At least, I didn't see any people at first; and I was mighty glad of that, because I didn't have any clothes on. I thought I must be dead-I knew I must, after what I had been through. When a machine-gun bullet lodges in your heart, you remain conscious for about fifteen seconds– long enough to realize that you have already gone into your last spin; but you know you are dead, unless a miracle has happened to save you. I thought possibly such a miracle might have intervened to preserve me for posterity.

I looked around for the Germans and for my plane, but they weren't there; then, for the first time, I noticed the trees and shrubs and flowers in more detail, and I realized that I had never seen anything like them. They were not astoundingly different from those with which I had been familiar, but they were of species I had never seen or noticed. It then occurred to me that I had fallen into a German botanical garden.

It also occurred to me that it might be a good plan to find out if I was badly injured. I tried to stand, and I succeeded; and I was just congratulating myself on having escaped so miraculously, when I heard a feminine scream.

I wheeled about, to face a girl looking at me in open-eyed astonishment, with just a tinge of terror. The moment I turned, she did likewise and fled. So did I; I fled to the concealment of a clump of bushes.

And then I commenced to wonder. I had never seen a girl exactly like her before, nor one garbed as was she. If it hadn't been broad daylight, I would have thought she might be going to a fancy dress ball. Her body had been sheathed in what appeared to be gold sequins; and she looked as though she had either been poured into her costume, or it had been pasted on her bare skin. It was undeniably a good fit. From the yoke to a pair of red boots that flapped about her ankles and halfway to her knees, she had been clothed in sequins.