“Nix on scared!” was the reply. “I al’ays t’ought it would be a fine t’ing getting out o’ N’York; but I never t’ought t’would be like this!”
Jack now applied himself to concentrating his mind on his destination, which he figured as Miriam, with a sapphire halo round her head. They were moving through the solid, yet diaphanous medium at a speed which could be estimated only in planetary terms; but with no sense of bodily exertion. All at once Jim cried out:
“Hully Gee! will yer lamp dat, boss!”
Jack looked: the spectacle sent a shock through him, as when one suddenly sees the red glare of an express train bearing close down upon him. A vast red disk covered twenty degrees of the eastern firmament. The planet Jupiter stood revealed in all its details. Raging whirlpools of fiery storms tore its surface, diversified with dark streamings and appalling abysses. Jack fancied he could feel the terrific heat radiating from it; flames hundreds of miles long licked out toward him. Accompanying this paralyzing sight was an awful humming sound, and a feeling as of being drawn into the vortex of an inconceivable red-hot maelstrom. The gigantic disk seemed nearer!
“The sapphire hand!” spoke the quiet voice of Mary Faust, like a whisper in his ear. Had she been observing his progress from her station on the other side of the diameter of the solar system?
He had forgotten the talisman that was to guide him across space: he grasped it, and in the same moment felt the rush past him of an invisible tide of forces; as, when one is being swept down the headlong torrent of a flood, he catches at some stable object, and the wild waters tear at him as they hurtle past. The sapphire hand barely stemmed the rush. As Jack hung there, in doubt whether he were saved or doomed, he seemed to see wild figures racing past him, snatching at him as they flew; fierce, beautiful faces convulsed with passion; contorted bodies of giants; the flaring out of fiery hair like streamers of the northern lights. They gnashed their teeth, the glare of their eyes was as the flashing of torches. But the sapphire hand was cool in his own, and its power prevailed.
“Dere was never no subway rush to beat dat!” was the manner in which Jim expressed his feelings, as the tension abated.
A powerful arm was thrown across Jack’s shoulders, drawing him out into freedom, and a voice like the tones of a mighty harp exclaimed laughingly:
“Those Jovian fellows are always on the lookout to catch people napping. They must be disciplined. If you hadn’t thought of your compass when you did, I should have had quite a struggle getting you free. You are from Faust, are you not?”
Jack nodded; he was panting from his exertions. Then he looked at his new friend.