All her efforts could not break a single thread.
"We must go back, I think, and try to get around this peculiar web," Ozma decided.
So they turned to the right and, following the web found that it seemed to spread in a regular circle.

On and on they went until finally Ozma said they had returned to the exact spot from which they had started.
"Here is a handkerchief you dropped when we were here before," she said to Dorothy.
"In that case, they must have built the web behind us, after we walked into the trap," exclaimed the little girl.
"True," agreed Ozma, "an enemy has tried to imprison us." "And they did it, too," said Dorothy.

"I wonder who it was." "It's a spider-web, I'm quite sure," returned Ozma, "but it must be the work of enormous spiders." "Quite right!" cried a voice behind them.

Turning quickly around they beheld a huge purple spider sitting not two yards away and regarding them with its small bright eyes.
Then there crawled from the bushes a dozen more great purple spiders, which saluted the first one and said: "The web is finished, O King, and the strangers are our prisoners." Dorothy did not like the looks of these spiders at all.

They had big heads, sharp claws, small eyes and fuzzy hair all over their purple bodies.
"They look wicked," she whispered to Ozma.