The Mercurial with whom we were already on gesticulating terms played off some orders on his own canteen, and two of the others advanced upon the box from which we had just descended. Pulling out a slide in the side of the receptacle, they exposed two ewers of steaming food, and we were motioned to fall to. We stood not upon the order, but obeyed instantly, using a pair of small paddles which were thrust into our hands. I had no idea what the food might be, but it was tender and of good flavor. "A bright little people," observed the professor as he ate. "Seemingly," I responded. "Nature has denied them the power of speech, yet see how they have surmounted the difficulty. I must give that talking machine of theirs a close inspection. We are in a most wonderful country, Mr. Munn." "The little I have seen of it already quite dazes me," said I. "What a pickpocket a man could make of himself with all those hands!" Quinn gave me a reproachful look, and I hastily apologized for even mentioning a branch of my profession. "Do you understand now," said he, turning the subject very pleasantly, "what those bright objects were which we saw on the tops of the low hills?" "No," said I. "They were ovens," he answered. "Food is put in them and sent up to the hot surface of the planet. When properly cooked it is lowered again." Association with this learned man was a liberal education in itself. I can never be sufficiently thankful to fate for causing our paths to cross. "You think, then," said I, "that we were blown to the top of one of the hills and fell into a shaft used by the traveling ovens?" "Nothing else could have happened." The professor gave a start and looked worried. "Dear, dear!" he exclaimed. "I was quite forgetting our friends. While we are here feasting and taking our ease, they are battling with the storm, and are no doubt in peril of their lives. How very, very thoughtless we are, Mr. Munn." I was not greatly exercised over the matter. The trust magnates believed that there was a figurative gulf between myself and them, and I was more than willing that this gulf should grow from the symbol to the reality. "I doubt if we can return to the outside of the planet at present, professor," said I, "and even if we were able to do so, what could we accomplish in the face of that tremendous storm?" "True, very true," said he. "That oven," said I, by way of taking his mind from the plutocrats, "must have been very warm when we landed on it and descended to these regions." "We should have been grilled, sir," returned the professor, "but for the fact that we are coated, and our clothing impregnated, with my anti-temperature fluid." "These Mercurials appear to stand the heat pretty well," I remarked.