"No consequence at all, except that a slight escape of gas would take place.
"There, we are going into the clouds now, and they will not trouble any more about us."
"I thought that we were going to have wind," Ralph said. "The barometer at the hotel had fallen a good deal; and the clouds, before we started, looked like it but, now we are once up here, we do not seem to move."
In another two minutes, they passed through the layer of clouds, and the sun shone brightly upon them. They looked down on a sea of white mist, without a break.
"There," Ralph continued, "we are entirely becalmed. These clouds below do not move, nor do we."
"You cannot tell that," Monsieur Teclier said. "We go in the same direction, and at the same speed, as the clouds. It is just as if you were in a boat, at night, upon a rapid stream. If you could see no banks, or other stationary objects, you might believe yourself to be standing still; while you were being drifted forward, at the rate of twenty miles an hour. We may be traveling, now, forty or fifty miles an hour; and as I agree with you, as to the look of the clouds before starting, I believe that we are doing so--or, at any rate, that we are traveling fast--but in what direction, or at what rate, I have no means, whatever, of knowing.
"Even if we found that we moved, relatively to the clouds below us, that would only show that this upper current was somewhat different from that below."
"But how are we to find out about it?" Percy asked.
"We must keep a sharp lookout for rifts in the clouds. If we could get a peep of the earth, only for a minute, it would be sufficient to tell us the direction and, to some extent, the speed at which we are going."
The boys, in vain, hung over the side. The sea of clouds beneath them changed, and swelled, and rolled its masses of vapor over each other; as if a contest of some gigantic reptiles were going on with them.