His mother awoke just then, and she caught her breath with a gasp as she looked up, for all the rigging of the imaginary ship had disappeared, and a dense fog was folded close around them. The balloon seemed, too, to have met with a new current of wind, for it was rushing along with fearful velocity, whither,--even the professor himself could not guess. Looking downward, they saw the same impenetrable fog, and the professor concluded to let the balloon drift on in its course for a while. Presently, Puck exclaimed: "Mamma, don't oo hear ze bears g'owl?" For some time, the others had heard a low menacing grumble. It sounded like the roar of machinery, with the falling of a heavy trip-hammer at regular intervals, and it seemed possible that they were in the vicinity of a manufacturing town. There was a little light in the eastern horizon, and Puck suddenly exclaimed, "T'ere's anoder b'loon!" It was the full moon, instead, that rose majestically, and the fog seemed to be disappearing. Looking down, the professor thought he could see the land, and he allowed the balloon to slowly descend. By and by, they could all see that the ground was marked with white streaks and spots, which they supposed to be snow. Lower and lower sank the balloon, and still Puck's bears continued to "g'owl." Suddenly, the professor uttered an exclamation of horror--only two words, "The sea!" But they sounded like a sentence of doom to the travelers. They were floating over a wide and angry sea! The professor threw overboard a bag of ballast, and the balloon darted upward again into space. Where were they? Was it the Bay of Biscay, the North Sea, the English Channel, or the open Atlantic? Very soon, the balloon began to descend again. The roar of the waves was louder than ever, and they beat the same tune that the great bass-drum and the cannon had played: "Boom-er-oom, a boom-er-oom! A boom! boom! boom!"-- for they were striking against a rocky wall, and the white cliffs of Dover rose ghostly in the moonlight before them. The professor threw overboard his last bag of ballast; Puck hid his face in his mother's dress, while she, in the presence of that mighty danger, sang a hymn. Mrs. Parker was one of the singers in the choir of a church at Paris, and her voice had been much admired; but she had never sung before as she sang now. Her voice was sustained instead of drowned by the roar of the sea, and was re-echoed back from the rocky cliff marvelously clear and pure, as she sang "Save me, O God, from waves that roll."