’Whew!’ Jack uttered a long whistle of relief. ’This is a change indeed! I began to wonder where on Earth—h’m, I mean where on Mars—we were rushing to! Where do you suppose we ’ve got to? I mean, supposing we dropped straight down, what part of your world should we be in?’ He asked the question in a general sort of way, and Malto answered him as vaguely, by admitting frankly that he had not the least idea. ’I confess I ’ve lost count of all landmarks,’ he declared. ’I am very much afraid we are now near what is known as the Great Desert. It is a more or less waterless tract which is uninhabited, save by some roaming tribes of wanderers who do not bear the best of characters.’ ’Ha! You have deserts, then, as we have?’ said Gerald. Malto looked at him in surprise. ’Why, of course; I thought everybody knew that! Fully one-third of our globe is waterless desert, and, what is worse, the tract is gradually extending. Our scientific men prophesy that the proportion will grow larger and larger until the whole planet becomes a dried-up waste. That is the cheerful sort of doom they predict for future generations!’ ’Curious, isn’t it?’ murmured Jack, glancing at Gerald. ’That is exactly what our earthly scientists have prophesied as likely to happen to Mars in the future!’ ’And to our own planet also, some day, I suppose,’ Gerald rejoined. ’Only, here, I suppose, the process has gone farther than it has with us.’ ’Well, desert or no desert, it will be better than Agrando’s dungeons,’ said Jack. ’We shall have to go down into it, I suppose, when the storm subsides? We can’t stop up here indefinitely. What are we to do meanwhile? Can’t we try to work back in this upper current?’ Malto shook his head. ’It would probably be of very little use, and would certainly be unwise,’ he counselled. ’We have come hundreds of miles—much farther than our whole store of electric force would carry us. If we expend it all in trying to work back we shall be in bad case if, when we come to the end of our store, we still find ourselves where we do not want to be. Now, to support ourselves up here quietly will take but very little of our reserve force, and we shall have a good stock left for emergencies. That is my advice; in fact, that is practically all we can do. We must wait here till the storm below has blown itself out. Then we will go down and try to find out what country we have got into.’ ’I think you are right,’ Alondra agreed. ’It is already well on in the afternoon—judging by the sun—and we have had nothing to eat. I ’m getting hungry!’ Jack grumbled. ’Don’t you have aerial inns up in the clouds here, where storm-tossed travellers can get a meal?’