“Centauri!” my three friends exclaimed.
My head grew light.
“Centauri,” I murmured. “I saw it.”
“I should think you did,” Saxe. cried. “We all saw it. I infer we are traveling in the land of Centauri.”
“Behind each flaming globe,” muttered Saunders, who was unusually pale, “I saw long, dark shadows of very solid appearance. They are planets signaling to us.”
“Planets be d——d!” roared Saxe. “They were four balloons with great electric search-lights. Boys, this side of the earth is inhabited, and they are far ahead of us when it comes to fireworks.”
“Yes, and fond of airing themselves and their fancied superiority, like the rest of us,” agreed Sheldon. “Therefore they’re human. Whee! for Centauri!”
CHAPTER IX.
Urged by curiosity we traveled steadily night and day. Saunders scanned the heavens nightly for a reappearance of the brilliant globes, and incidentally his star, but discovered nothing except the atmosphere was gradually clearing, and the filmy twilight heralded a beautiful, crescent moon, whose silvery, mystic rays pierced the lifting northern vapors. Sparse vegetation greeted us as we advanced, and we ran across an odd, stunted plant, bearing a beautiful, crimson blossom, which threw out a sickly-sweet odor, and shriveled up, turning black the instant it was plucked. These vivid ice blossoms dotted the snow desert profusely as the climate grew warmer.
We halted upon the crest of a hill to survey the surrounding country, which was almost submerged in a thick, floating, blue mist; but gradually this vapor sea lifted, compact like a monstrous lid, and we viewed a vast expanse of velvety whiteness; but beyond—far, far beyond, though real—we feasted our eyes upon the loveliest country God ever created. We cheered the beautiful scene, and marveled at the stupendously lofty mountains, whose azure peaks pierced the clouds. Vast plains and valleys stretched wide, crossed and recrossed with serpentine, silvery lines, and to the west, glimmering white, expansive, was a great body of water, an ocean. Through the glasses the mountains showed up, thickly covered with forest, a glorious, verdant land, richly seamed with sparkling streams, a wondrous land shading into golden lights, a paradise—superb Centauri!