout!  Only  more  loudly!  I'll come  over  to  you
directly," called back Karik.
     Valya  grasped  the wet slippery branches and quickly climbed up like a
monkey.
     Pushing aside the broad leaves which hung from the stem and blocked her
way, she climbed higher and higher. Every now and then she looked upwards.
     Soon she saw quite close above her head something like a huge cup.  She
got up to  it, clung  on to  the damp,  stringy, rubbery side and started to
look inside.
     In front of her very nose there were swaying feathery  balls. They were
suspended on thick long stems attached to the bottom of a cup.
     It was from these falls that the strong and delicious smell came.
     Valya felt that if she  did not  that very minute eat the ball right in
front of her nose she would simply die of hunger.
     She pulled  herself up with her arms and sat astride of  the lip of the
cup.
     The delicious  ball was-close  beside  her. Valya  clutched it with her
hands and pulled it hard  towards her.  She was not able, however, to wrench
it off. The ball held firmly.
     Valya tugged harder.
     The side on which  she was sitting  swayed so  that she nearly lost her
balance. In order not to fall the girl let go the ball and clung to the edge
of the cup.
     The  ball  flew away  from  her,  hit the  other  side  of  the cup and
immediately bobbed back in front of Valya's eyes.
     Then Valya tore at the ball  so violently that the whole cup started to
shake. The  ball ripped away from the pole and  next  instant Valya  and her
booty fell with a crash to the bottom of the cup.
     Not  letting go  the  ball  she  jumped  up, looked upwards  and around
herself. She was in  the centre of an enormous flower. The  damp petals rose
up  around  her  like  the smooth  inside  of a  round tower. Through chinks
between the dark petals the pink light of dawn now showed.
     Somewhere far, far away the birds had started to sing.  Below, rustling
the leaves, something ran about quickly turning them over with light feet.
     "I must climb down to the ground," thought Valya.
     Clutching the delicious ball closely to her bosom  she moved around the
flower  cup until she stopped in front of a narrow chink between petals. She
tried to squeeze through the chink but it was too narrow.
     Then Valya tried to climb  up one of the poles,  but she had only  just
gripped it with her hands when the walls of  the cup started to  move as  if
they were alive and slowly came nearer.
     The huge flower  in which Valya had  climbed closed its petals over her
head. It suddenly became pitch dark.
     In vain did she struggle to move the petals and escape from the flower.
The petals had contracted rigidly and would not let  her  out of her scented
prison.
     "Karik! Karik!" the  poor girl started to scream. "Hurry up! Here! Here
I am."
     She yelled  with  all her  might but her voice could not  penetrate the
soft, thick walls. It was just  as if she  was  shouting with her face stuck
into a feather pillow.
     This strangled,  almost inaudible cry reached Karik like the sound of a
distant echo. He stopped and listened. It seemed to him as if somewhere far,
far beyond the hills the Professor was shouting.
     "Ah!" Karik cheered up. "He's coming. He is sure to find us."
     He quickly ran up  to the top of a high hillock and once again making a
trumpet of his hands started to shout.
     "He-ere! Over here! We're here!"
     The only answer was the hoot of an owl.
     At the  foot  of the hillock the river ran on noisily. The  waves  were
splashing the shore. Sand falling from the steep bank was rustling softly.
     "Now in which direction was it that he called?"  thought Karik. "To the
right or to the left?"
     He  stood a little and then  shouted  again.  But  no  one replied.  He
shouted again and again in different directions.
     It was all in vain. There was simply no reply.
     Karik frowned.
     "No.  Something  must have happened." He  looked towards the  dark wood
where Valya was and said loudly:
     "Valya, did you hear? Wasn't it  just as if the Professor had  shouted?
Did you hear it or not?"
     But this time even Valya did not reply to Karik.
     "Gracious! Hasn't  enough happened  without' her disappearing," thought
Karik, and shouted again louder:
     "Va-alya!"
     A  rock  rumbled down the  steep bank into  the  water.  Karik started,
looked around, stood still a little and shouted again still louder.
     "Va-al-ya-ya!"
     There was no reply from Valya.
     "There you are! I told her to sit in the tree and wait, and now she has
gone off somewhere. . . . Get muddled up with girls and you are never happy,
never!"
     Then he slowly made his way across the field to the wood.
     Now here was the wood.
     Karik went up to the trees.
     Throwing his head back he stared up into their thick foliage.
     The  morning breeze was quietly  rocking the  broad  leaves out  of the
middle of which were peeping huge yellow balls. Valya was not  to be seen up
the trees. "Wherever  is she?" Karik was  quite perplexed.  He shouted again
and yet again, but only the wind murmured in reply.
     Valya gave no answering call. Karik bit his lip, stopped and started to
think:
     "Valya  cannot  have run far.  What does it mean? . . .  It  means that
something has caught her, dragged her off and maybe . . . eaten her!"
     Karik shuddered.
     "Oh,  if  only  the Professor was here!  He  would certainly  think out
something and certainly find Valya."
     Karik gazed around helplessly.
     Around him lay the hills, quietly indifferent.  A  cold,  lowering  sky
hung over the dull sandy shore. Dead trees, bare and  dry, creaked  dismally
on a neighbouring hill.
     A giant  beetle whizzed above his head and grazed the  dead trees  with
its wings.
     Something strange, unusual and sinister seemed  to be in the air. Karik
shuddered.  Then with a  piercing cry he dashed off,  not worrying  in which
direction he went.

     * * * * * *

     The Professor was awakened  before dawn  by the terrible cold. He moved
towards the  wall but immediately  jumped  back from it as  if  he had  been
stung.  The  curved  wall  of  the shell was  as  cold as ice.  It was quite
impossible  to sleep in such an  ice house. The Professor betook himself out
of the shell and started to run around it, trying to warm himself up a bit.
     The moon was still shining.
     The  cold wind blew now  on his face and now on his back, sweeping with
it a cloud of small stones which lashed his arms and legs.
     "There's a night  for you!"  grunted  the Professor.  "It's  lucky  the
children are so snug."
     He decided to look and see how they were sleeping in the nut. Were they
comfortable?  Were  they  peaceful? Then,  shivering in  the  cold,  he went
towards the river.
     The pale  moon  lit  up the  bare  promontory  with a single dead  tree
standing on its  crest. The Professor  ran up the hillside and gazed  around
perplexedly.
     There was  nothing  on  the  promontory. Just  the  dry,  crooked  tree
creaking in the wind, rustling its parched leaves sadly. The dark shadows of
the leaves moved dismally over the cold ground.
     "Strange! . . . very strange! . . ." he muttered.
     He  could quite  clearly  remember that the  nut had been lying here in
this very spot. There was the slight hollow pressed down by  its round side.
Yes, most certainly, this was the place. There could be no doubt of that.
     He bent over and started to examine the ground carefully.
     From the hollow a black broad mark stretched down to the  river just as
if something heavy had been dragged over it quite recently.
     The Professor straightened himself  and followed  this  track,  bending
down to examine it from time to time.
     The track led to the river.
     He stopped at the very top  of the  steep bank and  thoughtfully looked
below at the black river whose waters were flowing noisily past.
     There was nowhere now to go.
     Twisting his beard and lowering  his eyebrows, the  Professor  stood on
the top of the bank and talked aloud to himself:
     "If anything had fallen upon them they would have cried out, would have
called to me. I always sleep so lightly I should certainly have  heard them.
What  then can have happened.?  Something dragged the nut away,  is that it?
Well, no!  What use would  an old spoilt nutshell  be to anything? Nonsense.
The whole business is much simpler: the nut was blown into the water."
     He quickly made his way down to the water's edge.
     "Which way has the nut been carried? To right or to left?"
     He picked up a piece of dry leaf and threw it into the water.
     The current  caught the  leaf twisted it around and whirled it away  in
the foam of its waves.
     The Professor ran along the bank in the direction in which the leaf had
been carried.
     The forest came right down to the river.
     He now  wormed his  way through the trees and  now  went through  water
which was warm, like new milk. It was a light, moonlit night. It was only on
the  banks where the tall grass trees grew that the broad shadows were lying
in black stripes.
     In the middle of the river it was bright moonlight and petals, gigantic
leaves and logs were being swept along faster than the Professor could move.
     They  plunged  along now disappearing, now  bobbing  up  again - in the
distance it looked as if someone was swimming, battling with the waves.
     Each time that the Professor saw a log come plunging past in the middle
of the river he would stop and watch it in alarm:
     "Is it the children swimming?"
     He climbed down to the river and  went into the water up  to  his waist
ready  to dash  to their help. But then the log would float closer until its
naked branches could be seen.
     "Phew!" the  Professor  would  exclaim in relief, and continue  on  his
journey.
     The river for a long time  twisted amongst dark woods and mountains and
then  at  last  widened before the  Professor's eyes  into a broad,  shining
reach.
     Pushing the wet twigs aside with his arms, he  strode out of the forest
and suddenly stopped involuntarily.
     "The children!"
     Along the river in moonlight Karik and Valya were swimming.
     "Yes, yes, it is they !" whispered the Professor.
     There,  right  in the  middle of  the  river, Karik was swimming  and a
little to the right  of him  nearer to  the  bank - Valya.  Their heads  now
disappeared under the water  now reappeared just like fishing floats. It was
quite clear  that the children must a  long time ago  have been exhausted by
the struggle and at any moment they might disappear for good.
     Oh, if only there was time !
     The Professor flung himself into the water. The current  caught him and
swept him along downstream.
     "Stick to it!" he yelled at the top of his voice.
     Cutting through  the water with a fast stroke  he  quickly swam towards
the children.
     With each stroke  of his arms the distance between him and the children
decreased.
     Now he was  right upon  them  and stretched out his  hand. But what was
this?
     He saw under the water a  ribbed body bending like a letter S. "Ah, bad
luck to you!" he burst out  with  vexation as  he  turned  back  towards the
shore. What he had taken for the children by the uncertain light of the moon
was only the very ordinary larvae of a Hover fly which Russians call  "Lion"
flies.  These larvae  cling  to  the  surface  film of  the river with their
wonderful tails which are like tousled wigs thus  float head downwards,  and
in this manner prey on unsuspecting inhabitants  of the  river. They breathe
through their tails.
     At one time in his  youth the Professor had collected these  larvae for
his aquarium. Later  on,  flies had come out of the larvae,  with black  and
yellow stripes  resembling a  wasp and had,  indeed, laid  their eggs on the
flowering water weeds of the aquarium.
     The Professor had actually written a book about grasshoppers which hear
with  their feet and  about  Hover fly larvae  which  breathe through  their
tails.
     At  any other time you  would not have been able  even forcibly to tear
the  Professor away from these amazing  creatures but now he had no time for
them.
     Having  felt  the bottom with his feet, he  waded  rapidly  ashore and,
shivering with cold, started to run to try and get warm.
     From time to  time he stopped and listened. But he could  only hear his
own heart beating and the wind noising above his head.
     Having noticed a little way off a  hillock,  he ran over to it, climbed
up and, making a trumpet of his hands, shouted loudly:
     "Ka-a-ari-ik! Va-alya!"
     Then once again he ran to the river.
     "If I could - only  get out into the river on  a raft?"  he thought, "I
might get two or three logs to collide with each other in the  water, secure
them together and the raft would be made. I could overtake the children much
more quickly floating down the river."
     But the Professor did not have to knock up a raft for himself.
     The  raft,  just  as if  in a  fairy story it  had  heard  his  desire,
presented itself -  floated up to the very bank. It stopped by a dark sandy,
shoal and started turning round and round in the one spot.
     "Well, that is marvellous!" shouted the Professor. With a run he jumped
on to the raft and began to rock it in order to help it off the sandy shoal.
     The raft shook, started to lift in the waves and slowly floated away in
the current. At this moment another raft floated past the Professor and then
following that more and more of them.
     "Odd! Where can all these rafts be coming from?" he puzzled.
     Out  on  the  moonlit  waterway the  Professor started to  examine  his
miracle craft  very carefully.  He  found  that it was formed of thick  logs
sharpened  at  each end. These logs were like  gigantic  cigars and  lay  so
firmly together that they might have been glued to each other. The Professor
bent over, touched one with his hand and muttered perplexedly:
     "You don't say! Can this raft? . . ."
     Now by the light of the moon he had recognised these fearsome cigars.
     The  vessel  on which  the  Professor was  floating  was  loaded with a
strange cargo: its holds were stuffed with fever. Each cigar-log held within
it the larva of the malarial mosquito - the anophelesa mosquito.
     "Well, I never thought that  I should ever have to  be the captain of a
malaria ship!" he laughed.
     Right and  left of the raft were floating other similar  malaria ships.
Evidently somewhere  up the river the anophelesa mosquitos  had  been laying
their eggs.
     From time. to time the eggs of the simple, very ordinary mosquito could
be seen. They floated fastened  together  like a saucer which  bobbed in the
water  like a fishing-float  and looked  in the  distance very like a  small
boat.
     At every bend and every turn of the river the Professor craned his neck
and stared  intently at any patches  of  darkness. Had the nut run ashore or
was it floating in some quiet creek?
     The wooded bank had long ago been left behind.
     The  river turned abruptly this way and that.  An endless chain of bare
hills was floating past.
     It became lighter.
     The moon  paled.  The  stars went out one after  the other just  as  if
someone  was  extinguishing them and there only remained  one greenish  star
hanging low above the hill.
     The  raft was  carried  by the  strong  current towards  the bank.  The
Professor stood at the very edge rubbing his cold hands,
     chest and sides.
     The  river  turned to the right. Then suddenly the  Professor heard far
away beyond the hills some sort of weak voice.
     He shook with excitement, his heart throbbed and hammered.
     "Ah-ha!" shouted someone from the shore.
     The  Professor started  to run  along  his rocking craft and shouted as
loud as ever he could:
     "Karik! Valya!"
     "Pro-fess-ess-or!" came from amongst the hills.
     "Here ! Here ! Over here !" he exerted himself even more.
     Then Karik's head appeared above  the hill, then his shoulders and then
he ran along the skyline looking wildly in all directions.
     "Here! Karik! Over here!" yelled the Professor.
     Having  seen  the Professor,  Karik gurgled something in an odd way and
with his head down ran towards the river.
     "Come ashore! Quickly! Come ashore!" he shouted, waving his arms madly.
     The Professor lay  down on the raft and  started hastily to paddle with
his hands,  but the  raft as if on  purpose  turned the  Other way  down the
river, spun around in a whirlpool and bumped against a rock.
     It then whirled past Karik and rapidly drew away from him.
     "Stop! For heaven's sake, stop!" shouted Karik, running after the raft.
     "In a minute, in a minute, my boy!" and the Professor started to paddle
even more furiously with his hands.
     But  the  raft  simply would  not  pay  any  attention  to  him. So the
Professor ran up to the end of the raft and dived into the water.
     Karik started crying, and rushed into the river.
     "Where are  you going? What's up?"  shouted  the Professor, raising his
head out of the water.
     But Karik, unable to think at all, waded to meet the Professor and  did
not stop until he was  waist deep.  He was breathing heavily, had his  mouth
wide open and his knees were shaking.  The Professor swam up to the  boy and
stood up beside him. "You're alone?  Where's Valya?  Has anything happened?"
he asked in growing alarm, as he looked at Rank's tear-stained face. "It has
happened! Valya is lost!"
     "What are you talking about?" the  Professor seized Karik by the  hand.
"What has happened? When did it happen? Where did you lose her? Why  are you
silent?"
     "Well! we floated to begin with in the nut, then we got to the bank and
went  to  look for you, and  then. . . ."  Karik waved his hands  and became
silent.  "Well!  What  followed?  What  happened?"  demanded the  Professor,
hastily. "Tell me where did you leave her?"
     "There," Karik waved his arm uncertainly, "behind those hills."
     "You remember the place?"
     "Yes. I could not find it from here, but I  could find it  from the nut
!"
     "Where is the nut?"
     "Over there in a bay."
     "Right  you are!" said the Professor, decidedly.  "We'll go  to the bay
where  the nut stopped first  of all, and then we shall soon see what to do.
Come on!"
     The Professor and Karik climbed out on to the bank and silently marched
along the cold wet ground.
     "Show  me  the way  !"  commanded the old man. "I'll show you,"  sighed
Karik, and again started to sob. "Here, this is the way !"
     "Now,  please  don't cry! We'll find her. She  is not  a  needle but  a
living being . . . and she  must be able to shout and we shall hear her. . .
. We'll find her.  Most certainly we'll find  her." In the  distance the bay
appeared.
     On  its calm blue waters, the  nut was rocking like a barge,  black and
huge.
     "There it is," Karik said quietly.
     "I see."
     The Professor stopped.
     " Can you remember where you went from here?" he asked.
     "I can remember," replied Karik. "I went along  the bank and Valya went
to the right. Over there."
     "Good! Take me where you think Valya went !"
     The travellers set out. When they reached the wood Karik said:
     "It was from  here that she  shouted  to me for the last time. And then
she vanished."
     "What she shouted, you cannot remember, I suppose?"
     "I think it was 'Aoo'! " Karik replied, without conviction.
     The Professor thought for a bit.
     "You looked for her here this morning?"
     "I looked for her, searched the whole wood."
     "Well, now! You go to the right and I'll go to the left," said the  old
man. "Don't lose  sight  of  the  wood. We'll  meet here  in the wood.  Full
speed!"
     The Professor and Karik set out in different directions. They proceeded
to examine every hole, to look under rocks, lift giant leaves off the ground
and see whether by any chance Valya had hidden there and gone to sleep.
     Karik shouted until he was hoarse but all in vain.
     Valya wasn't anywhere to be found.
     After a long search they returned  to the wood. They were both so tired
that they could hardly move their feet. They neither of them wanted to talk.
     Above the Professor's head hung the stems with yellow balls on them.
     The balls  swayed, moving  their round shadows over  the surface of the
ground. One ball was  just as if it was alive.  Its walls shook and it moved
most oddly  on the stem just as if it wanted to  break off  and jump down to
the ground.
     The other balls were quite at rest.
     "Well, now  then," sighed the  Professor.  "We  must  set out and  have
another look. You  go this way and I'll go  to  the bank of  the river. Then
we'll meet again in the wood. You understand?"
     "I see," said Karik, sadly.
     The Professor got up and set off for the river in a quick walk.
     Karik moved off  in the  opposite  direction. As he  was going  off  he
seemed to hear a weak, suffocated cry. He quickly turned.
     "Go  on.  Go  on!"   shouted  the  Professor.  "Don't   lose  any  time
unnecessarily."
     So once again  they set off upon a search, running over hills  and sand
every so often calling out to each other.
     Suddenly the Professor stopped. On one side of the wood he spotted some
sort of strange tracks. The soil was torn up and flung about. Marks  of some
sort of feet were visible on the soft heaps of earth. Clearly there had been
a sharp scuffle in this spot quite recently.
     The Professor bent down to the ground.
     A fresh broad track stretched away towards a sandy hillock.
     "This  is her," he straightened himself up. "We must hurry. Karik. Come
quickly here!" he waved his arm.
     "Have you found her?"
     "Come here!"
     When Karik arrived out of breath the Professor silently pointed out the
traces of a conflict on the ground.
     "What is it?" Karik turned pale.
     "It looks  as if she  had  been  attacked  here.  As you  can  see, she
resisted but . . . ."
     The Professor was silent.
     "They have torn her to pieces?" screamed Karik.
     "I do not think so," said the old man, without any assurance, "but they
have dragged her off to some den."
     "Why have they dragged her off?"
     "We can  talk about  that  later; but  now let's run  quickly along the
trail. I think I know already what it  is that has seized her. Let's run, we
may yet be in time."
     The Professor and Karik dashed along  the  trail.  They ran on, getting
further and further away from the wood  where Valya was caught in the yellow
flower.
     The wind raised tall columns of dust on the  hills, turned  and twisted
around  the Professor  and  Karik, wiping  away all traces on  the ground of
their light steps.


        CHAPTER XIV


     The meeting with  a hunting  wasp- - Treacherous  plants  - Interesting
conversations in the Oenothera wood  - The marvellous baskets - The  rain of
corpses


     THE  WOOD  HAD  BEEN  HIDDEN  FOR A  LONG TIME  BEHIND  THE HILLS.  The
travellers were now running along a wide  bare valley. To right  and left of
them steep sand mountains rose up like yellow walls.
     Here and  there by the  wayside  they  came  across grass trees.  Their
branches were broken. The leaves were sprinkled with sand.
     "She is alive!" shouted the Professor, as he ran on.  "Do you see?  She
has been clutching the bushes.  She has been struggling. We must run as fast
as ever we can. We shall yet succeed. Come on, Karik! Come on , my boy!"
     And they dashed on still faster.
     "I can  see them! I can  see them!" shouted  Karik.  "Look!  Over there
beyond the trees. There they are fighting."
     The grass trees rocked about as if someone was shaking them hard.
     "It's  little Valya! She is fighting!"  Karik  croaked  hoarsely. "Make
haste, Professor, make haste!"
     The Professor and Karik became immensely cheered. But when they came up
to the sparse trees there was nothing there.
     The trees  were  crushed to  the ground. A wide track led off Somewhere
farther into a thicket of the grassy jungle.
     "Come on! She is not far off!" shouted the Professor,  and dashed along
the trail.
     The trees came to an end and they  were  once more running on dead, dry
sand. Suddenly the Professor stopped. Karik nearly ran into him.
     "Stop!" growled the old man.
     "What is it?" asked Karik, softly.
     The Professor gently nudged Karik and pointed with his hand.
     Away  over the  yellow sand the boy  could  see  a  winged, long-legged
creature very like a wasp. It was dragging a huge grub along the ground. The
grub was big  and several  times  as large  as  the  wasp.  It was resisting
desperately, but it was clear to see it could not get  out of  the clutching
grasp of the wasp. The wasp was dragging it, leaving  a broad trail  on  the
ground.
     It was along this trail that the travellers had been running.
     "It's  a  sand  ammophilia  or hunting  wasp,"  the  Professor  grunted
gloomily. "It  has got  hold of a grub called  a 'leather jacket' - the most
terrible  ravager of wheat and beet fields.  'Leather jackets' become 'Daddy
Longlegs' flies. . . ."
     Karik interrupted. Gazing perplexedly at the old man, he asked:
     "But where is Valya then?"
     "We  must turn back," said the Professor. "She cannot have gone far. We
must look for her near the  bay. If we haven't found her by nightfall  we'll
set fire to some marsh gas. Valya will see the fire and will naturally guess
that it must  be us. Even if she does  not guess she will certainly  come to
the fire.
     By  now Karik  could  hardly  believe that they would  ever find  Valya
again.
     "She  is lost!  We shan't find her! We cannot  possibly find  her!"  he
thought, as he strode after the old man. And everything began  to seem quite
hopeless. He  wanted  to cry but his  eyes  were dry.  He sighed  deeply and
suddenly he began to realise he was very, very tired.
     His legs trembled.  He stumbled continually.  His mouth  was quite dry.
His tongue had swollen  and was burning as  if it was in a fire. Karik  felt
that  at that  moment he  could have drunk a whole pail of iced water at one
gulp,  but around him was nothing but dead, dry sand.  There was no water to
be found in such a wilderness.
     "If only there was some sort of stream or  even  a puddle,"  he thought
longingly, looking around in every direction.
     Then suddenly at the  foot  of  a yellow hill he  spotted a tall,  bare
stem.
     The stem was rocking gently in the breeze.
     Karik went  over  towards  it. Below the stem there  spread out  fleshy
grey-green leaves.
     Out of the leaves there protruded like the eyelashes of an enormous eye
slender curving whips.
     At the top of each eyelash there hung a huge silvery drop.
     "Dew!"  shouted Karik, rushing towards  the  strange  leaves. "Come on!
I'll get there first. I must have a drink of dew."
     Karik jumped over a ditch.
     "Stop!"  commanded the Professor.  "Do you  hear?  Stop!  Come back  at
once!"
     "But I want a drink," said Karik.
     The old man jumped over the ditch and quickly barred the way to Karik.
     "It's not dew. You mustn't drink it."
     He took Karik by the shoulder and led him up to the strange plant.
     "Look!" he said.
     He got a rock from  the ground and swinging it with  his arms hurled it
into the centre of one of the drops.
     No sooner had  the rock touched  the leaf than the whips bent  over and
covered it up tightly.
     The rock disappeared.
     "What is it?" marvelled Karik.
     "The  sun  dew plant," replied the old  man  calmly, "an insect-eating,
treacherous sort of plant."
     "How is that?"  Karik  was more  amazed.  "Surely we  haven't any  such
plants. They only grow in hot countries. I read about them in some book."
     "It is true," said the Professor, "that there are many more such plants
in hot  countries than we have here, but  all the  same  they do occur here.
They  are most frequently met with where the soil is very poor. In such soil
the ordinary plants cannot survive. But these treacherous plants do  not  do
so badly, even  on poor  soil.  The soil does  not feed them - they exist by
hunting.  They catch insects and suck the nourishing juices out  of them. In
this way they live and  indeed  multiply. Neither animal nor vegetable, they
are both one  and the other together. Remember now: as well as  the sun  dew
plant various  kinds of primroses and pitcher  plants  trap  insects; and in
ponds sometimes you come across the treacherous bladderwort which even traps
small fish. There are quite a number of these carnivorous plants, my dear. I
could name more than five hundred for you, but. . . ."
     "Stop!" screamed Karik. "It is all quite  clear now. Valya has perished
in one of these plants."
     "Wha-a-t?" The Professor stopped and gazed at Karik uneasily.
     "Yes, yes. I remember. She shouted out to me  'I am going to climb  the
tree.' This means she climbed the tree but it would  not let  her  get down.
That's why I didn't find her in the wood."
     The old man seized Karik by the hand. "Follow me, Karik!"
     And they dashed, jumping over the yellow hillocks.
     "And  how do they  eat?"  shouted Karik, as  he  ran. "All  at once  or
slowly?"
     "These plants," replied the Professor, panting, "begin by pouring juice
over their  victim and  keep it until  it gets  softened, then they suck the
juices out of it."
     "But will Valya not get soft?" asked Karik.
     "Don't talk nonsense !"
     The  Professor grasped Karik's hand more  firmly and  dragged him along
after him.
     They dashed on and on until they finally reached the  bay where the nut
was still floating dark and wet.
     "Here we are," shouted Karik. "Stop, it's here!"
     Breathing  heavily  they  stopped on a high hill.  Below them  lay  the
yellow waste. To the right of the travellers a small wood showed green.
     "But where  are these  trees?" asked the  Professor.  "I cannot  see  a
single insect-eating plant at this moment."
     "All the same  it was  there," asserted  Karik hastily.  "I remember it
quite well.  Little Valya  vanished  there  in  that wood"; and Karik  waved
towards  the side of the  wood where  the branching trees stood  with  their
yellow balls.
     "In that  wood?" queried the Professor.  "There  where we  have already
been? You are sure she climbed one of these particular trees?"
     "Well, yes. There are no others there."
     The  Professor went over  and  looked at the yellow  balls closely  and
suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead, laughing.
     "My goodness! Why on earth didn't I  think of it  before?  Why didn't I
spot it at once. Yes, of course, it's that. . . . Oy. . . ."
     He turned to Karik and quickly asked:
     "When did this happen? In the morning or the night?"
     "In the morning. The sun had not risen."
     The old man rubbed  his hands  excitedly. "Then it is now quite clear,"
he  said.  "Yes, indeed, I understand it all .  . . very  well.  . . . It is
absolutely grand."
     He sighed  noisily with relief, and,  smiling, seized Karik's hand  and
shook it heartily.
     "Valya is alive. She is there. Sitting in the flower."
     "In the flower?"
     "Yes,  certainly. This  is an Oenothera plant. Valya  is sitting in  an
Oenothera flower, in other words in an 'Evening Primrose'."
     "But isn't it dangerous?" demanded Karik.
     "No, no,"  replied  the  Professor. "We  shall soon  see  her alive and
well."
     "Then let's hurry!" shouted Karik, and seized the  old man by the hand.
"Let's climb up the Primrose quickly and help Valya to get out,"
     The Professor shook his head.
     "You see," he replied,  clearing  his voice  rather  specially, "at the
moment this would be useless. You and I  do  not know which  Oenothera Valya
climbed. That's the first thing. Let us suppose we could find the flower she
is sitting in. How should  we get  her out?  Unfortunately we could not free
her. We haven't got the strength to move the petals of  an Oenothera flower.
That is the second point."
     "But thirdly, won't Valya get suffocated in there?" demanded Karik.
     "She  won't be suffocated. The  flower  is  large and roomy. We'll wait
until the evening and the flower will open itself."
     "What an odd flower,"  said Karik, displeased. "Other flowers  open  in
the morning, and why does this open in the evening?"
     "An overseas visitor. A foreigner. Came here  from America and it still
follows its old American habits."
     Karik smiled rather unbelievingly.
     "I am not joking," continued  the  Professor, seriously. "The Oenothera
plant was brought from America. Three hundred years ago  its seeds were sent
to the botanist,  Caspar Bogen, in Europe. During these three hundred  years
the  Oenothera plant has spread all over Italy, France, Germany, Poland, and
at last appeared in our country, Russia. At the present time along the sandy
banks of many of our rivers you  will actually find more Evening Primroses -
foreigners - than you will local plants or indigenous, as they are called."
     "And it is certain to open in the evening?"
     "Quite  certain.  Every evening the flowers of  this plant open  up and
early every morning they close again.  It is not for nothing that  the plant
has been christened 'The  Night Light.' But, my dear, what  are we  going to
do? We have some hours at our disposal."
     "I," said Karik, "propose that we eat  something and  then lie down and
sleep."
     "A  reasonable  proposal."  The  Professor  nodded  his  head.  "Agreed
unanimously."
     Stretching himself and  yawning, he  stood up and  set off  towards the
bank of the river.
     "Let's go straight to  the flowers,  my  dear. We are certain  to  find
something to eat there."
     Karik cocked his  head from  side to side.  "But where did you  see any
flowers open?"
     "I haven't seen the flowers yet," said the old man, "but all the same I
can  hear quite  plainly that over there on  that  little headland bees  are
buzzing. That means there must be flowers."
     The Professor was not mistaken.
     Hardly  had they scrambled over the hilltop than they saw below them in
a valley huge trees  thrusting themselves  up  here and there.  The  tops of
these trees bent down under the weight of mauve flowers.
     The Professor hastened to one of the trees loaded with flowers, climbed
up it and shouted from on top:
     "Stay where you are!"
     He, got into one of the flowers and set to work rather laboriously.
     Karik stood below.
     He  could see through the green leaves glimpses of the Professor's red,
sunburnt back, moving up and down, as with elbows well apart the old man now
tugged and now pushed at something, like the piston of an engine.
     Karik remembered  mother.  This  was just like the way she  worked  the
dough.
     "Eh, hey," shouted the  Professor. "Catch some  fresh rolls." He looked
out of the flower, bent down and threw something to the ground.
     Round  little loaves  fell  drumming  on the leaves and  bouncing  off,
rolled on to the ground.
     Karik picked up one of the 'rolls' and bit a piece out of it.
     "Well, how's that?' asked the old man from above.
     The  'roll' was scented  and  just as  delicious  as  the Andrena bee's
pastry.
     "Is it made of flower pollen and honey?" asked Karik.
     "Yes! Pollen and nectar. Do you like it?"
     "It's lovely. What are you doing with them up there?"
     "I  am  sprinkling the pollen into  the  nectar and  kneading them like
dough."
     The 'rolls'  fell around Karik like  autumn apples  from an apple tree.
Karik collected them and stacked them in a pile.
     At length the Professor  climbed down the tree, sat  on the  ground and
choosing a 'roll' rather bigger than the rest at once bit off half of it.
     "Life is not so bad actually !" The  Professor winked in a friendly way
at Karik.
     "No," agreed Karik,  "it is possible to live here, but all the same . .
." he sighed and became silent.
     "Well, well,"  grunted  the old man, "don't worry. We'll get  home  and
everything will be grand."
     He stood up.
     "Although it is still  a long time before evening comes, we  mustn't go
away from the Oenothera wood.  Let's go  there, sit down and wait for Valya.
Bring the 'rolls.' I think Valya will like them."
     "I am certain of it," nodded Karik. "She, poor girl, has had nothing to
eat all day. Everything will please her."
     "That's  good," said the old man, "but  how are we  to  carry all these
rolls?  Without a basket we  certainly  cannot carry  more than a  few. Look
here, my boy,  you sit  here  a  little  while  whilst I go and look  for  a
basket."
     He looked to the right and to the left and then went over to one of the
big brown heaps which rose like hillocks on the river bank and, bending over
it, picked at it with his fingers.
     "Excellent," he announced, "it seems to be just what we need."
     He started to dig out a lump.
     "Here  you are, my dear, wash this  thing!"  handing Karik  a big muddy
lump.
     Karik  took it  and  trying to hold  it  as  far away  from himself  as
possible so as not to get dirty ran down to the river.
     He went into the water up to his knees and lowered the Professor's find
into the river. The water became cloudy.
     The  clay melted away like  a  piece of  butter on  a frying-pan.  Soon
something  white  appeared  from  beneath a layer of  dirt. Karik started to
scrape  off the clay with  his hand and suddenly  felt  some sort of slender
handle.
     "Apparently it is actually a basket," he marvelled.
     Soon the strong  current of water had completely washed away  the clay,
and Karik found in his hands a basket of unusual beauty.
     He lifted it by the handle, right up to his eyes and stood for a minute
gazing  in admiration  at its ornamental lattice work which looked as if  it
had been wove out of ivory.
     "How's that? Good enough for a basket?" Karik heard the old man's voice
behind him.
     "It's  exactly as if it had been made of lace," replied Karik, admiring
it. "Who ever made it?"
     "I'll tell you that later," said  the Professor, "but now wash these as
well."
     He threw  two heavy balls of clay  on the ground  and  went back to his
excavations. Karik started work.
     He carefully washed the  clay off  the  extraordinary baskets and stood
them side by side on the bank; but the Professor brought more and more.
     One basket was even more amazing than the others.
     Fine silvery stems were platted- together in ornamented squares. On the
squares  there were screens pierced by  the stems and decorated  with stars,
leaves and garlands. One would have thought that such delicate  baskets must
have been made by the  hands of a master craftsman. One basket reminded them
of some sort of tiny  palace with openwork  towers and  fine Gothic windows.
Silver lattice work stood up around the palace-like walls.  These walls were
decorated with flowers, stags' antlers and stars. Some of them were not like
baskets at all, but Karik did not throw them away but stood them beside  the
baskets.
     It  was as  though dishes, vases, helmets,  spheres, stars,  cubes  and
crowns had been woven out of ivory.
     "And they are all different!" marvelled Karik.
     "Yes," said the  Professor, "they are every  sort of  shape. You  could
study them  for a lifetime and yet every day you  would always  discover new
forms of the plant."
     "What?" Karik  turned quickly  to the Professor.  "Did  you say  it's a
plant?"
     "Yes, it  is  a single-celled  water  weed.  Diatoms,  more  exactly  -
membranous  plants. In these beautiful basket-like membranes live the simple
water plants - the  diatoms.  Thus, in this one,"  the old man pointed  to a
round  basket, "there  lived  the heliopelta  diatom; in these triangles - a
tritserata; in this rhomboid  - a navicula. That which you hold in your hand
is only  the skeleton of the diatom. The water plants die, but their  strong
membranes remain. In tens or even hundreds of years the amazing baskets will
not have been destroyed by age."
     "Oho!" said  Karik. "They are certainly  very  strong. Look, you  can't
break them."
     The Professor laughed.
     "That is because the membrane is made of silica. That's a ' very strong
material."
     "You said that this was a water plant. That  means they live in  water.
How is it that they - ?"
     "You want to ask how they got on to the land? Apparently they must have
been deposited on the bank by  a flood or a storm.  Or maybe  very long  ago
there was a  lake here which was filled with diatoms from the surface to the
bottom."
     "Such little things! How could they fill a lake?"
     "Yes, they are small, but against that there  are so many of them. Like
dust in a broad sunbeam they exist throughout the whole mass  of  the water.
Millions and millions. Their life is short. They are born and having lived a
few hours they die. Day  and  night  in  seas, lake and rivers  there  falls
without ceasing a rain of their corpses.
     "Their bodies lie on the bottom. On their bodies new bodies fall. Layer
after layer the  pile of millions of diatom bodies rises up and thousands of
years pass. The diatoms rise  from the bottom of the  rivers  in islands and
shoals.  The river divided course  around them into  branches, they make the
river deltas. By this means. they change the  course  of the rivers. By this
means  they  change geography.  Huge  lakes slowly die under  the  layers of
diatoms. They turn into swamps. They vanish from the map.
     "Not far from Leningrad there is the fortress of Kronstadt. You have to
go 30  kilometres  of a  water journey  to reach it.  But in  two and a half
thousand years it will  be  possible to go  from  Leningrad to Kronstadt  on
foot. The bodies of the diatoms  will  have covered  the gap between  with a
dense, firm causeway.
     "So you see these teeny creatures, unnoticed by man, change the face of
the earth.
     "Well! the membrane of the diatom has new significance  now. Choose for
yourself baskets for the 'rolls.'
     Karik  thoughtfully  filled two little baskets with  'rolls'  and  went
after the Professor.
     They  returned to the Oenothera wood, laid their baskets  under  a tree
and stretched themselves out in the cool shadow. With their arms under their
heads, they lay there talking quietly, but both started very soon to yawn.
     "Let's sleep," proposed the old man.
     "You sleep and I'll keep guard," said Karik.
     The Professor went to sleep.
     Karik lay beside  him and listened to the measured breathing of the old
man. He  started to  think  how pleased  mother would  be  when he and Valya
arrived  home  and how she  would  exclaim when he started to tell her about
this wonderful journey.
     Karik's eyes felt full of sand.
     He  turned  on  his  side and was  soon  just  as  fast asleep  as  the
Professor.
     In their sleep they heard  some indistinct noise and soft steps as if a
wild  beast was creeping up  to them. All was silent.  Then suddenly a  very
ordinary human voice shouted.
     "Ah, here you are ! Whatever has happened?"
     The Professor and Karik opened their eyes.


        CHAPTER XV

     Karik makes the  acquaintance of  a lion  ant  - A  caw hospital  - The
bumble bee's larder  - Mysterious lights - An extraordinary horse - Besieged
by flies

     IN THE ROSY GLOW OF THE EVENING SUNSET, THERE IN FRONT OF the Professor
and Karik stood Valya: the real live Valya.
     She held in her hands one of the diatom baskets and she was attentively
examining its  silvery pattern. She first put the little basket  up close to
her eyes, then lifted it high above her  head and  peered at it with one eye
screwed up.
     "Take  a  look, citizens!" grinned  Karik. "The next instalment of  the
film  'The  girl   from  Kamchatka'  has  commenced.   The  missing   damsel
mysteriously appears on the west coast."
     The Professor didn't say anything. He  just  clasped Valya  to him  and
silently stroked her hair.
     Valya wriggled out of  his  arms  and stretching out the diatom  basket
towards him, demanded:
     "Did you really make this yourself? What is it made of? And why does it
smell so delicious? Can we eat it?"
     "You cannot eat the basket but you may certainly cat the 'rolls' in the
basket," answered the old man.
     "How many  do you want? Two? Three?" asked Karik, taking the  rolls out
of a basket.
     "Five! I want five!" Valya answered quickly.
     The Professor and Karik laughed.
     "That is what they call famished!" said Karik.
     "It doesn't  matter,  it  doesn't  matter! Let her eat what  she wants.
Indeed, we might all have a bite with you. Would you like something?"
     "I could manage it !" agreed Karik.
     The Professor arranged the baskets of 'rolls' opposite Karik and Valya,
and with a wide hospitable sweep of the arm invited the children to supper.
     Valya took a bite of 'roll,' munched it, and announced:
     "Most delicious!" and proceeded to stuff her two cheeks with 'roll'.
     The other two  watched her smilingly. Karik winked at the Professor and
asked in a very innocent way:
     "Is  it  true that there was a man in Moscow who had the appetite of an
elephant?"
     "I never heard that," said the Professor.
     "But I heard it. They say he ate ten plates of soup."
     "And I could eat them!" said Valya, shoving a huge piece of 'roll' into
her mouth.
     Karik nudged the old man  with his elbow. "And for a  second  course he
ate fifteen tender chops."
     "And I could eat fifteen!" rejoiced Valya.
     "Lastly, he ate twenty dishes of fruit salad," continued Karik.
     "But I would like thirty!"
     Karik  moved  the basket away from himself and  wiped  his fingers on a
petal.
     "Then this chap tied a napkin across his chest and said:
     "Well, I think I must have swallowed a worm. So now, if you please, I'd
like to start my proper dinner!"
     "And I. . . ."
     Valya stretched out her hand  to the  eighth  'roll\ but after touching
it, thought a  little  and then sighing heavily declared:  "No, I don't want
anything now."
     "Perhaps  you  will  now tell  us  how you contrived, to  get  into the
Oenothera flower," said the Professor, clapping her on the shoulder.
     "Karik and I were looking for you. . . . That's right, Karik?"
     Karik nodded his head.
     "I went on and on  and suddenly  I got  hungry. In the wood  there  was
something which smelt just like  a  confectioner's shop.  'I'll  climb  up a
tree,'  I  thought.  I  climbed  up.  But  then all of a sudden it shut  and
wouldn't let me out. I shouted and shouted, until even my own ears ached."
     "And you cried, surely?"
     "A little. . . . But then I slept so soundly that I didn't even  dream.
Afterwards  I heard someone shouting 'Valya, Valya!' I wanted to wake up but
I simply couldn't."
     "Well, all's well that ends well!" said the old man. "Now in order that
we shall  not  lose each other  again,  give me your  word that you will not
wander off, not even one step, from me!"
     "On my honour as a Pioneer!" said Karik.
     "On my honour saluting!" Valya saluted.
     "Then - on we go!" ordered the Professor, cheerfully, "on the march, my
dears, on the march!"
     The  travellers collected the baskets with 'rolls' and moved off beside
the river.
     By nightfall they reached a big hill. Here  in some sort  of  hole they
spent the  night, and then next morning, having  eaten some scented 'rolls',
they continued their journey.
     Thus they proceeded for several days, spending the night in flowers, in
shells, in empty wasps' nests, under stones, and in mucky damp dens.
     They fed on nectar, bees' honey, butterflies' eggs and green milk.
     In the  valley  of  Three Rivers the Professor succeeded  in  killing a
hedge sparrow. The travellers had roast and smoked  fowl for three days  and
indeed would have had sufficient meat for a further fortnight had not 'skin'
beetles attacked them on their journey, carried off all their provisions and
very nearly disabled the Professor.

     * * * * *

     Every day  they got nearer and nearer to the  lake on the opposite side
of which stood the pole landmark.
     According to the Professor's calculations they were  due to get to  the
lake the following day in the evening. They had then only to get  across the
lake, when they should be able to land quite near to the landmark.
     "In a few days we should be home !" the Professor assured the children.
     But their guide's calculations were not to prove correct.
     When the travellers were near the lake an unfortunate event occurred.
     It happened in the early morning.
     The  Professor and  the children had  just emerged from  the  cavern in
which they had passed the night and they were  beginning their march  in the
cold morning dew.
     "I declare there's a frost!" shivered the old man.
     Shaking  with  cold and  with  their  teeth  chattering the  travellers
marched  up hill and down dale. It seemed to them as if their bare feet were
moving over ice sprinkled here and there with earth. They wanted to stop and
tuck their feet up under themselves like a goose standing on the ice does.
     At last the children could stand it no longer and  in order to get warm
they started to run ahead.
     "Don't run too far !" the old man shouted after them.
     But the children were already dashing  towards  a chain  of high hills,
overtaking  each other,  jumping in  their chase over wide  holes and little
rivers.
     "Come back!" shouted the old man. "Come back, Karik! Come here, Valya?"
     But Karik only waved his hand and quickly running up on to the crest of
a hill disappeared behind it.
     Valya stopped as  if undecided whether to turn back or to follow Karik,
but,  after hesitating  a little, went  off after her  brother  and was also
disappearing behind the hill.
     The Professor, alarmed, quickened his steps.
     Then suddenly from behind the hill came a desperate cry.  A few moments
later Valya  reappeared  on  the top of  the hill. She waved her  hands  and
called to the Professor for help.
     "Quickly, quickly! . . . They are attacking!" she shouted.
     The old man ran as fast as ever he could. He simply flew up the hill.
     "Where is he? Where?" he panted at Valya.
     "There! There he is!" Valya replied.
     At the bottom  of  a sort of funnel up to  its neck in sand  a terrible
monster  was twisting and  digging. A large  black head  with  long  curving
pincers was rapidly throwing up sand and rocks in a regular spray.
     On the slope of the funnel  stood Karik, quite dazed. He was helplessly
covering his head with his hands and turning this way and that way. Sand and
rocks hurtled straight at him. He fell down, got up and fell down again. The
monster did not stop  showering him. The sandy wall of the funnel  fell away
under his  feet and Karik started to slide down,  down, down, right into the
monster's lair.
     "Turn  on  your  back,"  shouted  the  Professor.  But  Karik  couldn't
understand anything and couldn't hear.  Then the old man rushed down, seized
Karik by the arms and clambered out of the funnel, up the crumbling side.
     A  regular hail of rocks followed  the fugitives. But the Professor set
his teeth  and, not letting go of Karik, quickly  climbed upwards, with  his
head well down in his shoulders and bending down to the very ground.
     At last he got out of the  funnel, carefully laid  Karik on  the ground
and grunted:
     "Goodness gracious! are we really out of it?"
     Karik  lay there  pale  with a  thin  stream of blood creeping down his
cheek. His head and  the  whole of his spider's web suit were  powdered with
sand.
     Valya ran up to her brother.
     "Is he alive?" she demanded of the Professor in  alarm, as she  dropped
on her knees beside her brother.
     "He's alive all right," said the old man, frowning. "He'll soon recover
consciousness!"
     "The sooner the better! We must get away from here as soon as possible.
That frightful thing will climb out and start throwing stuff at us again."
     "It  won't climb out!"  replied  the  Professor  curtly,  and,  looking
angrily at  Valya, continued, "Didn't I tell you, didn't I shout at you? Oh,
no . . . must have it your own way!"
     He put his ear to Karik's chest, then  felt for  his pulse  and looking
skywards started to move his lips, making no sounds.
     Karik sighed.
     "Can you hear me?" asked the Professor, loudly.
     Karik  raised himself up, gazing at  the Professor with dull eyes.  His
lips moved ever so slightly.
     "It's .. . gone?" he asked in a weak voice.
     "It's gone  away, it's gone away !" said the  Professor. "Now how about
you? Can you get up?"
     "I think I can!" said Karik.
     Swaying, he stood up, said "Come on!" and clenched his teeth.
     For some time the travellers moved on in silence, but the old man could
not remain angry for long. When presently they sat down to rest he looked at
Karik and laughed:
     "What a hero. . . . Eh? Look at him! Fell into a lion's den!"
     "I was unlucky," said  Karik. "I was running and running - and suddenly
the funnel appeared and - well! I rolled down it."
     "You would do much better  if you watched  your step instead of chasing
wild geese.  A little longer -and you would have made  a nice  dinner  for a
'lion-ant'."
     "What did you say it was called, a 'lion-ant'?" demanded Valya.
     "Yes, that's what it is called," nodded the old man.
     "However, this was not  actually  a 'lion-ant' itself but its larva. It
doesn't live  in a  hole itself, it flies about, but most often climbs about
trees. I think you must have actually seen one at one time or other. . . ."
     "What is it? What's it like?"
     "It  is  rather  like a  dragonfly.  But it  is  an  idler,  a terrible
lazybones. It sits on a tree letting its four wings flop. Yes, and it'll sit
there  all day long,  just as if it had been stuck there on a pin.  But this
bully which sits in a hole and hurls stones - this is its larva. That is how
it  hunts.  You saw what a cunning  trap it had set for ants who don't  look
where they are going!"
     "For ants?"
     "Not  only for ants. It doesn't let other  insects get out. But what is
most insulting," smiled the Professor, "this creature who wanted  to eat you
hasn't even got a mouth."
     "Well, then. . . . How was it going to eat me? With its feet?"
     "Yes, in a way - with its pincers!" replied the Professor. "You see, my
dears, the 'lion-ant' has no mouth opening, but on the contrary has two huge
pincers on its head with which  it attaches itself to  its prey, and through
which it sucks their blood. Another two or  three minutes and you would have
made the acquaintance of these pincers."
     The Professor got up from the ground and said:
     "Well, ready? Let's go on!"
     Valya trotted behind the old man and Karik dragged himself along behind
them both, trying not to get separated from Valya.
     At times a sharp pain made him jump and stop. It seemed to him as if he
had trodden on a long, sharp needle.
     For all that he kept going. Frowning, making faces, biting his lips, he
nevertheless kept moving and did not drop behind a single step.
     The old man looked  around every so often and stole a glance  at Karik.
When Karik stumbled the Professor asked him with alarm in his voice:
     "Well,  what's  the matter with you? Perhaps you would like  to lean on
me, wouldn't you?"
     "No,  no, it's nothing!"  replied Karik,  hastily, "it's just.  . . . I
trod on a sharp stone!"
     At last  Karik  began  to  lag.  He now no  longer  walked but  hopped,
trailing one leg behind the other one after him along the ground.
     The Professor stopped and said:
     "Well, I can see you are quite exhausted."
     "No, no!" protested Karik. "I could do another fifty miles  still."  He
straightened himself up and started to walk quickly forward but, having made
a few steps, fell,  and  clutching his  bad leg groaned. Then the  Professor
without saying a word lifted Karik up on to his back.
     "No, I  can stick it. Let me  go! I  can  manage it  myself!"  resisted
Karik.
     "Sit there!" scolded the  Professor. " 'I can  stick  it,'  indeed! You
think you're a champion."
     Holding  Karik tightly,  he walked on frowning and  looking down at his
feet. Beside him came Valya, with a guilty look on her face.
     Karik  laid his head  on  the Professor's shoulder, his  eyes were soon
shut and he was sound asleep.
     When next he opened his eyes he saw that he was  lying on the bank of a
big lake. The Professor was standing  on a rock and using  his hand to shade
his eyes was  gazing  at  the  opposite  bank  where the  landmark stood  up
solitary in the distance.
     Karik heard Valya ask something but what it was he could not make out.
     He raised his head from the ground and listened. At that moment the old
man was speaking:
     "We'll build  a boat and  sail or  row across. But to  begin with let's
look  for a  suitable lodging-place. We may probably have to spend a week on
the bank."
     "But why ever?"
     "What do you mean why ever? You must have seen how ill our Karik is?"
     "You don't need to!" said Karik, raising himself on his elbows.
     "Don't need what?"
     "You  don't need to  spend a  week on the  shore.  I can crawl into the
boat, and I am sure I could row!"
     "Stuff and nonsense!" the Professor waved his  hands. "What will happen
if a storm suddenly springs up. You'll go to the bottom like a stone."
     The old man bent over Karik and carefully touched his swollen knee with
his hand.
     "Look how blue it has become! And it hurts, no doubt?"
     "It is painful," Karik wrinkled up his  eyes. "It burns all the time as
if someone was ironing the knee with a hot iron."
     The Professor  started to think  and then suddenly clapping his hand to
his head ran to the lake.
     "0-oh, isn't  it swollen!" Valya touched Karik's sore  leg with the top
of her finger.
     "Yes. If you  had been bombarded like  that  you would be swollen too!"
rejoined Karik, rubbing his bad knee.
     "If you don't put your  weight on that leg it will  soon go!  Would you
like me to find you a crutch?"
     At this moment the Professor arrived back. He held in front  of himself
on outstretched hands a tiny leaf from which water was  trickling down on to
the sand.
     "Well, now, turn a little!" said the old man, "and give me your leg."
     Then  having laid  the wet,  cold leaf  on  the  hot,  swollen knee  he
skilfully bound up Karik's bad leg.
     "How's that?"
     "Very good," said Karik, "a sort of compress. It started  to get better
at once."
     "Excellent! Lie quiet, and Valya and I will go and  look for a place to
spend the night."
     As luck  would have it  the  travellers did  not  have to look long for
their refuge. The whole bank  of the lake was pierced with deep caverns. The
old man and Valya started inspecting first one and then another, and at last
chose a dry sandy cave with a low roof and narrow entrance.
     "Let's stay in this one!" suggested Valya.
     The Professor agreed.
     He returned  to the bank, lifted Karik and  carried him  to the cave in
his arms.
     "Lie  there!" he said, putting  Karik  down beside  the wall.  "Is that
comfortable for you?"
     Karik  did not answer. He was already sleeping the  heavy sleep  of the
sick.
     The old man and  Valya sat at  the entrance and, by the fading light of
evening, ate a supper of the remains of the honey dough.
     "Now we must go to sleep!" said the Professor.
     Blocking  up  the  entrance  to  the  cave  with  rocks  the travellers
stretched themselves out on the dry sand and were soon asleep.


     * * * * * *



     Towards morning  the Professor dreamt he saw  a lion-ant.  The lion was
firmly holding Karik in its curved pincers and was staring at him  with huge
protruding eyes.
     Karik was hitting the  monster on the head with his arms  and  legs and
quietly groaning.
     The old man opened his eyes.
     "Good gracious, I was dreaming!" he thought.
     However, the groans continued. It wasn't a dream after all!
     "Karik, are you all right?" the Professor hailed him.
     Karik did not answer.
     It was dark in the cave.
     The old man got up and feeling the wall with  his hand made  his way to
the  mouth  of the cave. In the  darkness, touching the barricade  of  rocks
which blocked up the entrance, he  took off two big  rocks from the  top and
gently, so as not to wake the children, lowered them down to the ground.
     It now became light in the cave.
     The grey light which comes  before the dawn filtered in and touched the
floor where the children were sleeping.
     In the centre of the cave Valya could be seen curled up like a cat,
     Karik  was sleeping near the  wall with his arms flung widely apart. He
was all red in  the face. Sweat stood on his forehead. He was shivering  and
groaning in his sleep.
     The Professor  went  over to him,  bent down  and  quietly  touched the
swollen knee wrapped in the leaf.
     Without waking Karik drew up the leg and groaned loudly.
     "Do you want something to drink, Karik?" he asked.
     Karik  opened his  eyes. Unable  to  grasp  anything,  he gazed at  the
Professor for a long time and then turned away from him towards the wall.
     "Would you like me to get you some water?"
     "No-o!" said Karik, through his teeth.
     "But would you like me to change the compress?" asked the old man.
     "Yes . . . compress, please!"
     The  Professor brought  a  fresh damp petal and fastened it around  the
swollen knee.
     "How's that? Better?"
     "Better!" sighed Karik.
     "That's fine! Sleep away! Meanwhile  I'll go  and look for something to
eat.  If  Valya  wakes up, don't let her  go out  of the  cave. I'll be back
soon."
     Karik silently nodded his head. '
     The  Professor filled  up  the  entrance  to the cave  with  rocks and,
looking around himself in order to remember quite clearly where the children
were, went off to find something for breakfast.
     Not far from the cave a hill rose up covered with thick bushes.
     The  old man  went  to the foot of  the  hill,  examined it  carefully,
touched the soft feathery foliage of the green bushes.
     "Evidently  it is moss! Yes, indeed, just ordinary moss. Now let's  see
if there is anything eatable here."
     He climbed daringly through the  thick growth of moss.  But he had only
gone a few steps when he disappeared up to the waist.
     Falling, he managed to clutch hold of some of the foliage.
     With his legs swinging above a dark hole he peered downwards and in the
half darkness  descried earthy arches and a smooth, trampled floor. The weak
light filtered in  from above through  the thick  foliage and  lit the  dark
cellar fitfully.
     In the depths of the cellar  along the wall white barrels stood in even
rows.
     "Apparently it's a bumble bee's store!" muttered the Professor.
     He measured with his eye the distance to the earthern floor and letting
go the  foliage with his hands dropped down. The earth beneath his  feet was
dry and warm.
     Examining  the  cellar with curiosity  the old man  went  over  to  the
barrels.  They  were  each of them closed with a white  cover. He lifted the
cover off one of the barrels, bent over it and sniffed.
     "That's just what it is!"
     The barrel was full  to the very  brim with  scented  honey.  Alongside
stood other barrels, and they too were filled with honey.
     It was very much like a storeroom in which  supplies  were kept "for  a
rainy day."
     In actual fact this was what it was - a bumble bee's storeroom.
     The female bumble bee lays its eggs in a nest and leaves alongside them
little balls of honey and  pollen.  The larvae come out of the eggs, eat the
balls of honey and  pollen and turn  into cocoons,  which are barrel-shaped.
After a little  while the young bumble bees open the top of the barrels  and
fly out. But the  cocoons are not wasted. In the summer the bumble bees fill
them with honey and in cold, rainy weather, when  it is not possible to  fly
out of the nest, they feed on this.
     The Professor,  in no  hurry,  breakfasted and  then chose one  of  the
stronger barrels and started to drag it out of the storeroom.
     This was no easy task.
     The barrel, as if it had been alive, jerked itself out of the old man's
hands,  bumped  him  and knocked  him  off his feet. But  for all  this  the
Professor managed to get it up out of the cellar.
     His knees shook. His  hands were numb. His heart beat so furiously that
he could feel it clearly even in his temples.
     "And now how can I roll it to the cave," he puzzled.
     He was afraid to  turn  the barrel on  its side and roll  it along  the
ground as one normally rolls the ordinary barrel. The lid might open and all
the honey would pour out on to the ground.
     "There's nothing for it but to try some other way." He gripped the edge
of the barrel with his hands and shook it fiercely.
     The barrel rocked.
     "Aha! It'll soon come!" he rejoiced.
     He tipped the  barrel over  on one side and proceeded to push,  at  the
same time rolling the  barrel from side to  side as  if he wanted to  bore a
hole in the earth.
     Slowly, step by step, pushing the barrel with his hands and leaning his
full weight against if, the old man drove it to the cave.
     When the Professor got to the bank of the lake Valya came to meet him,
     "Up  already?"  he  asked, stopping and taking  breath.  "How is  Karik
getting on?"
     "He is asleep! Let me help you!"
     "Certainly, help if you can!"
     "But what is this? What is the barrel?"
     "Honey!"
     "A whole barrel! That's really grand!"
     Valya  took hold  of  the  barrel  and began to push  it,  helping  the
Professor.
     With their combined efforts  they  rolled the barrel into the cave  and
stood it in a corner.
     "You have breakfast, little Valya," said the  Professor, wiping his hot
neck with his hands, "I must go and look for a bed  for Karik. It's not very
comfortable for him, poor chap, to sleep on the bare ground."
     He went out.
     Valya successfully threw off the lid and at once dug her hands into the
honey.  Her  fingers  became  covered  with the scented liquid. She  ate  so
enthusiastically that soon her  face, neck and  arms, up to the very elbows,
were coated as if with glue, in amber-yellow honey.
     "Now what  shall I do?"  Valya spread her sticky  fingers apart. "There
isn't even anything to wipe them on. I'll go to the lake and wash."
     She went out of the cave and ran to the lake.
     On  the sandy beach  Valya  stopped  to make  sure that  there  were no
monsters in the neighbourhood and only after this did she get into the water
and start to wash.
     After bathing  she ran back. On her  way back she  collected a piece of
petal and dragged it into the cave.
     "It will be useful," she considered. "It  is certain to be useful to us
now!"
     At the cave itself she  saw the Professor,  who was dragging  a mass of
feathery hair.
     "Now where have you been running to?" he asked, stopping.
     "To wash myself!"
     The Professor shook his head.
     "Now, that doesn't  please me at  all.  I warned you most seriously.  I
warned you not to go out without me."
     "But I was all covered with honey!"
     "All the more likely,"  gruff-gruffed the old man, "that a fly, wasp or
a bee would  carry  you off with the honey  -  in fact, there are few of our
neighbours here who could resist a girl covered in honey."
     He went into the cave and threw the pile of tangled hair on the floor.
     "Well, there you are, there's a bed for Karik! Yes, and there is enough
hair for you and me as well."
     "It's just  like a real  mattress!" Valya touched  the hair. "Where did
you get it?"
     "I took it from a gipsy moth!"
     "Does a gipsy moth sleep on a mattress?"
     "No," smiled the Professor, "it doesn't sleep itself. It flies. But its
next generation are covered carefully by it with this down. Neither rain nor
cold  are harmful to  the eggs of  gipsy moths,  which  lie under such dense
feathery eiderdowns."
     "What is this feathery stuff? It's surely ordinary horsehair!"
     "You forget that you and  I are not ordinary ourselves  and that is why
this down  appears  to us  as  horsehair. However, let us  make up a bed for
Karik now."
     "I'll make the bed!" said Valya.
     She laid  hair  near the sandy wall, beat  it up with  her hands as one
puffs up a pillow, then threw a big bunch of hair at the head of the bed and
went a little way away.
     "It looks quite nice," she said admiringly.
     "Excellent,"  approved the Professor. He took the sleeping  Karik up in
his  arms and transferred him to the bed. Valya opened the petal up and laid
it over Karik like a quilt.
     "He seems pretty comfortable now.  Look after  him  while I  go out for
half an hour or so," said the old man. "I have some things to do outside. If
Karik wakens feed him!"
     "Right you are," said Valya. "You go on, I have some things to do too."
     When the Professor had  gone,  Valya made up two more  beds, dragged in
two new blue quilts made  from harebell petals, swept the floor with a piece
of petal, then rolled into the cave four big stones, put a flat rock  on top
of  them  and  on top  of that  laid as a tablecloth the  white  petal of an
ox-eyed daisy.
     This provided a splendid table.
     Around the table Valya  arranged smaller stones,  put  the remainder of
the hair on these and covered it with yellow petals.
     "There are our comfy chairs!" said Valya.
     Having finished work she inspected  the cave and was very pleased  - it
was now really cosy.
     "Now we could stay here even a whole month while Karik gets well."
     She  went over  on tiptoe  to  her  brother's bed,  bent over  him  and
carefully rearranged the quilt.
     "He is asleep," she said in a whisper.
     Soon the Professor arrived back. Breathing heavily, he rolled a  second
barrel of honey into the cave and stood it up by the wall.
     "Look what I have done here," boasted Valya.
     "What's happened?" asked the old man  in alarm, but on  looking  around
the cave nodded his head approvingly. "Bravo, bravo! You're a champion! Yes,
you're  a  regular housewife!"  He praised Valya. "By  the way, I too may be
able to  add something to the comfort of our dwelling. Just here by the cave
I found an interesting little thing."
     He  went out and  in ten  minutes  returned  with a little leaf in  his
hands. Using the leaf as if it  was a tray he  carried in a mound  of oblong
little eggs.
     "What are those?" asked Valya, "Can we eat them?"
     "No," replied  the Professor, "they  cannot be eaten but they  will  be
useful to us, very useful!"
     "But what use can they be?"
     "Live and learn!"
     The Professor put the tray of eggs on a barrel and said:
     "I have been thinking  things over: Our patient will  evidently have to
stay in bed for some days. In  order not to waste  time you and I will  roll
all the  barrels of honey  into the cave and  then we can set about building
our battleship."
     "What battleship?"
     "Well, something is sure to turn up that we can make into  a ship! Then
as soon as Karik gets well, we can set out on our voyage. Since our landmark
is  on the opposite side  of the  lake, it  means  we must  go  across in  a
vessel."
     Having fed themselves on honey, Valya and the old man set about rolling
the barrels of honey from the bumble bees' store to the cave. Each time they
came back the Professor went over to Karik, listened to his uneven breathing
and felt his pulse.
     Karik slept as if he was dead.
     When the whole corner of the cave was stocked with barrels of honey the
Professor announced:
     "That's that. Now, little Valya, let's go and build a ship."
     "That will be interesting!" rejoiced the girl.
     "I don't know if it will be interesting," said her companion, "but I am
ready to wager that we'll have a spot of work to do!"
     Having closed up the entrance to  the cave  with rocks in order that no
wild beasts should get in to Karik,  the old man and the girl set out to the
lake.
     "What  can we make  the ship  out of?"  demanded Valya, marching  along
beside the Professor.
     "We'll  find  something. There are  quite a  few dry tree leaves on the
bank. We can build it out of these. This morning 1 saw behind the hills some
ordinary trees."
     "It  is very likely that the wind  carries their  leaves  here.  At any
rate, we shall soon see."
     The Professor and  Valya went along the bank  and no sooner had the old
man got a little way away from Valya than she suddenly cried out:
     "I have found it! Found it! Found it already!"
     "Where?" the old man turned to her.
     "Here we are!"
     By  the lake itself lay a huge yellow leaf with deeply  indented edges.
Thick veins spread fan-like in all directions.
     The  Professor  walked  around  the  leaf,  looked  at  it  from  every
direction, lifted its edge and looking underneath said:
     "Yes, this is an oak leaf, but unfortunately we cannot make a  ship out
of it."
     "Why not?"
     "There are galls on  the  leaf. Do you see? The whole  leaf  is covered
with galls!"
     "Galls. What are they?"
     The Professor lifted the edge of the oak leaf still higher.
     Valya squatted down  and looked under the leaf. The whole  of its lower
surface was covered with  dark balls. These balls  appeared  just as if they
had been glued  on to the leaf. Valya touched them with her hands. They were
as hard as stones.
     "We could never move such a leaf!" the old man announced.
     "Whatever are these things?" demanded Valya.
     "They are  insects' nests!" said  the Professor. "Numerous insects  lay
their eggs directly on  leaves.  But the  leaves  don't like this  and  they
protect  themselves with all  their resources against unwelcome  guests. The
cells  of the leaf collect around the  egg, trying  to push it away, just as
the white corpuscles of the blood push away  a thorn which has got into your
finger.
     "It  is for this reason  that an  inflammation  appears on  your finger
around the thorn  whilst on the leaves swellings appear - these  very galls.
They are usually called 'ink nuts' or 'oak apples,' although by no means all
of these galls are inky nor are they very inviting apples."
     "But what insects do this?" asked Valya.
     The Professor shrugged his  shoulders.  "One or  two!" he said. "Let me
see! The following  lay their eggs on leaves: 60 sorts  of  butterflies, 113
sorts of beetles, 486 sorts of flies and, well, 290 sorts of other insects."
     "Can we ever find a leaf without galls?"
     "We shall have to find one!" answered the Professor.
     It was already dusk  by the time  they at length found  a  dry oak leaf
suitable  for launching. But it lay a good  distance  from the bank, so  far
that it was quite beyond the Professor and Valya to push it into the water.
     "We'll never get it there!" Valya shook her head.
     The Professor  started to think. Stroking  his  beard he  stood  on the
leaf,  silently  gazing  at  its  thick  veins,  which  stretched  in  every
direction.
     "What  if? . . .  Yes, of course!"  gruff-gruffed the old man, and then
suddenly started laughing.
     "What are you up to?" Valya looked surprised.
     "I  am up  to  just this," replied  the Professor. "We'll  go home now.
To-morrow we'll harness a horse to do the job."
     "A horse?" Valya was still more surprised.