"Oh, what are we going to do?" she asked tearfully. "What _are_
we going to do? Where are we?"

"You mean, _when_ are we," Arthur corrected with a grim smile. "I
don't know. Way back before the discovery of America, though. You
can see in everything in the village that there isn't a trace
of European civilization. I suspect that we are several thousand
years back. I can't tell, of course, but this pottery makes me
think so. See this bowl?"

He pointed to a bowl of red clay lying on the ground before one of
the wigwams.

"If you'll look, you'll see that it isn't really pottery at all. It's
a basket that was woven of reeds and then smeared with clay to
make it fire-resisting. The people who made that didn't know about
baking clay to make it stay put. When America was discovered nearly
all the tribes knew something about pottery."

"But what are we going to do?" Estelle tearfully insisted.

"We're going to muddle along as well as we can," answered Arthur
cheerfully, "until we can get back to where we started from. Maybe
the people back in the twentieth century can send a relief party
after us. When the skyscraper vanished it must have left a hole
of some sort, and it may be possible for them to follow us down."

"If that's so," said Estelle quickly, "why can't we climb up it
without waiting for them to come after us?"