So Gerald loosed his hold upon the one he had rescued, and a little later had recovered sufficiently to be able to scramble into the boat. Then he gave his aid to Clinch, and between them they lifted the stranger in also.
'Where to now, Mr Gerald?' asked Tom, a little dazedly. All these sudden happenings, as he afterwards phrased it, had been 'a little trying to the works of the upper story, an' had set 'em spinnin'.' In other words, his brain was in a whirl.
Gerald looked round, and saw that a ladder had been lowered from the platform; and seizing the oars, he rowed the boat to the place. Two strangers were waiting on the lower part of the ladder. To Gerald's surprise they wore masks upon their faces, and he noted that all the other strangers were now masked also.
As the boat came alongside, and Tom raised the inanimate form in his arms, the two on the ladder seized it, and carried it up the ladder, across the platform, and out of sight. A moment or two later the ladder was drawn up in very sudden fashion, the platform was run in, and then the doorway closed up completely, leaving nothing to mark the place where it had been.
The great mass lost its luminous appearance, and the two in the boat found themselves in complete darkness.
'Well, I 'm sugared!' exclaimed Tom, or words to that effect. 'If that don't take the cake! Never so much as a "good-bye," or "thank yer kindly," or—— Well!' He gave a great gasp, words altogether failing to explain his feelings.
'You forget, Tom, that they probably don't know our language, and we shouldn't understand theirs,' said Gerald. 'You must remember that they are foreigners—er—that is—h'm!—strangers, you know, from another'——
He hesitated, and broke off. For what could he say? Strangers these people certainly were; but foreigners? Well, that depended upon the point of view—travellers from where? Another world? The suggestion seemed monstrous—preposterous! Yet where else could they have come from? If it seemed impossible—incredible—to think of them as travellers from another sphere, it was certainly no less impossible to regard them as inhabitants of the Earth. No mortal upon our globe had yet succeeded in manufacturing an affair like this 'meteorite,' and travelling about in it; that much was certain. To conceive it possible was to imagine a miracle quite as wonderful as to suppose that this extraordinary flying-machine—for something of that sort Gerald now felt certain it must be—had come from another planet.
However, Gerald realised that he was not in a state of mind to be able to think clearly or logically about the matter at all. His brain, like honest Tom's, was in a whirl; and he tried in vain to collect and marshal his thoughts. The whole affair was too puzzling, too extraordinary for sober thought.
'Tom, row me ashore,' he said abruptly. 'This is too much for me. I'm going to bed.'