"Now," said Torrence, "as we are going up to a great height, we might find it more comfortable to slip on warmer clothing; or at all events to get out some top coats."
This we did, and then seating ourselves on deck, watched the great feathery mass into whose bosom we were gradually ascending. All at once the earth, the sky, and the greater part of the air ship vanished. We had plunged into the cloud, and I could not even see Torry, who was sitting only a few feet away. Luckily we had on tarpaulins, or we should have been wet to the skin. It was like unaided flight, not even our support being visible. Torrence's voice came out of the invisible, producing a weird sensation, and I could feel that we were still being borne rapidly upward.
"Still ascending?" I inquired, feeling as if I were addressing chaos.
"Still ascending!" came the answer.
"How much higher do we go?"
"Clear above this bank. It will be pleasanter."
The words had a strange unnatural sound, as if coming from under the water. My body was the only objective reality in all creation, and even the more distant parts of that showed a tendency to evade me. Still onward and upward, with nothing to prove our motion save the feeling which the vessel imparted. Suddenly a flood of sunlight enveloped us, and we rose like a duck out of the water into another element. A milk-white sea was spread beneath; a dazzling sky above. Again Torrence was at his screws and levers. We halted, and trembled for a moment in midair, preparatory to changing our course; and then, with the rush of a sudden gale, went swirling ahead in the opposite direction. A minute later he looked at the register and said:
"Altitude, eight thousand two hundred. Speed, a mile a minute. Course, northeast by north!"
And now the Hullites could amuse themselves speculating how long it would take us to reach London, while we swept on to the North Sea.
Our present altitude was unpleasantly cold, and the atmosphere perceptibly rarefied, but it was not the intention to remain at such an elevation longer than necessary, and when well beyond the English coast we would descend to our former level. It was here that a strange sight attracted our attention.