"Oh, Professor! how could we have left the earth?" demanded Mark. "See! we are standing upon it now; at least, this glacier is an ice-river of Alaska, and Alaska has not been wiped off the map!"
"But that is exactly what has happened to it," said the professor, earnestly. "At least, a part of Alaska—we do not know how much of that territory, or how much other territory with it—is no longer a part of the sphere called the earth."
Phineas Roebach looked at the old scientist as though he thought the latter had taken leave of his senses. But Jack Darrow leaped to the right conclusion.
"You mean, sir, that the earthquake and the volcanic eruption have torn away some great fragment of the world, and we are on it?"
"That is what I mean."
"We are floating in space, then—an entirely new world? And that is the old world shining there in the sky?"
"That is what has happened, Jack," declared Professor Henderson, with solemnity. "I suspected it when we first felt the lightness of the atmosphere. I was convinced when I found the ether envelope of this new world—this island in the air, as it were—was so thin. My calculations regarding the rising of the moon, and the outlines of objects upon the great globe hanging yonder, prove to my mind conclusively that the awful cataclysm we endured, when we all completely lost consciousness, was the time when the eruption occurred, and we, with this great fragment of the earth, were blown out into space."
"It can't be! it can't be!" shouted Phineas Roebach. "We've lost our heads, perhaps; but we haven't lost our hold on the earth. It's nonsense!"
"I sincerely wish I could feel that same confidence, Mr. Roebach," said Professor Henderson, drily. "These instruments of mine, however, cannot lie. It is a simple calculation to figure that the moon, now just risen, is thousands of miles out of her course, if we are still on the earth. No, Mr. Roebach, I am stating the exact truth when I say that we have been blown off the earth by that awful volcanic eruption, and that we are now floating on a torn-away world, or a new planet, in space, doubtless hanging between the earth and the sun. We are as unsafe as though we were on a wandering star, or meteor—only this island is not afire. But in time we shall fall into one or the other greater bodies of our system—of that end there can be no possible doubt."