neath came up the faint, hollow echo of metal upon stone, bouncing and crashing, and then silence. His bed was undoubtedly in the Manoa Valley.
The gust had gone on out to sea; and Dick, in a somewhat hectic suit of vari-colored pajamas, was swinging among the branches of the slumped iron-wood tree, overhanging something like a thousand feet of atmosphere, and with its roots held gingerly in a crack of the crumbling rocks and a bit of shallow soil. For a moment he was not sure but that he was still dreaming, the situation was so sudden and impossible; but his hold was precarious, and self-preservation immediately took up the work of directing his incredulous arms and legs toward a very gentle and reverent approach to the main trunk of the tree. At last his arms clasped it, pitifully thin and inadequate though it seemed, and he clung there and tried to gather together his scattered senses and get them into working order again. At the particular point to which he was so strenuously attached, the branches happened to be exceedingly slim, probably from some dry season or from age, and the ones below seemed for the most part dead and ready to drop off of their own weight; so he managed to hitch himself a little higher and wrap himself about the trunk of the tree somewhat after the manner of a damp blanket. Having thus reached the acme of comfort to be contrived in the existing
