As hours advanced, the blackness of night increased, and their impressions appear somewhat strange to anyone familiar with ordinary night travel in the sky. Mr. Monck Mason compares their progress through the darkness to "cleaving their way through an interminable mass of black marble." Then, presently, an unaccountable object puzzles and absorbs the attention of all the party for a long period. They were gazing open-mouthed at a long narrow avenue of feeble light, which, though apparently belonging to earth, was too long and regular for a river, and too broad for a canal or road, and it was only after many futile imaginings that they discovered they were simply looking at a stay rope of the balloon hanging far out over the side. Somewhat later still, there was a more serious claim upon the imagination. It was half-past three in the morning, and the balloon, which, to escape from too low an altitude, had been liberally lightened, had now at high speed mounted to a vast height. And then, amid the black darkness and dead silence of that appalling region, suddenly overhead came the sound of an explosion, followed by the violent rustling of the silk, while the car jerked violently, as though suddenly detached from its hold. This was the idea, leading to the belief that the balloon had suddenly exploded, and that they were falling headlong to earth. Their suspense, however, cannot have been long, and the incident was intelligible enough, being due to the sudden yielding of stiffened net and silk under rapid expansion caused by their speedy and lofty ascent. The chief incidents of the night were now over, until the dawn arrived and began to reveal a strange land, with large tracts of snow, giving place, as the light strengthened, to vast forests. To their minds these suggested the plains of Poland, if not the steppes of Russia, and, fearing that the country further forward might prove more inhospitable, they decided to come to earth as speedily as possible. This, in spite of difficult landing, they effected about the hour that the waking population were moving abroad, and then, and not till then, they learned the land of their haven--the heart of the German forests. Five hundred miles had been covered in eighteen hours from start to finish! CHAPTER VII. CHARLES GREEN--FURTHER ADVENTURES.