'Will you listen, you incorrigible dreamer?' exclaimed Jack impatiently. 'I want to tell you that I am afraid there is some fresh trouble brewing in which those Zuanstrooms are mixed up. Two or three times lately I have come upon their youngster, Freddy, wandering about in melancholy fashion, and when I asked him why he was alone, he said, each time, that they had sent him out because the "ugly old man" had come there to talk, and he was in the way. Now, by "ugly old man" Freddy means the one you called the Ogre—Kazzaro. The question naturally suggests itself, why should there be secret conferences between that worthy and the Diamond King?'
'Seems funny, doesn't it? Have you mentioned anything about it to our guardian or Mr Monck?'
'Not yet. You see, I haven't anything definite to go upon. But I 'm going to keep my eyes open, and I mean, if I can, to find out what it really is that is going on between the Zuanstrooms and the crowd they've become so thick with.'
'Well, I'll help you to keep an eye on them too. Neither Kazzaro nor Mr Zuanstroom is any friend of ours; that we know. I do believe that if they could have their way they would throw us off the ship, and leave us to go whizzing about in space like a couple of little comets.'
However, time passed on without anything further occurring to strengthen Jack's suspicions; and soon they were almost forgotten in the interest and excitement which sprang up and grew from day to day as they neared the end of the voyage.
The apparent size of Mars was visibly increasing each time they looked at it, till at last it seemed to take up the whole of the firmament in front of them. It was a wonderful, and in many ways an awe-inspiring, sight. For, just as when they had been leaving the Earth it seemed to be our globe which was travelling away from them—not they from the Earth—so now Mars appeared to be coming towards them, and at a frightful pace. Majestic, magnificent, inconceivably grand, it certainly was; but there was something oppressive in its very grandeur, something awful in its swift, silent approach, something terrible in its overwhelming greatness.
Seas and continents began to show upon its surface, till the wondering spectators could see the whole of one side laid out as on a gigantic map. And there, plain to the eye, were the so-called 'canals,' those curious constructions or formations which our earthly astronomers have viewed through their telescopes and puzzled over for so many years, and which are supposed to be artificial canals upon a gigantic scale.
At last, the Ivenia entered the planet's atmosphere, through which they had been viewing everything as through a faint-pinkish haze. Then a great change took place in the outward appearance of the aerostat. The upper covering was removed, the immense wings were spread, a beautifully carved and decorated 'figurehead,' like the head of a colossal bird, was run out at one end and a tail-like addition at the other.
Monck led Mr Armeath and his companions out on to the upper deck.
'You may now safely venture into the open air,' he observed; 'for, unknown to you, the air within the aerostat has been gradually changing, and becoming denser. We are all, therefore, now acclimatised, and you will feel no ill effects.'