“Them flames is gittin worser!” Washington cried a little later. “We’s comin’ nearer!” From the bottom window the professor and the boys looked down. True enough the curious, changing, vari-colored lights seemed brighter. They could almost see the tongues of flame shooting upward in anticipation of what they were soon to devour. The heat was increasing every minute. The sides of the ship were hot. The heads of the travelers were getting dizzy. They could hardly talk or move about. “I must save our lives! I must trust to the——” The professor, who was muttering to himself started toward the storeroom. As in a dream Mark watched him. He remembered afterward that he had speculated on what might be the outcome of the mystery the professor threw about the place. “I will have to use it,” he heard the scientist say softly. Just as Mr. Henderson was about to open the door there came a fiercer blast of heat than any that had preceded. At the same instant the conditions in the _Mermaid_ became so fearful that each of the travelers felt himself fainting away. “Go to—storeroom—get cylinder—get in——” the professor murmured, and then he fell forward in a faint. CHAPTER XVI THE NEW LAND “What is it? Tell us!” exclaimed Jack, almost in his last breath, for, a few seconds later he too toppled over senseless. Then Washington went down, while Andy, Bill and Tom succumbed to the terrible heat. Mark felt his head swimming. His eyes were almost bulging from their sockets. He dimly remembered trying to force himself to go to the storeroom and see what was there. He started toward it with that intention, but fell half way to it. As he did so he saw something which impressed itself on his mind, half unconscious as he was. The door of the storeroom suddenly opened, and from it came a giant shape, that seemed to expand until it filled the whole of the apartment where the stricken ones lay. It was like the form of some monster, half human, half beast. Mark shuddered, and then, closing his eyes, he felt himself sinking down into some terrible deep and black pit. A second later the whole ship was jarred as though it had hit something. How long he and the others remained unconscious Mark did not know. He was the first to revive, and his first sensation was one as though he had slept hard and long, and did not want to get up. He felt very comfortable, although he was lying flat on the floor, with his head jammed against the side of a locker. It was so dark that he could not distinguish his hand held close to his face. “I wonder if I’m dead, and if all the others are dead too,” he thought to himself. “What has happened? Let’s see, the last I remember was some horrible shape rushing from the storeroom. I wonder what it could have been? Surely that was not the secret the professor referred to.”