Before taking his place on the machine, Jack stood for several minutes looking down upon the form of Miriam, as if to draw into himself, through the medium of that beautiful image, the perfume of the spirit he was to pursue.
He turned at length, his face cheerful and tranquil. He exchanged a mighty grip with his uncle. To Mayne he said, as the latter grasped his other hand: “When you see us again, sir, she will be my affianced wife.”
“I love her more than life and all,” replied the old man stoutly; “but when I see her yours, I’ll love her more yet!”
Mary Faust now threw about his neck a gold chain with a pointing hand attached to it, wrought out of a sapphire. “It is the mariner’s compass of your voyage,” she said.
‘Good-by, Jim,” said Jack, enclosing the little gnome’s fingers in his large clutch. “Take care of Uncle Sam while I’m away. Did you finish cleaning the paint brushes?”
“Sure I done ’em, boss” answered the boy, in a piping tone, his black eyes sparkling like diamonds. “Good luck and happy days to yer!”
Jack stepped on the throne; as he did so, the hollow hemisphere above his head glowed like molten metal, and zigzag flashes played to and fro within it. An undertone of deep sound vibrated through the room. Jack, with a farewell glance at the others, laid his right hand upon the lever. As he was about to press it down, Jim, who had crept round to the left, made a sudden spring with his crutch and landed across his knees. The lever descended, and they were off!
CHAPTER VII
800,000,000 MILES
“NOT a bit what I expected,” murmured Jack to himself: “not the least!”
He looked around him, turning slowly this way and that. On every side stretched out a plain—if it were a plain; but it had no horizons—no curvature. In fact, though solid beneath the feet, it was not easily distinguishable from the medium in which he stood, moved and breathed. It was transparent, too, in all directions, below as well as above and sidewise. It was as if he were walking on water—or in water, like a fish. This medium, however, had a luminousness of its own: not sunlight or moonlight, though sunlight itself was not so bright and clear. Moreover, yonder was what looked like the sun—probably was the sun, indeed; it shone like a white fire, and had no shadowed side, like the other spherical objects that floated at various distances round about it, and which he now surmised must be planets. Yes, planets of the solar system, evidently; and that large one, somewhat below and to the right was our own earth; the masses of north and south America, and part of western Europe, were recognizable, lying lustrous on the dark oceans; and there was the moon, just clear of it on the further side; they must be very far off—several hundred thousand miles. Jupiter—that must be Jupiter, with the belts and the red spot—looked much larger than the earth, although more remote. Jack must have been traveling at a good pace during the few minutes since pushing down that lever in Mme. Faust’s laboratory—if it were a few minutes, and not a few days or years: there was no way of telling. Was he stationary now, or still moving? That too was not easily decided.