And now, as they sank lower, the blur disintegrated into flying banks of cloud, shot through and through with flashing lights and darting shadows. Poised there, as they were, in space, it was a terrifying thing to watch this fearful rush of the earth’s surface from west to east. Could they ever manage to break safely into the circumambient atmosphere and go whirling along with
it? How—how, without having their delicate machine wrenched
and torn in pieces?
"We must break our descent with the tractor, come down gradually," said Bennie, "and trust to luck."
Burke inverted the Ring, and they gathered about the dead-light, the cloud-banks sweeping by below them with a thousand times the velocity with which a toy globe can be spun by a playful child. Nearer and nearer rose the clouds toward them. A faint, humming sound filled the car—the wind! They had entered the earth’s outer atmosphere. The hum rose gradually to a whine and then to a roar. The car shook, and the steel covering thundered. The noise increased to the crash of a hurricane, and they could scarcely hear one another' voices. Cautiously they descended, increasing the lift of the tractor when the movement of the clouds seemed too fast, and slacking off a bit when their speed held constant, until the Ring, gradually acquiring the velocity of the gale, was carried swiftly along by the atmosphere, and the cloud banks below them began to move more slowly and at length not at all* They had pierced the envelope of the earth and were once more in the life-giving element of the air.
Slowly, they dropped through the masses of cumulo-cirrus which, suddenly opening beneath them, revealed the rollers of a sunlit ocean. The breaking crests seemed perilously near after limitless distances of the firmament through which they had been voyaging, and they gave the Ring more lift and rose to a safer distance above the waves. Far to the west, close to the horizon, they could see a distant mountain peak, and for it they steered their craft.
They were flying now with a speed a hundred times greater than that of the swiftest gull, the ray churning the sea into a boiling vortex that followed them like a white foam-monster, spurting great geysers of froth and steam fifty feet into the air. The mountain reared its head higher and higher, and soon the shore of a green island, sprinkled with white houses, rose toward them.
"Fayal!" shouted Atterbury, from the control-room. "I’ve been there!"
"Bear away and look out for boats!" directed Bennie, and they took a wide sweep and left the islands far to the south. Atiead of them, Rhoda saw a small black dot from which arose a dark smudge.
"That must be one of the Cunard steamers!" she cried. "Oh, do let’s go down where we can watch the people! I should so like to see a human being again!"
Burke laughed, and the Ring dipped like a swallow and skimmed along only half a mile above the surface of the Atlantic. Soon the liner was just in front of them, and they veered to avoid striking her with the ray. Her decks swarmed black with people, and, through the glasses, sailors could be seen working at the life-boats.
"I wonder what they think we are!" exclaimed Rhoda, looking for Burke, who had left his post.
"He's going to wireless them not to be afraid. They're precious near a panic down there," explained Bennie.
By the time the aviator reappeared, the steamer was four or
five miles behind them.
"That’s the Saxonia," he told them. "Captain says they recognized us, and only got the boats ready for fear the ray might make trouble. What course, Professor? Shall we run across to Florida and up the coast, or follow the lanes to Nova Scotia and work down?"
"The shortest," urged Rhoda, and Burke laid their course by compass and called Atterbury to the lever while they snatched some breakfast, for the sunlight and sight of the sea combined to make them all ravenously hungry.
They had lifted to a height of about three miles. The white crests of the rollers had melted into the vast expanse of blue, and only the smoke patches showed where steamers lay everywhere about them.
"How crowded the ocean is!" remarked the girl. Picking their way with care, lest the ray should do some unintentional damage, they continued westward until a dark line on the horizon suddenly appeared and began to creep toward them. Then they swung to the south to avoid the Bay of Fundy and found themselves, owing to the rapid falling-away of the coast-line, out in the bosom of the vast Atlantic again. Once more turning west, they came down to less than a mile and soon picked up a barrier of sand-dunes edged by a white rim of surf. There were ships everywhere about them—the coastwise trade of the New England seaboard.
"This won't do!" declared Burke. "If we don't get over land, we'll be bound to do damage."
They slanted and soared shoreward. A lighthouse broke the line of dunes and beach, rising out of a group of small white buildings and surrounded by the wire enclosure of a chicken-yard.
A woman in a calico bonnet was feeding the chickens, and, at sight of the Ring, to the ecstasy of the fowls, she dropped the contents of her apron and rushed to the door of the lighthouse. In a moment, a man in his shirt-sleeves and smoking a corn-cob pipe appeared on the upper parapet. He looked at the Ring lazily, and then waved his hand. They lifted again, following the shoreline, and flew over a dreary waste of scrub-oak, cranberry-bog, and sandy beaches until they saw a light-ship tugging at her chains a mile offshore. Then the coast turned, and they recognized Martha's Vineyard and, farther off, Nantucket. Once they had got their bearings, they rose higher and flew at an elevation of several miles over Nantucket Sound, Gardiner's Bay, and Long Island to Westchester, and thence over the Hudson to Jersey
City, whence they followed the line of the railway toward Philadelphia.
They were all in the highest spirits and, as Burke noted,
there had not been a single case of sickness on the voyage. The brown fields and green woodlands crept slowly along below them. The air was sweet. There was still an hour to sunset. Overhead, the sky was a soft, impenetrable blue. The world was full of light. Tiny trains hurried along like little harmless snakes. Lil-liputian men, horses, cows, and dogs crawled about the fields and roads.
Isn’t it nice?" whispered Rhoda, seeking Bennie’s hand.
You bet it is!" he answered heartily.
"Lots better than the stars!’’ she murmured.
He pressed her fingers.
"I didn’t let on," he confessed; "but I was scared to death."
"And so was I," she acknowledged. "I never want to leave the earth again!"
They stood there silent for several minutes.
"But it is jolly!" she said unexpectedly, in a tiny voice. "You know—I might take just a little trip again—if you asked me!"
They passed high over Philadelphia and Baltimore and, just as the sun sank blazing among the tumbled cloud castles in the west, caught sight of the Washington Monument—a flashing spire— and then the Capitol, its dome burning golden in the afterglow. The silver Potomac wound toward the city, as it rose toward them. The avenues and boulevards gleamed amid the soft verdure of trees and shrubbery.
And, as they settled earthward, from a parade-ground came faintly upward the call of a bugle—like a jewel in the dusk.
Rhoda waved her hand toward the smiling earth below.
"Do you remember ’Marpassa'?" she whispered.