Herland | Page 9

"You'll see," he insisted. "I'll get solid with them all--and
play one bunch against another. I'll get myself elected king in no
time--whew! Solomon will have to take a back seat!"

"Where do we come in on that deal?" I demanded. "Aren't
we Viziers or anything?"

"Couldn't risk it," he asserted solemnly. "You might start a
revolution--probably would. No, you'll have to be beheaded, or
bowstrung--or whatever the popular method of execution is."

"You'd have to do it yourself, remember," grinned Jeff. "No
husky black slaves and mamelukes! And there'd be two of us and
only one of you--eh, Van?"

Jeff's ideas and Terry's were so far apart that sometimes it was
all I could do to keep the peace between them. Jeff idealized women
in the best Southern style. He was full of chivalry and sentiment,
and all that. And he was a good boy; he lived up to his ideals.

You might say Terry did, too, if you can call his views about
women anything so polite as ideals. I always liked Terry. He was
a man's man, very much so, generous and brave and clever; but
I don't think any of us in college days was quite pleased to have
him with our sisters. We weren't very stringent, heavens no! But
Terry was "the limit." Later on--why, of course a man's life is
his own, we held, and asked no questions.

But barring a possible exception in favor of a not impossible
wife, or of his mother, or, of course, the fair relatives of his
friends, Terry's idea seemed to be that pretty women were just
so much game and homely ones not worth considering.

It was really unpleasant sometimes to see the notions he had.

But I got out of patience with Jeff, too. He had such rose-
colored halos on his womenfolks. I held a middle ground, highly
scientific, of course, and used to argue learnedly about the
physiological limitations of the sex.

We were not in the least "advanced" on the woman question,
any of us, then.

So we joked and disputed and speculated, and after an
interminable journey, we got to our old camping place at last.

It was not hard to find the river, just poking along that side
till we came to it, and it was navigable as far as the lake.

When we reached that and slid out on its broad glistening bosom,
with that high gray promontory running out toward us, and the straight
white fall clearly visible, it began to be really exciting.

There was some talk, even then, of skirting the rock wall and
seeking a possible footway up, but the marshy jungle made that
method look not only difficult but dangerous.

Terry dismissed the plan sharply.

"Nonsense, fellows! We've decided that. It might take
months--we haven't got the provisions. No, sir--we've got to take
our chances. If we get back safe--all right. If we don't, why,
we're not the first explorers to get lost in the shuffle. There are
plenty to come after us."

So we got the big biplane together and loaded it with our
scientifically compressed baggage: the camera, of course; the
glasses; a supply of concentrated food. Our pockets were
magazines of small necessities, and we had our guns, of course--
there was no knowing what might happen.

Up and up and up we sailed, way up at first, to get "the lay
of the land" and make note of it.

Out of that dark green sea of crowding forest this high-