But no sooner
did a breath of the air enter my mouth than I hastily readjusted the
contrivance, for the gas which had struck down everyone but myself was
as strong as ever. Indeed, the mere whiff of the fumes made my head reel
and swim, and I was forced to steady myself by grasping the bridge-rail
until the dizzy spell passed. “Once more myself, I focussed the glasses as best I could upon the
whirling sphere above the ship. But I could make out little more than by
my naked eyes. The band about the center or equator of the globular
thing was, I could now see, divided into segments, each of which bore a
round, slightly convex, eye-like object from the centers of which
extended slender rods which vibrated with incalculable speed. Indeed,
the whole affair reminded me of the glass models of protozoans which I
had seen in the American Museum of Natural History. These minute marine
organisms I knew, moved with great rapidity by means of vibrating,
hair-like appendages or cilia, and I wondered if the enormous spherical
machine at which I was gazing, might not move through space in a similar
manner by means of vibrating rods moving with such incredible speed
that, slender as they were, they produced enormous propulsive power. Also, I could now see that the two extremities of the sphere, or as I
may better express it, the axes, were equipped with projecting bosses or
shafts to which the cables supporting the red spheres were attached. And
as I peered through the glasses at the thing, the huge green sphere,
which had been hitherto traveling on an even keel, or, in other words,
with the central band vertical, now shifted its position and one end
swung sharply upward, throwing the band about the centre at an acute
angle. Involuntarily I grasped the rail of the bridge expecting to be
thrown from my feet by the abrupt uptilting of the ship. But to my utter
amazement the _Chiriqui_ remained on an even plane and I then saw that
as the sphere tilted, the cable at the uppermost axis ran rapidly out so
that the two red spheres, which evidently supported the captive ship,
remained, in their original relative horizontal position. No sign of
life was visible upon the machine above me, and I surmised that whoever
might be handling the thing was within the sphere. “Wondering how high we had risen above the sea, I stepped to the
starboard end of the bridge and glanced down, and an involuntary
exclamation escaped my lips. Far beneath the ship and clearly visible
through the captain’s glasses was land! I could distinguish the white
line marking surf breaking on a rocky shore, and ahead I could make out
the cloud-topped, serried summits of a mighty range of mountains. Not
until then did I realize the terrific speed at which the machine and
captive vessel were traveling. I had been subconsciously aware that a
gale had been blowing, but I had not stopped to realize that this was no
ordinary wind, but was the rush of air caused by the rapidity of motion. But as I peered at the mountains through the binoculars, and saw the
distant surface of the earth whizzing backward far beneath the
_Chiriqui’s_ keel, I knew that we were hurtling onward with the speed of
the fastest scout airplane. “Even as I gazed, the mountains seemed to rush towards me until, in a
few minutes after I had first seen them, they appeared almost directly
under the ship. Then the gigantic machine above me suddenly altered its
course, it veered sharply to one side and swept along the range of
summits far beneath. For some reason, just why I cannot explain, I
dashed to the binnacle and saw that we were traveling to the south, and
it flashed across my mind, that I had a dim recollection of noticing,
when I first realized the nature of the machine which had been mistaken
for a meteor, that by the stars, we were moving eastward. In that case,
my suddenly alert mind told me, the land below must be some portion of
America, and if so, judging by the altitude of the mountains, that they
must be the Andes. All of this rushed through my brain instantly, and in
the brief lapse of time in which I sprang to the binnacle and back to my
observation point at the bridge-rail. “Now, I saw, we were rapidly descending, and focussing my glasses upon
the mountains, I made out an immense conical peak in the top of which
was a gigantic black opening. Without doubt it was the crater of some
stupendous extinct volcano, and, with a shock, I realized that the
machine and the ship were headed directly for the yawning opening in the
crater. The next instant we were dropping with lightning speed towards
it, and so terrified and dumfounded had I become that I could not move
from where I stood. Even before I could grasp the fact, the _Chiriqui_
was enclosed by towering, rocky walls, inky blackness surrounded me,
there was an upward breath-taking rush of air, a roar as of a thousand
hurricanes. The _Chiriqui_ rocked and pitched beneath my feet, as if in
a heavy sea; I clung desperately to the bridge-rail for support and I
felt sure that the ship had been dropped into the abysmal crater, that
the next instant the vessel would crash into fragments as it struck
bottom, or worse, that it would sink into the molten incandescent lava
which might fill the depths of the volcano. For what seemed hours, the
awful fall continued, though like as not the terrible suspense lasted
for only a few minutes, and then, without warning, so abruptly that I
lost my balance and was flung to the bridge, the ship ceased falling, an
indescribable blue light succeeded the blackness, and unable to believe
my senses I found the ship floating motionless, still suspended from the
giant mechanism overhead, above a marvelous landscape. *       *       *       *       *

“On every hand, as far as I could see, stretched jagged rocks, immense
cliffs, stupendous crags and rugged knife-ridged hills of the most
dazzling reds, yellows and purples. Mile-deep canons cut the forbidding
plains, which here and there showed patches of dull green, and in one
spot I saw a stream of emerald-hued water pouring in a foaming cataract
into a fathomless rift in the rock. But I gave little attention to these
sights at the time. My gaze was riveted upon a strange, weird city which
capped the cliffs close to the waterfall, and almost directly beneath
the _Chiriqui_. Slowly we were dropping towards it, and I could see that
the buildings which at first sight had appeared of immense height and
tower-like form, were in reality gigantic basaltic columns capped with
superimposed edifices of gleaming yellow. “The next second the glasses dropped from my shaking, nerveless hands. Gathered on an open space of greenish plain were hundreds of human
beings! But were they human?