As they continued their journey they passed over various cities and countries. Sometimes strange war-vessels, seeing from a distance that a small fleet was approaching, came soaring up to inquire who and what they were. Continually, all day long, other craft, of every size and kind, passed them. Some were great liners, carrying passengers, going swiftly to and fro like our greyhounds of the Atlantic; some were private yachts; and others again war-craft, alone, or in twos and threes. All, as they went by, ran up signals; and when they learnt from the answering signals who the illustrious travellers were, saluted in token of respect. Their progress was leisurely, and there were many halts. There were certain places where their coming was expected, and preparations had been made to give them a brilliant reception. Airships, splendidly decorated, came up to welcome them, and beg them to descend to receive addresses. Then it was that the strangers saw how much diversity it was possible to introduce into the decoration of the various air-craft, and how their outward appearance could be varied and altered according to the taste and ingenuity of the owners. Every kind of bird was imitated upon a large scale. There were gigantic swans, eagles, swallows, and other birds such as are familiar to us upon Earth, and a number of strange bird-forms which exist only on Mars. There were grotesque creatures, too, representations of beasts and fish, and uncanny-looking monsters, some of the latter resembling what we know as dragons, griffins, wyverns, and so on. At night there would be fêtes, when all these creatures were lighted up in curious and ingenious fashion, revealing to the astonished and delighted travellers most weird and marvellous effects, as they performed intricate evolutions and manoeuvres in the air in the dark. Then there were fireworks such as have probably never been dreamed of by even our most skilful pyrotechnists. Illuminated airships soared up into the heavens and formed brilliant constellations of huge coloured stars, or rained down showers of fire, like colossal, inverted, fiery fountains. Chariots of fire sailed to and fro and engaged in races, contests, or in sham-fights upon a grand scale. Fiery monsters, which left long, shining trails of light behind them like the tails of comets, darted to and fro with a roar which startled those who heard it for the first time. Luminous clouds—red, yellow, blue, or green—formed mysteriously, and aeronauts played hide-and-seek amongst them with their lighted cars, vanishing suddenly into them and reappearing quite unexpectedly in a different place.