“Where are we to go, Professor—out on the deck?” asked Lady Elphinstone.
“Certainly not, dear lady,” answered the professor, earnestly. “You must witness the phenomenon through the closed windows of the pilot-house. If you were to go out on deck, you would be swept away in a moment by the hurricane force of the wind created by the ship as she rushes through the atmosphere. And if perchance you were fortunate enough to escape being blown overboard, you would be made seriously ill by the sudden change, from the dense air which you are now breathing, to the highly rarefied air outside. For this same reason it is also necessary that, while the ship is in flight, all ports and doors communicating with the exterior atmosphere should be kept tightly closed. But come, the sun is rising,” he said, as a flash of golden light darted in through the scuttles; “you must not miss this sight.”
With one accord the whole party rose and followed the professor, as he eagerly led the way up the double flight of steps into the upper storey of the pilot-house; and in another moment the two ladies were advantageously placed at two contiguous scuttles whence they could obtain the best possible view of the phenomenon, while the men grouped themselves elsewhere.
It was a magnificent spectacle upon which the party looked out. Beneath them, and as far as the eye could reach on every hand, stretched the vast, unbroken sea of cloud, heaped together in gigantic masses of the most extraordinary shapes, as though some giant hand had strewn a boundless plain with great, carelessly heaped piles of light, soft, fleecy, snow-white cotton wool, over the eastern edge of which the sun was just rising into view, while his brilliant, lance-like beams darted and played over and through the piles of vapour in a glory of prismatic colour that beggared description. The beauty and glory of the scene consisted indeed solely in the shimmering and shifting play of every conceivable shade and tone of richest and purest and most brilliant colour; and its most charming effect lasted only a brief minute or two, when the colours gradually became lost in an all-pervading white of dazzling purity.
“It was lovely, Professor; the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld,” exclaimed Lady Elphinstone, as she presently turned away from the ice-cold glass of the scuttle. “What did you think of it, dear?” to Feodorovna.
“I can only say, with you, dear Lady Elphinstone, that it was the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld,” answered Feodorovna. “It was as wonderful, too, as it was beautiful, but an even greater wonder, to me, is the undoubted fact that this huge—ship, I suppose I must call it—is actually floating in the air at a greater altitude than the clouds themselves. Although I know it to be the case, from the evidence of my own senses, my imagination is scarcely powerful enough to realise the circumstance as a sober fact. And I am lost in wonder, too, at the magnificence of everything around me. The ship is literally a palace; and everything is so solid and substantial that, although I know myself to be hundreds—perhaps thousands—of feet above the earth, I have not a particle of fear!”
“Fear?” exclaimed the professor, with a laugh. “You would not be Colonel Sziszkinski’s daughter if you were afraid. But in very truth there is nothing to be afraid of, here; this ship is as safe as any ship that ever rode the sea; and for precisely the same reason. In the case of an ocean ship, she will float upon the sea so long as the water is excluded from her hull; and, in the same way, this ship will float in the air so long as the air is excluded from her vacuum chambers. The same natural law applies in both cases.”