I remember hanging limply and helplessly to the table for a moment, remember Sam pushing me suddenly away. I have a dim memory of a crashing thunder of sound that reverberated deafeningly and seemed to roll away to infinite distances through the fiery mist. And with that strange, deep sound, my consciousness faded away! CHAPTER XI The Roof of Waters The next thing I knew I was lying on the floor, with a torrent of icy water falling on my face. I sat up, sputtering. Sam was bending over me with a relieved grin on his face. "Care for any more?" he asked, emptying the pail. "That's quite enough, thanks," I sputtered. "Where are we?" "Right here." "Talk sense," I pleaded, trying to get up, and rubbing the bump in my head. "Really, I hardly know," he said, soberly. "It's rather queer. We're afloat on a smooth, warm sea! The sky is red!" I stared at him stupidly. "It's a good thing we had the rockets! If we hadn't used them, we'd have hit this water like a concrete pavement!" "Queer, you say! My eye! We're both crazy! It can't be!" "You might get up and see for yourself." "You say we've fallen through the Pacific and into another sea?" "I only know what I can see." "We did seem to come out of the water into a red mist." "So it seemed." "But the Pacific Ocean overhead! We must have come through six miles of water! And water won't float on air!" "We have several interesting questions before us." I got uncertainly to my feet, walked past the calm old scientist, and climbed out on the narrow deck. Indeed it was a weird and incredible sight that met my eyes. Overhead arched a great dome of crimson fire. In all directions it reached down to the dark, warm sea on which we were floating. Nothing in sight but red sky and dark waves! There was a light, hot breeze, but the strange sea was very still. Its color was a blue-black, splashed weirdly with the reflected light of the crimson sky. It stretched out on every hand to where the red sky rose, utterly lifeless--lonely and dead. We had fallen into an unsuspected and incredible world! Miles of water lay between us and our fellow men. Suddenly I felt an absurdly great loneliness, a vast homesickness for the world we had left--even if my fellow men had never meant very much to me! I felt an ineffably intense desire for the sunshine, for blue skies and green plains, and for the busy, cheerful cities of men! In fact, I almost burst into tears. It was not so much that I was afraid. But the place seemed so strange, that even after I was dead my soul could not find a way out! If there had been a rock, or an island to break the monotony of the ghostly, silent sea, it would not have been so bad. But there were none. The strange dark desert of waters stretched out as far as my eye could reach! The eerie, scarlet radiation of the sky beat down with intense heat, and the wind was damp and sultry.