"A sparsely inhabited country, and therefore one where we may venture to halt for a while without fear of interruption," said Joe. "Our water supply is running short, and if we are to continue our regular baths every morning we must fill our tanks again." Whoever heard of an airship carrying baths and water tanks of big capacity? But this one did, and bore the weight as if it were nothing. And the completeness of her equipment was again demonstrated, for, having sighted a huge lake in the heart of Persia, and made sure that there was not a town or a village in sight, Joe dropped the ship directly on the water, setting her elevators to work so gently that they held the giant framework but six feet above the surface. "Now we drop our pumps, set the motors going, and in a jiffy fill the tanks," he said. "Watch the whole performance." But there was little to see, though Dick and Alec, ever the most curious of those aboard, strained their necks to watch all that was passing. Two snake-like, flexible metal pipes were passed from the engine-room through apertures specially constructed for the purpose. Then the motor hummed a little louder, while one of the pump attachments was set going; the gurgle of water splashing into the tanks was the only indication that the operation was being performed with success. An hour, indeed, sufficed to replenish their supplies, when the ship shot upward once more till some six thousand feet of pure, sun-lit air lay beneath her. "And now for the north-west frontier of India, where our soldiers are ever on the watch," said Joe. "Come, Major, you feel no nervousness? You have no fears, I hope, lest our gas should run short and land us in the arms of some of those gentry who look upon an Englishman as a dog, to be slaughtered on any and every occasion?" "You may take me where you will, in chains if you wish," was the smiling response. "After the things that I have seen I have the utmost confidence in both the leader of this expedition and on the ship his hands have constructed. There! I cannot say more." It may be stated that only one person aboard the airship had a doubt as to her capacity and his own security, and, as may be guessed, that individual was Carl Reitberg. But then he was always nervous for his own skin. "The north-west!" he gasped, when Joe told him of their immediate destination. "But--but that's where there are always little wars and skirmishes." "Precisely," observed the Major, with cutting abruptness. "Our best soldiers are bred there. I've had a dose of the north-west myself. Keeps you alive, sir. And if you aren't lively, why----" "Ahem!" lisped Dick. "You're dead, dead as a herring." "And you go there?" stuttered the magnate, his face paling, his fat cheeks trembling. "Certainly!" declared Joe. "But supposing something happened, supposing----" "It won't, I hope," came the answer.