Wet Magic
"The last button, Ulfin," cried the voice of the unseen Princess, "press the last button," and next moment the soldier, breathless with amazement and terror, was looking stupidly at his empty hand. Ulfin, as well as the three children and the Princess, was not only invisible but intangible, the soldiers could not see or feel anything.
And what is more, neither could the Princess or the children or Ulfin.
"Oh, where are you? Where am I?" cried Mavis.
"Silence," said the Princess, "we must keep together by our voices, but that is dangerous. A la porte!" she added. How fortunate it was that none of the soldiers understood French!
As the five were invisible and intangible and as the soldiers were neither, it was easy to avoid them and to get to the arched doorway. The Princess got there first. There was no enemy near—all the soldiers were crowding around the rifled Museum case, talking and wondering, the soldier who had seized Ulfin explaining again and again how he had had the caitiff by the arm, "as solid as solid, and then, all in a minute, there was nothing—nothing at all," and his comrades trying their best to believe him. The Princess just waited, saying, "Are you there?" every three seconds, as though she had been at the telephone.
"Are you there?" said the Princess for the twenty-seventh time.
And then Ulfin said, "I am here, Princess."
"We must have connecting links," she said—"bits of seaweed would do. If you hold a piece of seaweed in your hand I will take hold of the other end of it. We cannot feel the touch of each other's hands, but we shall feel the seaweed, and you will know, by its being drawn tight that I have hold of the other end. Get some pieces for the children, too. Good stout seaweed, such as you made the nets of with which you captured us."
"Ah, Princess," he said, "how can I regret that enough? And
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