*CHAPTER XXVIII.*
*SAILING ON THE STORM-WIND.*
The five adventurous fliers were borne along by the wind in a fashionwhich can be better imagined than described.
To Gerald and Jack, at least, it was an absolutely novel experience,whatever it may have been to the others. Every time they glanced downit almost made them giddy to see the rate at which the various featuresof the landscape were racing, as it were, past them.
Of the wrecking of the pavilion by lightning they knew nothing. Theyhad been dazzled by the awful flash, and almost deafened by the terriblecrash which followed; but they were then already two or three hundredyards from the scene. A minute or two later, and they were a mile ormore away; and the place itself would have been out of sight even ifthey could have looked round.
But they had no time to look round. They scarcely seemed to have timeto look ahead. No sooner did they catch sight of something--a largebuilding, a group of trees, or what not--in the distance, than, lo! itseemed to make a mad rush towards them. One moment it was half a mileaway; the next it had vanished behind them.
But it was very difficult to distinguish any individual object.
The whole landscape beneath them was one vast blur. Cities, villages,trees, fields, woods, streams, lakes, hills, valleys--all seemed to bemerged into a vague mass, and there was no time to single out detailsbefore they had slipped past.
Curiously enough--and contrary to all expectations of the two visitorsfrom Earth--their progress, wild and mad as it seemed when they lookeddown, was serene, easy, almost quiet, when they looked up. So long asthey made no effort to stop or turn they scarcely felt any wind at all;and so long as they could keep clear of possible obstacles in theircourse by sailing over them there appeared to be no immediate danger.Below them all was a wild, mad race amid a continuous, low, boomingroar; above, everything looked quiet, almost stationary, for the blackclouds travelled noiselessly and kept exact pace with them.
Whether they would be able to continue to travel thus so long as thestorm should last was another matter--as also was the question of wherethey were being carried. They had no control over their course, no ideaof what their ultimate destination was likely to be, no possible meansof arresting their wild career. To have ventured on a lower course,nearer the ground, in the hope of stopping, would have meant certaindeath.
Nor could they so much as speak to one another. They were all ropedtogether, it is true, and this proved a very wise precaution, forwithout it they would undoubtedly have quickly become separated andhopelessly lost to one another. Malto had left plenty of rope betweeneach, and this was now extended to its utmost, leaving too great aninterval to permit even of shouting. They all looked to Malto--who wasin the centre--for guidance; and he conveyed his directions and adviceby signs.
Of other fliers, or of airships of any kind, they saw none. It was thecustom to send warnings ahead in such case, and for all air-craft toseek shelter until the storm had passed.
The wings they had found and appropriated were a sort ofcombination--that is to say, they were supplied with electric motors,but could also be used as ordinary wings when the supply of electricitystored in the batteries ran out, just as one can work a motor-cycle withone's feet. At present the travellers were husbanding their powercarefully, using only just enough to keep them at what seemed to be asafe height.
It had been Malto's hope, when they had started, that the storm wouldnot continue in such fury for any length of time. But this expectationproved to be delusive. Hour after hour passed, and still they werecarried along at a pace which would have rendered any attempt atstopping sheer madness. Cities and towns had long disappeared;villages, even, now seemed to be no more. The ground became hilly, andless and less cultivated till they came upon a region which was littlemore than a rocky desert. Here the hills were growing into mountains;and some of these towered up to such a height that possible collisionwith their rocky peaks became a very ugly possibility.
Malto grew alarmed, and signalled to his companions to ascend yethigher. Upwards they mounted accordingly, and passed into the midst ofthe swirling clouds. Here they were in a thick mist, but presently, toMalto's relief, they struck into an upper current free from cloud, andthere they entered a region of perfect calm.
They could now even talk, and look round, and take rest of a sort. Thesun was shining, and everything was bright and cheerful. Beneath theirfeet they could see nothing save great masses of sombre, heavy-lookingclouds scurrying furiously onwards.
'Whew!' Jack uttered a long whistle of relief. 'This is a change indeed!I began to wonder where on Earth--h'm, I mean where on Mars--we wererushing to! Where do you suppose we 've got to? I mean, supposing wedropped straight down, what part of your world should we be in?' Heasked the question in a general sort of way, and Malto answered him asvaguely, by admitting frankly that he had not the least idea.
'I confess I 've lost count of all landmarks,' he declared. 'I am verymuch afraid we are now near what is known as the Great Desert. It is amore or less waterless tract which is uninhabited, save by some roamingtribes of wanderers who do not bear the best of characters.'
'Ha! You have deserts, then, as we have?' said Gerald.
Malto looked at him in surprise.
'Why, of course; I thought everybody knew that! Fully one-third of ourglobe is waterless desert, and, what is worse, the tract is graduallyextending. Our scientific men prophesy that the proportion will growlarger and larger until the whole planet becomes a dried-up waste. Thatis the cheerful sort of doom they predict for future generations!'
'Curious, isn't it?' murmured Jack, glancing at Gerald. 'That isexactly what our earthly scientists have prophesied as likely to happento Mars in the future!'
'And to our own planet also, some day, I suppose,' Gerald rejoined.'Only, here, I suppose, the process has gone farther than it has withus.'
'Well, desert or no desert, it will be better than Agrando's dungeons,'said Jack. 'We shall have to go down into it, I suppose, when the stormsubsides? We can't stop up here indefinitely. What are we to domeanwhile? Can't we try to work back in this upper current?'
Malto shook his head.
'It would probably be of very little use, and would certainly beunwise,' he counselled. 'We have come hundreds of miles--much fartherthan our whole store of electric force would carry us. If we expend itall in trying to work back we shall be in bad case if, when we come tothe end of our store, we still find ourselves where we do not want tobe. Now, to support ourselves up here quietly will take but very littleof our reserve force, and we shall have a good stock left foremergencies. That is my advice; in fact, that is practically all we cando. We must wait here till the storm below has blown itself out. Thenwe will go down and try to find out what country we have got into.'
'I think you are right,' Alondra agreed.
'It is already well on in the afternoon--judging by the sun--and we havehad nothing to eat. I 'm getting hungry!' Jack grumbled. 'Don't youhave aerial inns up in the clouds here, where storm-tossed travellerscan get a meal?'
Needless to say, they were all hungry, but there was nothing to be donebut wait. So, to pass the time, they began to compare notes, andAlondra related his adventure of the early morning in the pool in theglass-house. Malto and Malandris nodded their heads significantly asthey listened.
'Ah, there are strange tales afloat about that glass-house and thedeadly plant it shelters,' the elder man declared. 'I have never seenit myself, but I have heard quite enough concerning it.'
The talk went on, and an hour or two slipped by; and then, just as thesun drew near the horizon, Malto, looking down, suddenly ventured anopinion that the wind below had subsided.
To test the point, they swept downwards, passed through several strataof dense cloud, and found, sure enough, that the guess had been correct.Below the cloud all was now almost as calm as above. There was scarcelybreeze enough
to carry them along.
They finally descended, just before sunset, in a gloomy, forbiddingvalley of rocks, where there were no signs of Martian inhabitants to beseen in any direction. They found, however, a small stream--a factwhich surprised Malto--and this enabled them to quench their thirst.But how to obtain the wherewithal to satisfy their hunger was anotherand more hopeless matter.