It would have taken something very substantial to have awakened any one on board the Mermaid that night. They all slept soundly and awoke to find the strange colored lights shining in through the glass covered port holes.
“Well, the sun, or what corresponds to it, is up,” observed Jack, “and I guess we had better do as the little boy in the school reader did, and get up, too, Mark.”
Soon all the travelers were aroused, and the sound of Washington bustling about in the kitchen, whence came the smell of coffee, bacon and eggs, told the hungry ones that breakfast was under way.
After the meal work was again started on repairing the ship, and by noon the professor remarked:
“I think we shall try a little flight after dinner. That is, if one thing doesn’t prevent us.”
“What is that?” asked Jack.
“We may be held down, as were those stones,” was the grave answer.
CHAPTER XXI
THE FISH THAT WALKED
It was with no little apprehension that the professor prepared to take his first flight aboard the ship in the realms of the new world. He knew little or nothing of the conditions he might meet with, the density of the atmosphere, or how the Mermaid would behave under another environment than that to which she was accustomed.
Yet he felt it was necessary to make a start. They would have to attempt a flight sooner or later, and Mr. Henderson was not the one to delay matters. So, the last adjustment having been made to the repaired machinery, they all took their places in the ship.