"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 deadlight, 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's 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. Ahead 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.