The lightning had struck the pavilion and wrecked it!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
SAILING ON THE STORM-WIND.
The five adventurous fliers were borne along by the wind in a fashion which 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 down it almost made them giddy to see the rate at which the various features of the landscape were racing, as it were, past them.
Of the wrecking of the pavilion by lightning they knew nothing. They had been dazzled by the awful flash, and almost deafened by the terrible crash which followed; but they were then already two or three hundred yards from the scene. A minute or two later, and they were a mile or more away; and the place itself would have been out of sight even if they could have looked round.
But they had no time to look round. They scarcely seemed to have time to look ahead. No sooner did they catch sight of something—a large building, a group of trees, or what not—in the distance, than, lo! it seemed to make a mad rush towards them. One moment it was half a mile away; 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 be merged into a vague mass, and there was no time to single out details before they had slipped past.
Curiously enough—and contrary to all expectations of the two visitors from Earth—their progress, wild and mad as it seemed when they looked down, was serene, easy, almost quiet, when they looked up. So long as they 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 their course by sailing over them there appeared to be no immediate danger. Below them all was a wild, mad race amid a continuous, low, booming roar; above, everything looked quiet, almost stationary, for the black clouds travelled noiselessly and kept exact pace with them.