BOOK III. I-SATURN II.-THE SPIRIT'S FIRST VISIT HI.-DOUBTS AND PHILOSOPHY IV.-A PROVIDENTIAL INTERVENTION V.-AYRAULT'S VISION VI.-A GREAT VOID AND A GREAT LONGING VII.-THE SPIRIT'S SECOND VISIT VIII.-CASSANDRA AND COSMOLOGY IX.-DR. CORTLANDT SEES HIS GRAVE X.-AYRAULT XI.-DREAMLAND TO SHADOWLAND XII.-SHEOL XIII.-THE PRIEST'S SERMON XIV.-HIC ILLE JACET XV.-MOTHER EARTH LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, INCLUDING NINE DRAWINGS BY MR. DAN. BEARD, AND A DIAGRAM. ---- The Callisto and the Comet The Callisto was going straight up The Signals from the Arctic Circle Diagram of the Comparative Sizes of the Planets The Ride on the Giant Tortoise A Battle Royal on Jupiter The Combat with the Dragons Ayrault's Vision They look into the Future The Return BOOK I. A JOURNEY IN OTHER WORLDS. ---- CHAPTER 1. JUPITER. Jupiter--the magnificent planet with a diameter of 86,500 miles, having 119 times the surface and 1,300 times the volume of the earth--lay beneath them. They had often seen it in the terrestrial sky, emitting its strong, steady ray, and had thought of that far-away planet, about which till recently so little had been known, and a burning desire had possessed them to go to it and explore its mysteries. Now, thanks to APERGY, the force whose existence the ancients suspected, but of which they knew so little, all things were possible. Ayrault manipulated the silk-covered glass handles, and the Callisto moved on slowly in comparison with its recent speed, and all remained glued to their telescopes as they peered through the rushing clouds, now forming and now dissolving before their eyes. What transports of delight, what ecstatic bliss, was theirs! Men had discovered and mastered the secret of apergy, and now, "little lower than the angels," they could soar through space, leaving even planets and comets behind. "Is it not strange," said Dr. Cortlandt, "that though it has been known for over a century that bodies charged with unlike electricities attract one another, and those charged with like repel, no one thought of utilizing the counterpart of gravitation? In the nineteenth century, savants and Indian jugglers performed experiments with their disciples and masses of inert matter, by causing them to remain without visible support at some distance from the ground; and while many of these, of course, were quacks, some were on the right track, though they did not push their research." President Bearwarden and Ayrault assented. They were steering for an apparently hard part of the planet's surface, about a degree and a half north of its equator.