Chapter 17: The Welcome Of The Master

It was nearly twelve hours later, as their watches showed them, that the first of the weary adventurers awoke. The Very Young Man it was who first opened his eyes with a confused sense of feeling that he was in bed at home, and that this was the momentous day he was to start his journey into the ring. He sat up and rubbed his eyes vigorously to see more clearly his surroundings.

Beside him lay his two friends, fast asleep. With returning consciousness came the memory of the events of the day and night before. The Very Young Man sprang to his feet and vigorously awoke his companions.

The action of the drug again had ceased, and at first glance the scene seemed to have changed very little. The incline now was some distance away, although still visible, stretching up in a great arc and fading away into the blackness above. The ground beneath their feet still of its metallic quality, appeared far rougher than before. The Very Young Man bent down and put his hand upon it. There was some form of vegetation there, and, leaning closer, he could see what appeared to be the ruins of a tiny forest, bent and trampled, the tree-trunks no larger than slender twigs that he could have snapped asunder easily between his fingers.

“Look at this,” he exclaimed. “The woods--we’re here.”

The others knelt down with him.

“Be careful,” cautioned the Doctor. “Don’t move around. We must get smaller.” He drew the papers from his pocket.

“Rogers was in doubt about this quantity to take,” he added. “We should be now somewhere at the edge or in the forest he mentions. Yet we may be very far from the point at which he reached the bottom of that incline. I think, too, that we are somewhat larger than he was. Probably the strength of our drug differs from his to some extent.”

“How much should we take next, I wonder?” said the Big Business Man as he looked at his companions.

The Doctor took a pill and crushed it in his hand. “Let us take so much,” he said, indicating a small portion of the powder. The others each crushed one of the pills and endeavored to take as nearly as possible an equal amount.

“I’m hungry,” said the Very Young Man. “Can we eat right after the powder?”

“I don’t think that should make any difference,” the Doctor answered, and so accustomed to the drug were they now that, quite nonchalantly, they sat down and ate.

After a few moments it became evident that in spite of their care the amounts of the drug they had taken were far from equal.

Before they had half finished eating, the Very Young Man was hardly more than a third the size of the Doctor, with the Big Business Man about half-way between. This predicament suddenly struck them as funny, and all three laughed heartily at the effect of the drug.

“Hey, you, hurry up, or you’ll never catch me,” shouted the Very Young Man gleefully. “Gosh, but you’re big!” He reached up and tried to touch the Doctor’s shoulder. Then, seeing the huge piece of chocolate in his friend’s hand and comparing it with the little one in his own, he added: “Trade you chocolate. That’s a regular meal you got there.”

“That’s a real idea,” said the Big Business Man, ceasing his laughter abruptly. “Do you know, if we ever get really low on food, all we have to do is one of us stay big and his food would last the other two a month.”

“Fine; but how about the big one?” asked the Very Young Man, grinning. “He’d starve to death on that plan, wouldn’t he?”

“Well, then he could get much smaller than the other two, and they could feed him. It’s rather involved, I’ll admit, but you know what I mean,” the Big Business Man finished somewhat lamely.

“I’ve got a much better scheme than that,” said the Very Young Man. “You let the food stay large and you get small. How about that?” he added triumphantly. Then he laid carefully on the ground beside him a bit of chocolate and a few of the hard crackers they were eating. “Stay there, little friends, when you grow up, I’ll take you back,” he added in a gleeful tone of voice.

“Strange that should never have occurred to us,” said the Doctor. “It’s a perfect way of replenishing our food supply,” and quite seriously both he and the Big Business Man laid aside some of their food.

“Thank me for that brilliant idea,” said the Very Young Man. Then, as another thought occurred to him, he scratched his head lugubriously. “Wouldn’t work very well if we were getting bigger, would it? Don’t let’s ever get separated from any food coming out.”

The Doctor was gigantic now in proportion to the other two, and both he and the Big Business Man took a very small quantity more of the drug in an effort to equalize their rate of bodily reduction. They evidently hit it about right, for no further change in their relative size occurred.

All this time the vegetation underneath them had been growing steadily larger. From tiny broken twigs it grew to sticks bigger than their fingers, then to the thickness of their arms. They moved slightly from time to time, letting it spread out from under them, or brushing it aside and clearing a space in which they could sit more comfortably. Still larger it grew until the tree-trunks, thick now almost as their bodies, were lying broken and twisted, all about them. Over to one side they could see, half a mile away, a place where the trees were still standing--slender saplings, they seemed, growing densely together.

In half an hour more the Very Young Man announced he had stopped getting smaller. The action of the drug ceased in the others a few minutes later. They were still not quite in their relative sizes, but a few grains of the powder quickly adjusted that.

They now found themselves near the edge of what once was a great forest. Huge trees, whose trunks measured six feet or more in diameter, lay scattered about upon the ground; not a single one was left standing. In the distance they could see, some miles away, where the untrodden forest began.