"It is very fortunate, Miss Magnet, that you were the only thoroughly insulated person in this whole territory. The wooden boat, the inverted glasses saved you. You only had a normal amount of electricity in you. You were a poor conductor, otherwise you would have evaporated through the law of induction."
"I can't stand this any longer, or I'll be a fit candidate for an idiot asylum!" blurted out the professor finally. "I am dying for a chaw."
He cast impatient glances at a trackless, desolated grade a mile away. This grave of a great trunk line extended beyond their view.
The four had not stirred from where they had been dropped by the balloon. To do so they would have had to pick their way cautiously. Russell was like an extinct volcano. She was yet hot. But she did not smoke, as one might have expected. There were no smouldering embers left to produce smoke. Combustion had been instantaneous and complete.
But the travellers had no need to go sight-seeing. Everywhere was the same blackened, cooling, ferruginous slag. To see one square yard was to see the whole. The appalling thing about the effect was the cause. Civilization, ever ready with revengeful thrusts, as if protesting against the advance of science, had produced a new accident, a unique disaster.
Swift made an automatic motion for his watch.
"I must go," he said; "I must get my despatch to the Planet in time for the evening edition. We will have a scoop on the whole world."
"I'm your man," said the professor. "We can foot it to the nearest telegraph station in four hours."
"Ah, I forgot," said Swift. "That will lose me the four o'clock edition. I'll have to hold the wire all night if I can get it. I'll wire such an account as no other paper will ever get. There isn't a minute to lose!" It was then that Mr. Statis Ticks, realizing, whether from calculation or from sympathy, that Miss Magnet could make no such forced march, and seeing that the girl only held herself together under the tension of the great excitement, gallantly proposed to remain by her and join the rest of the party that evening by the first team that could be chartered.
But the young lady unexpectedly refused the proposition. Her whole nature shrank from spending another minute in that blasted spot. It was therefore arranged, much to Mr. Ticks' disappointment (for he had hoped to add to his copious stock of mental notes by further investigation on the ground), that the girl should accompany them, as far as she was able, down the railroad, away from the lost city.