Thanks to the water ballast which she had again taken aboard, the airship was wonderfully steady, while her capacity to withstand a gale was proved to the utmost. Even when turned broadside on to the wind the ship maintained her position, the sweeping aerial currents being cut asunder by those lateral keels, and passing harmlessly above and beneath her. But then she was possessed of those cross air-shafts in which powerful screws worked, a feature absent entirely from the Zeppelin. It was a week later when the passengers on the deck above sighted the huge island of New Guinea, that inhospitable region, a great part of which is still unknown to white men, where jungles and swamps are inhabited by the fiercest of cannibals. And here it was that Dick and his friends came in for another adventure. CHAPTER XVIII Off to New Guinea A purple sea from which the sun's rays flashed upward with all the iridescent colours of the rainbow; a gorgeous blue sky without a single fleecy cloud; and a medley of brilliant islets marked the course of the great airship as she stemmed her way towards the wild, uncivilized island of New Guinea. Stepping the broad, long deck above, and enjoying to the full a climate as balmy as that of Old England in the heyday of summer, one could peep down upon golden dots rising here and there in the distance, dots which grew from a purple haze and became more yellow, till at length the deep green of luxuriant vegetation began to merge with the yellow, till single objects became distinguishable, and until one could trace long lengths of smooth sand upon which white breakers roared, wide-sweeping coral boundaries of silent lagoons that appeared by their wealth of colour to be of vast depth, and groves of waving palms that invited those aboard the ship to halt, to descend and rest awhile amidst surroundings the peace and beauty of which none had ever seen an equal. But sometimes the picture was spoiled, for dark objects dotted the sands. Men raced out from amidst the trees, and puny bows sent equally puny arrows soaring upward in a feeble attempt to reach the leviathan overhead. "Plucky of 'em," remarked the Major. "No doubt those islanders take us for some supernatural object, and are really shaking in their shoes." "Shoes!" interjected the Commander, with lifting eyebrows, lowering the glasses which he had held for some while glued to his eyes. "I don't see anything to convince me that the people we have seen make use of such civilized attachments. Indeed, their clothing is chiefly remarkable by its absence. My dear Major, we are passing above islets seldom visited by white men, some hardly visited even by wandering Chinese or Dyaks. Those are nature's children we see below, many of them without a doubt wild heathen cannibals." "Ugh! Supposing we were to fall," laughed Dick.