Our journey led us through a pleasant country, level for the most part and covered with irrigated fields growing the white blossoms which the Baigols gathered and cooked for food. The king's will, as made known by the banner, secured us rest by the way.
I have not considered it necessary to refer to the fact that there was light and darkness throughout the kingdoms of Baigol and Baigadd during each period of twenty-four hours and three minutes. Light and heat were sent through the under-world by means of the two huge reflectors already mentioned, and when the sun passed from the heavens of course night fell.
But the climate was at all times delightful. We were armored against the temperature, and could not ourselves experience the equable air, yet our eyes and ears assured us of its presence, and this proved another surprise for the professor.
By day we traveled and by night we rested, often covering as many as five hundred spatli in a single day. Four days, at that rate, were to carry us to the capital of the other kingdom.
I gathered much wisdom from the professor as we journeyed, and there were two of our conversations which made a deep impression on me. The first had to do with the reflectors that turned the sun's rays into the bowels of the planet.
"Without the sun, Mr. Munn," remarked Quinn, indicating the white fields beside us with a gesture of the hand, "there could be no vegetable life in Baigol. Those fields must be quickened to life by the solar rays or they would be as barren as the outer shell of the planet. Finite ingenuity may always be trusted to accommodate itself to its environment. I can set the astronomers of Terra right on one mystery, at least."
"What mystery do you refer to, professor?" I asked.
"Why," he answered, "a luminous point has been detected by earthly telescopes on the disk of Mercury. The phenomenon has been explained as a huge mountain, whose top reflects the sun; yet it is only one of the great reflectors fabricated by these ingenious people."
Then at another time:
"Professor," said I, "have you made any discoveries relative to that powerful little weapon which the Baigols know so well how to use?"