The Goblin of Curtery Sink

When they left Moretonhampstead on their way to Tavistock, there was a brief moment of sunshine, lighting up the bare rolling hills all about them; but the clouds closed in again almost at once. England's Dartmoor was appropriately gloomy and forbidding. They rode in silence, Mildred scowling at the overcast firmament, Harry appraising the terrain, which fascinated him: hill after low barren hill, clothed in nothing but grass and bracken, with frequent stark outbursts of rock but not a single tree to justify its name of Dartmoor Forest. Still, it was everything Thomas Hardy had promised; or was it Lorna Doone? Anyway, it was great.

"Remember." he said, "stop at the Dart River."

"You say when and I'll stop." Mildred said: and then, genially: "Harry, tell me, why are you doing this? I mean, you've got this big problem, big problem, with the firm, and now you've got nothing better to do than trek across this miserable landscape on a day like this. And what is all this about Gran-mere Pool and a mailbox?"

"I'll explain," Harry said. "You know what they say when they're asked why they climb Mount Everest-'Because it's there'? Well, the best that poor little England can do in the because-it's-there line is this hike to Cranmere Pool, which is, I believe, the spot farthest away from human habitation in the whole country. A whole seven miles away from the nearest house."

"And what's with the mailbox?"

"Well, you know, you spend all that effort, you like to have a destination and a proof. With a mountain it's easy: You get to the top and take a picture. With Cranmere Pool it's a mailbox. You put your letter in and take out the one you find there, and you are honor bound to deliver the other fellow's letter to the nearest post office, where they will hail you as a hero and put the cherished 'Granmere Pool' postmark on it. And that's the whole story."

"Except for why you want to go on this pilgrimage."

"Well, honey." Harry said, "why not? As you know, I like long walks. This is an interesting challenge. Also, as you point out, I have this big problem with the company. Maybe this solitary communion with nature will have beneficial results-you know, the Thoreau hit."

"OK." Mildred said doubtfully. "Now just let me volunteer an observation or two. It's going to rain, that is inevitable. You are in pretty fair shape for a guy of thirty-two, but you haven't been out of that lab for six months, and you have about fifteen miles to go in unfamiliar country. You're dressed for the city, not hiking. The places where you like your long walks, such as (continued on page 120)Goblin of Curtery Sink(continued from page 109) golf courses-and sometimes with a little assist from a golf cart-are a far cry from this terrain. In my opinion, you are going to be one miserable baby before this day is over."

"I disagree," Harry said. "I have my coat, and galoshes, and a compass, and a map, and a lunch, and everything I need to hike across a few hills." He became suddenly alert, looking from map to landscape; saw that they were dipping down into a broad valley with a bridge ahead.

"That is it," he declared. "Let me out here. This is the Dart."

Mildred braked and stopped at the side of the road.

Harry laid the map on their knees. "Now look at this," he said, perhaps a bit too importantly. "Here we are. Here is the course of the Dart River. Here is Cranmere Pool. I am going to follow the Dart up to its head, and then go down to Cranmere Pool, where I am going to mail my postcard to myself. Then I am going to follow the east Okement River right down to the neighborhood of Okehampton, where I'll meet you at The Crown. I should be there by five at the very latest-that'll give me seven hours from now. You will continue on this road to Tavistock and then turn north on the road to Okehampton. All clear?"

"All clear," Mildred said without enthusiasm.

Harry got out of the car and then reached back to the rear seat for his coat, galoshes and lunch. "Ta-ta," he said. Somewhat impeded by this gear, he scrambled over the stone wall and down the embankment. At the river's edge he turned to salute his wife, but she had already put the car in motion and did not see his gesture.

Harry Gibbsee set off up the hill, full of good spirits. The footing was firm, the incline gradual, and the air invigoratingly cool. Ahead, a mile away, a low hump called Hartland Tor invited him to assail and conquer. He foresaw a stroll uncomplicated by much exertion, with ample opportunity for introspection in ideal surroundings; of which, as he knew, he was in great need.

For Harry Gibbsee was in a mess. It appeared likely that he would lose his job, in which case his future was uncertain, to say the most. He was employed by the ancient and senescent firm of Digby & Sons, manufacturers of ceramic products. A century ago it had supplied the best line of chamber pots in New England; now, after successive generations of mismanagement, it was struggling along on a motley line of saucepans, surgical trays, ceramic bricks, clay tile, insulators and flowerpots. A management consultant had recommended that the company diversify into products with more modern appeal, and Harry had been hired as chief research chemist, at a very gratifying salary, to discover what "modern" product the firm should concentrate on. But his efforts, alas, had plunged the organization into far deeper trouble.

The Old Bastard, unfortunately, had been against any departure from tried-and-true ways from the beginning. A wizened Yankee with a face like a skull, he had shown Harry to his corner of the main ceramics hall with the words "Well, young man, this is where you can set up your retorts and alembics. I trust that the noise of the useful work being done in this factory will not disrupt your trains of thought."

Well, he had made the O.B. eat crow soon enough. After studying the facilities and skills available at the plant, he had concentrated on the field of molded plastics. In his little corner of the hall, while the money-losing flowerpots all around him grew from slip to kiln to finished ware, he manipulated his gooey concoctions. Every Friday the boss would make a point of handing him his check personally, with a remark such as, "Well, this makes $11,500 we've paid into your pocket. When do you plan to make your first payment into ours?"

Harry mumbled something to himself.

And in an unbelievably short period of time-less than six months-he had made a major breakthrough and had applied for a patent in the name of the firm. He recalled now his warm sense of achievement as he stood before the board with his data, his charts and his experimental models. As he climbed, phrases soared through his memory:

"We concentrated our attention on plastic hollowware containers and on their main flaw, which is their tendency to crack. Here, for example, you have a typical polyethylene wastebasket after eight months of ordinary use. You will notice the crack around the base." (Because I have just poked four fingers through it, he confided to himself.) "Here, now, is our similar model. Same gauge but different formula. You will note that it is intact, though worn. On the memorandum before you, you will find a description of the manner in which it was subjected to 250,000 buffetings, corresponding to approximately 84 years of daily use. Gentlemen, we have perfected a plastic of unprecedented stability."

Electricity in the air. The Old Bastard with the sudden light of greed in his weasel eye. What a triumph!

"I invite you to study our data in detail. It is up to you gentlemen, of course, to conduct the necessary market studies to determine how this breakthrough can best be exploited . . ."

And conducted they were, by God! So great did the demand prove to be that the decision was to go into full production at once. A million and a half dollars were borrowed and a new plant built. After the first hundred tons had been produced, Harry had taken this much-deserved vacation in Britain.

Warmed by this recollection, he looked about him, and was surprised to find himself surrounded by unattended sheep. In stark but gentle sweeps of hill the moor lolloped into the haze on all sides and, dotting the slopes, in groups of from two to a dozen, the sheep grazed. As he approached, they moved aside, shaggy and mistrustful. Otherwise, there were only the remnants from the Stone Age that his map had prepared him for: a crumbling wall in the midst of nowhere, a tumulus, a cairn, a crude circle of stones, a jumble of rocks where a campsite must have been. It was a landscape where a man might put his finger on the core of his problem.

But before he could proceed to do so, the rain set in: not a British mist that became too heavy for itself and fell, apologetically, but a torrent, all at once. He scrambled into his raincoat. It was a gabardine he had bought in Paris, an imperméable, and so Harry felt quite snug in it for the first minute or two. And the rain enhanced his mood of solitary coping. Very soon, however, the coat proved to be permeable: his shoulders were quickly wet, right through his imperméable and jacket and shirt, and the water made its way down his back. For the first time-it was not to be the last-he felt a twinge of doubt about the wisdom of this excursion.

This doubt coincided with a resumption of his recollections-the less pleasurable part of them. For, just two days ago, the sky had fallen in. A phone call from the Old Bastard to London, and he had been almost hysterical. "It cracks! It cracks!" he had screamed. "A hundred tons of cracked wastepaper baskets coming back by the truckload!"

"Absolutely impossible!" Harry had shouted back. "Did you stay with my formula? Let me talk to Heller."

But Heller, second in command. Ph.D., MIT, had made it quite clear that the formula had not been tampered with. "It just doesn't work anymore," Heller had said. "We're turning out the same old short-life stuff as everybody else."

The O.B. had got back on the line. "This company has been doing business for a hundred and eighty years," he had croaked. "Not making a fortune, maybe, but a lot better off than before we went a million and a half in the hole on your recommendation. Now you better get us out of this, buster, you just better get us out of this!"

And it was on this note that Harry had set off across Dartmoor. He wanted to be alone, and he intended to use this time to review, in the most precise detail, every aspect of his research and every step in the manufacture of his final batch. In this (continued on page 173)Goblin of Curtery Sink(continued from page 120) way, he was sure, his lucid, keenly efficient mind would light upon the solution of the vexing problem at hand.

Heartened by this assurance, and by the rain's stopping, he made his first big mistake: He took off his shoes. They had shrunk while his feet had expanded, and the relief was exquisite. He walked for quite a distance in his socks over the springy turf and would have continued in this way to Okehampton, if he had not come to a stream to be crossed, whose bed was sharp shale. When he tried to get the shoes on again, they would not fit-they came nowhere near fitting. He was obliged to use his galoshes instead to wade across this tributary to the Dart, which appeared on his chart as a thin blue hair but which was 12 feet across and knee deep, running fast.

Then the terrain roughened and he had to keep the galoshes on. They were too big: His feet slid around in them and he could feel blisters forming. Soon every step hurt.

At one o'clock, hungry, he sat down on a barrow, or cairn, or something, and took out the sack that contained his sandwiches. They had been wrapped in paper napkins: each was a sopping mass of bread and paper pasted to a slab of ham or cheese. He scraped off the mess and ate the slabs, without pleasure, washing them down with generous draughts of whiskey from the flask he had forethoughtfully brought along. While he was doing so, he saw his first dead sheep, off to the right a bit: a patch of dirty wool, a few bones, a toothy skull. The meal finished and his appetite far from appeased, he opened up his chart to get his bearings: At once, of course, the rain came down again. He saw that he was nearing Dart Head and a marsh; but right beyond lay Cranmere Pool and the downhill run. He put the map away and the rain-on cue-desisted.

The marsh posed a problem. For one thing, it ran uphill; for another, it seemed to be easy to get across until you were too far into it to want to turn back. Harry started across with a sense of excitement-this was fun. He hopped from tuft to tuft, half drunk and hence congratulating himself on each feat of balance. After a while, of course, he came to an interval too wide to hop. Here he took an intermediary step and found himself soberingly up to his knee in mud. He waded to the next tuft and appraised his situation with some alarm. Should he go back? But the other edge was only a dozen hops away. He decided to go on.

It was not pleasant. Three times he had to venture into the swamp, and each time it frightened him. After all, there was such a thing as quicksand. Once a galosh came off and he had to root around in the mud, sinking slowly deeper, until he had found it. Safe on the other side, he surveyed the ruin of his suit, smeared with muck to the armpits. There was no clear water in which he could wash.

Now, according to the chart, he should descend exactly 100 feet to the northwest for half a mile, and there would be Cranmere Pool. He did so by compass.

But it was not there. He had imagined a ghostly and misty pond like the one King Arthur threw Excalibur into, but there was nothing that looked like a pond, or even where a pond might conceivably have lain. He tracked back and forth for a while, looking, and then gave up. His feet were killing him.

"Cranmere Pool does not exist," he said loudly. "Another of those damned British myths."

He set off angrily up the hill, in a state of grave disrepair. He wished with all his heart that he was eight miles away, in a warm tavern with his wife, drinking a Pimm's.

He rounded a low hump in the landscape, and there it lay.

It wasn't a pool, exactly-more a puddle surrounded by weeds and swamp. But the mailbox, set against the side of the hill, identified it beyond question. There it was, his primary destination.

Harry stumbled over to it, carefully skirting the soft ground. In the box he found a letter addressed to Ronnie Mitchell, Sarratt, Herts. He took the letter and put it in his soggy pocket, and then he sat down on the ground and looked both without and within himself.

Without he saw the sodden, barren landscape, a few sheep and the eight miles he had yet to cover. Within, he saw a scene no less depressing: a guy about to lose his job because he had caused $1,500,000 to be spent in vain, and who had not the slightest clue how to salvage the situation. The best he could come up with was the idea of depositing here a postcard to himself. Gazing at his mud-caked clothing, he realized that he had got himself into a ridiculous position.

He made a bundle of his shoes and raincoat and tied it together with the belt of the coat. Under the belt he tucked a one-pound note and a slip of paper with his address in London. He laid this bundle beside the mailbox, put his postcard in the box and limped off in the direction he thought would bring him to Okehampton. He was, as Mildred had foreseen, one miserable baby.

The downhill trip was a sort of nightmare. Now that he had abandoned his coat, a cold wind sprang up and set him to shivering. A mood of resignation beset him. He found himself willing to concede some measure of justice to the O.B.'s strictures. Anyone, he told himself, who could get himself into a mess like this was ipso facto unreliable. Furthermore, he kept seeing more and more dead sheep grinning at him from right and left, with no live ones to keep him company.

After about a mile and a half, he came to the headwaters of a stream, and wanted to know what stream it was. On reaching for the chart, he found, to his greater despair, that he had left it in the pocket of his imperméable. His choice was to go back and get it or to follow the stream, whatever it was, until he reached something. The thought of retracing his steps was too repugnant, and he did not do so. This was his next-to-last mistake of judgment.

It was, as it happened, the upper reaches of the east Okement River and he was, without being sure, on the right track. If he had had the map, he would have known that the path he came upon a few minutes later, which led off to the left, had been made by men and not by sheep, and that it would bring him securely to civilization. As it was, he pondered it briefly; saw that it took him away from his only reliable guide, the river: crossed it and went on across the trackless moor.

His last mistake, in a whole day of mistakes, was committed a good two hours later, when he could already discern in the far distance farmhouses, crofts and the smoke from chimneys. He was by this time in a state of nearly total exhaustion, taking each step only by an effort of will. Staying close to the river, he had frequently had to climb up and around rocky abutments that blocked his way, and detour the marshy areas that got more and more frequent as the ground leveled off. Now, when he could already see, a hundred yards ahead, a road with walls on each side, a final obstacle confronted him: a marsh surrounding a tiny tributary where it joined the river. The brook dropped down so sharp a cliff that he knew he could not scale it. He would have to go back half a mile and work his way around, unless he took a chance on the wet ground. Without really thinking about it, he took the chance.

It wasn't much of a chance, really: The marsh was only about 20 yards wide. He jumped from tuft to tuft without any difficulty almost to the other side, not so much as wetting his galoshes; even crossing the stream itself was no problem. But then, of course, there it was, the inevitable 12-foot hop. The ground between looked almost solid, with a fine growth of bright-green grass. He jumped out as far as he could.

Bright-green grass! his mind exclaimed as soon as he was in the air. If he could have, he would have reversed direction in mid-flight, like the characters in the animated cartoons when they fall off the cliffs: for he remembered a sentence in the guidebook that warned against bright-green grass in conjunction with quicksand on Dartmoor, and at precisely this time of year.

He sank to his knees at once. There was a dreadful sucking sound as the sand settled around his leg's. The solid clump was six feet away, beyond his reach. He felt himself sinking lower and uttered a strangled cry. Then, miraculously, his feet came to rest on something solid. Thank God! he thought. I can wade over.

But he was wrong. When he slid his foot forward and tried to step down, he found nothing beneath it. It nearly cost him his precarious equilibrium to draw it back. His attempt to retreat met with no greater success. He was perched on a tiny submerged island. Prodding about with his toe, he concluded that he was standing on the butt end of a sunken log that was balanced upright in the morass.

"What fantastic luck!" he said aloud, looking at the placid deadly tract around him. Suddenly he felt giddy as he realized just how improbable it was that he should be standing there, alive. A foot more or less in his leap-floundering in that horrid quagmire-the first snootful of sand and water as his head went under . . . What had guided him to this one square foot of salvation?

Anyway, there he stood marooned, with nothing to do but to wait. Solid ground was only a couple of paces away-it might as well have been a mile. But in plain sight ran a road-well, not a road, exactly, but something that people traveled over now and then. Help could not be far away. Reluctantly, somewhat sheepishly, he decided to shout for it.

He shouted for ten minutes, until he was hoarse. No help came. Darkness came instead, calling forth lights in the distant farm buildings. He began to confront the possibility of standing at this solitary post throughout the night. Mildred would give the alarm, of course, and they would send out a search party, but there was not the slightest chance of their finding him in the dark.

It was just when he had achieved this insight that help appeared. With a distinct sense of relief, he saw a head bobbing along behind the wall.

"Hallo!" he shouted apologetically. "I say, can you come over and give me a hand?"

A startled gaze was turned in his direction and abruptly the head disappeared.

"I say!" he cried, louder. "Where are you? I'm caught in this damned bog!"

The head showed itself again, at the same place. Cautiously, a boy of about 14 climbed over the wall; cautiously he moved forward, until finally he stood about ten yards distant.

"Well, I certainly am glad to see you!" Harry said. "Have you a rope or something? A belt? Take off your belt-you can reach me."

"Ye're the Goblin o' Curtery Sink," the boy mumbled. "Nanny told me about ye. 'Stay away, stay away, he'll get ye.' I'll not come nigh."

It was one of the worst moments in Harry Gibbsee's life: He realized that the boy was dim-witted.

"Lad, lad," he said, his voice getting shrill as he fought down a growing hysteria. "Lad, listen. I'm not a goblin. I don't live here. I'm a poor fellow who got caught in this sand and wants to get out. I need your help. Now come closer and pull me out. Come and help me, lad."

The boy stood stupidly 30 feet away, his eyes bulging, his jaw agape. "Nay," he said, "I'll not come nigh."

At least he could talk and understand-thank God for that. "Listen," Harry said urgently but slowly. "If you won't help me, go quickly to The Crown in Okehampton and tell them there that you saw the Goblin of Curtery Sink, and that he wanted you to come closer. Go and tell them that he wanted your help."

The boy simply stood there. Harry made a final effort. "Son!" he cried. "Think! If I was your father, and in trouble like this, wouldn't you stop and save me?"

A look of pure terror animated the boy's face. "Me dad?" he faltered. "You me dad? No-no-don't beat me! I'll not do it again, Dad!" The boy turned and fled, unheeding of Harry's shouts and cries.

And now Harry Gibbsee knew for certain that he was going to spend the night, and maybe a lot longer than that, right where he was.

• • •

The Crown at Okehampton was not really a hotel; it was, rather, a pub with a few rooms on the second floor, one of which Mildred had engaged for the night. She had spent an hour or so wandering around the village on foot, trying, and failing, to find something of interest. Then the rain had driven her inside, and since noon she had been sitting in the pub, drinking beer. At the two-o'clock closing time all the other patrons had left, but she was allowed! to remain, being an overnight guest; and the proprietors, whose names were Will and Alice Tavy, had good-naturedly continued to serve her beer in defiance of the law.

"It's a filthy, stupid law anyway," Will Tavy said bluntly, "to say a man can't have a pint from two to five. Why not, I'd like to know."

"Why not, indeed," Mildred asked. "Come on, how about another bitter and a game of darts?"

They played several games of darts, all of which Mildred lost spectacularly, and discussed seriatim the weather, English food, life on the moor, the singing of birds, the National Health, Harry's whereabouts, Labor vs. Tory concepts of government and English beer. They had just taken up the British monetary system when Alice Tavy threw open the doors at five o'clock, and the workmen and farmers straggled in for their afternoon pints.

"We stopped for gas-petrol-at Exeter," Mildred was saying. "Fill her up. It came to thirteen and a half gallons at seven shillings thruppence ha'penny. The man took out a pencil and pad. 'Thirteen and a half times seven is 941/2 shillings,' he said; 'then thirteen and a half times three and a half is, well, let's see now . . ." Tavy, I swear it took him five minutes, and then he said, 'Just let me pop in and get the little book,' and out he came after a while with the little book he needed to look up the answer to a simple multiplication."

Will Tavy was busy at the tap and could not answer, but Mildred went right on. She was the only woman drinker in the place, but she had the sort of looks that let her get away with anything.

"The trouble with my husband Harry is that he approves of all that. He was delighted. 'Giving up the pounds, shillings and pence would be like chucking out the Royal Family,' he says. 'It's tradition that has made England great.' If you want to see a happy man, just watch Harry at the Changing of the Guard."

"I'd want to see him coming in pretty soon if I was you," Alice Tavy said. "He's long overdue, seems to me. Isn't he, Will?"

"Ay, should be back by now. Be lost all night out there, I shouldn't wonder."

"Is it some cove out on the moor?" one of the workmen asked. "Alone?"

"Like as not get into the artillery range," another said.

"Why, it'll be dark in half an hour."

"Is he certified?"

There were a few hoots of laughter, but half a dozen troubled glances were turned in Mildred's direction.

"Is there really some danger?" she asked, feeling alarm for the first time. "Could he be lost or hurt?"

"'Tis no place for a stranger to be out alone, ma'am," a grizzled old fellow said gravely. "Not this time o' year. And not this time o' day."

"I've been lost out there many a time, I'll not deny it," a younger man said, "and roamed the moor since I was a mite."

A young boy came in and made his way to the tap with a tankard.

"The usual for the gov'nor, Tad?" Will asked.

"Mild," the boy said. "And see ye fill it to the brim." This was apparently a daily exchange, for all laughed.

While Will was filling, a man at the dart board spoke. "Intending no disrespect, ma'am, but I'll lay any man ten bob"-here he raised his voice-"I'll lay any man ten bob to three nobody comes off the moor this night."

In the silence that followed, the boy spoke up. "I saw the Goblin o' Curtery Sink today, I saw him sure."

All eyes turned to him.

"You were on the moor, Tad?" Will asked.

"Ay. To catch a pony."

"And you went past the Sink?"

"Ay, I did. And there he was, his eyes like fire and him hootin' for me to come close. Oh, I ran!"

Will turned to one of the men, urgently. "Fred, have ye been there lately? Is it soft?"

"Ay, 'tis," Fred answered. "You know I lost a ewe there Monday last."

Mildred looked at the boy, whose face showed fright again, and at Will Tavy, whose eyes betrayed a sure surmise. "It's Harry!" she screamed. "It's that husband of mine!"

• • •

By the time darkness was complete, Harry Gibbsee had considered and rejected a number of notions how he might better his plight. He thought of diving forward or backward in the hope of being able to swim, so to speak, the few feet to solid ground; but the sensation of the sand sucking almost beseechingly at his hand when he immersed it was enough to put this plan out of his head. He then contemplated dousing his shirt with whiskey, setting it afire and waving it as a signal. On taking the bottle from his pocket and sniffing it, however, he found himself deploring the investment of so much good Scotch in so tenuous a hope, and decided on an internal application. He took a good long swig of it; and, before very long, another.

Under its stimulation he remembered the indecently dirty comb and handkerchief in his pocket; and, although the prospect of death had not seriously occurred to him, he felt that it would be judicious to dispose of these items. He did so by prodding them under the surface at his side. He also tossed his wallet to the firm ground, and the letter he had picked up at Cranmere Pool.

"Putting my estate in order," he said with a chuckle. Somehow he could not take his situation seriously. In fact, the more he thought about it, and the more he drank from the bottle, the more it seemed to him that life must hold some rich reward in store for a fellow who could jump into quicksand and land safely on a pin point. He began to feel more confidence about his job, and for the first time turned his thoughts seriously to the problem of the plastic that was immortal when he made it, but cracked when mass-produced.

He had followed the classical procedure: blown his steam of kerosene and mothballs (a duodecane petroleum fraction and paradichlorobenzene, actually) over a bed of his catalyst, a calcium silicate. Ah, that calcium silicate! That little dash of Tabasco in the catalyst-that was what had made the plastic immortal.

Or was it? The plastic wasn't immortal any longer. Could some other substance-somehow, without his knowledge-have got into the mixture? And not be getting into it in die new factory? If so, what might it have been? What would it have to be to produce the given effect?

Tilting his head back for another dose of Scotch and inspiration, he lost his balance and sat down in the bright green grass. He sank quickly to his shoulders, with his backside where his feet had been.

"Damn!" he said; but, after the momentary shock was over: "Why didn't I think of this before?" For he was a good deal more comfortable: warmer, for one thing, and much relieved in the feet. He celebrated his new posture with a hefty draught, and then automatically wiped his mouth with the back of his now muddy hand.

"Damn!" he said again. "Faugh! Ptui! Eccgk!"-spitting, and tasting again that icky mud taste-the same taste he had just got away from, in his corner of that miserable flowerpot factory, where the air was full of ceramic dust. It had got in his hair, in his ears, under his collar, in his books-everywhere.

Harry Gibbsee felt the tumbler fall in the lock he was trying to pick.

Everywhere! Everywhere! Into the plastic mix, too, of course!

"I've got it! I've got it!" he shouted.

"Yippee! Oh, glory be!" Wildly exultant now, he was also, to tell the truth, totally drunk. Flaunting the bottle in the air, he broke into song:

"Oooooh, I'm the Goblin of Curtery Sink;

I'll bite off your head as quick as a wink,

Unless I'm too busy imbibing a drink,

Which is just what I'll do at this moment, I think."

And he did so, emptying the bottle. "Each man kills the thing he loves," he hollered. "Yippee!"

It was this noise that led the rescue party to its destination: Will Tavy, two other men and Mildred, stumbling after, far from sober herself.

They played the light over Curtery Sink and found him. Will Tavy went as close as he could and called for the rope.

"Take it easy, man," he said. "We'll have you out in a jiff."

"No hurry," Harry shouted cheerfully, saluting with the bottle. "All th' time in th' worl'. Jes' a-settin' here doin' some high-level research in th' chemistry of synthetics. Mildred, I've got it! I've thought of the necessary amendment to the formula. The whole problem's solved!"

The men looked questioningly at Mildred, uncertain what to make of this peculiar American. She rose magnificently to the occasion.

"My husband's a very famous experimental chemist," she explained. "He's always done his best work when he's dead drunk and up to his neck in quicksand."