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. Lilliputian men, horses, cows, and dogs crawled about the fields and roads.
"Isn't it nice?" whispered Rhoda, seeking Bennie's hand.