Although the “Albatross” had sunk several hundred feet she was still in the thick of the cloud, and the flashes played across her as if they were fireworks. It seemed as though she was struck. The screws ran more and more slowly, and what began as a gentle descent threatened to become a collapse. In less than a minute it was evident they would get down to the surface of the sea. Once they were immersed no power could drag them from the abyss. Suddenly the electric cloud appeared above them. The “Albatross” was only sixty feet from the crest of the waves. In two or three seconds the deck would be under water. But Robur, seizing the propitious moment, rushed to the central house and seized the levers. He turned on the currents from the piles no longer neutralized by the electric tension of the surrounding atmosphere. In a moment the screws had regained their normal speed and checked the descent; and the “Albatross” remained at her slight elevation while her propellers drove her swiftly out of reach of the storm. Frycollin, of course, had a bath—though only for a few seconds. When he was dragged on deck he was as wet as if he had been to the bottom of the sea. As may be imagined, he cried no more. In the morning of the 4th of July the “Albatross” had passed over the northern shore of the Caspian. Chapter XIV THE AERONEF AT FULL SPEED If ever Prudent and Evans despaired on escaping from the “Albatross” it was during the two days that followed. It may be that Robur considered it more difficult to keep a watch on his prisoners while he was crossing Europe, and he knew that they had made up their minds to get away. But any attempt to have done so would have been simply committing suicide. To jump from an express going sixty miles an hour is to risk your life, but to jump from a machine going one hundred and twenty miles an hour would be to seek your death. And it was at this speed, the greatest that could be given to her, that the “Albatross” tore along. Her speed exceeded that of the swallow, which is one hundred and twelve miles an hour. At first the wind was in the northeast, and the “Albatross” had it fair, her general course being a westerly one. But the wind began to drop, and it soon became impossible for the colleagues to remain on the deck without having their breath taken away by the rapidity of the flight. And on one occasion they would have been blown overboard if they had not been dashed up against the deck-house by the pressure of the wind. Luckily the steersman saw them through the windows of his cage, and by the electric bell gave the alarm to the men in the fore-cabin. Four of them came aft, creeping along the deck. Those who have been at sea, beating to windward in half a gale of wind, will understand what the pressure was like. But here it was the “Albatross” that by her incomparable speed made her own wind.