Finding that the doctor's prediction as to the suitability of the air to their lungs was correct, they ventured out, closing the door as they went.
Expecting, as on Jupiter, to find principally vertebrates of the reptile and bird order, they carried guns and cartridges loaded with buckshot and No. 1, trusting for solid-ball projectiles to their revolvers, which they shoved into their belts. They also took test-tubes for experiments on the Saturnian bacilli. Hanging a bucket under the pipe leading from the roof, to catch any rain that might fall--for they remembered the scarcity of drinking-water on Jupiter--they set out in a southwesterly direction.
Walking along, they noticed on all sides tall lilies immaculately pure in their whiteness, and mushrooms and toadstools nearly a foot high, the former having a delicious flavour and extreme freshness, as though only an hour old. They had seen no animal life, or even sign of it, and were wondering at its dearth, when suddenly two large white birds rose directly in front of them. Like thought, Bearwarden and Ayrault had their guns up, snapping the thumb-pieces over "safe" and pulling the triggers almost simultaneously. Bearwarden, having double buckshot, killed his bird at the first fire; but Ayrault, having only No. 1, had to give his the second barrel, almost all damage in both cases being in the head. On coming close to their victims they found them to measure twelve feet from tip to tip, and to have a tremendous thickness of feathers and down.
"From the looks of these beauties," said Bearwarden, "I should say they probably inhabited a pretty cold place."
"They are doubtless northern birds," said Cortlandt, "that have just come south. It is easy to believe that the depth to which the temperature may fall in the upper air of this planet must be something startling."
As they turned from the cranes, to which species the birds seemed to belong, they became mute with astonishment. Every mushroom had disappeared, but the toadstools still remained.
"Is it possible we did not see them?" gasped Ayrault.
"We must inadvertently have walked some distance since we saw them," said Cortlandt.
"They were what I looked forward to for lunch," exclaimed Bearwarden.
They were greatly perplexed. The mushrooms were all about them when they shot the birds, which still lay where they had fallen.