The great solitary pinnacle which she had noticed through the chart-room window especially excited her curiosity, and, as it seemed but a short distance away, she first photographed it and then decided to study it at closer range--to determine the cause of such a stalagmite formation under the open sky. The possibility of having any trouble in finding her way back to the Ring did not occur to her, since every object in the moonscape was defined with a truly unearthly brilliancy, snow-white on the light side and almost jet-black upon the other. Out of the inky curtain of the sky, the sun glared through a circular rent, like a beam through a hole in the roof of some dark garret. Where it fell, everything was dazzling bright, but in the shadow was the darkness of the Styx. It was like walking across a lava field by full moonlight. Thus, it seemed easy enough to mark the high lights of the vicinity and to find one's way around. Clearing from four to eight feet at a stride, Rhoda quickly crossed the plain to where the pinnacle stood like a lofty minaret, found that it could be easily climbed by a gently sloping ridge, and, without apparent exertion, gained the top and sat down on the very crest. Below her lay the Ring, its windows gleaming yellow in the startlingly white light, inclining slightly on its side in almost the center of the plain. Having photographed it, she turned her eyes in the other direction. Everywhere, as far as she could see, the lunar surface was spotted with craterlets, large and small, surrounded by circular ridges of jagged rock, and bristled with spires and pinnacles. It reminded her vividly of the white, dried shell of a sea-urchin with a few lingering bristles still adhering to it, such as are found so plentifully on the seashore. To what, owing to the sun's position, ought to be the north, her view was cut off by a towering range, beyond which she could glimpse the white peak of a high mountain--Copernicus, probably--and believing this range to be not more than a few miles away, she resolved to utilize the time while the men were at work in trying to get a photograph of the moon's most superb natural feature. II The reader may recall that, at the moment of the departure of the Ring upon the preceding evening from the aerodrome at Georgetown, Bentham T. Tassifer had ensconced himself on the roof of the limousine containing his wife and the professional members of their party, and that, the Ring having vanished upward into the air, Mrs. Tassifer suddenly recalled the absence of her niece Rhoda, and, thrusting her head out of the window, had anxiously inquired of the world in general and of Bentham in particular what could have become of her. "How should _I_ know?" snapped back her husband, whose attention had thus, much against his will, been directed back to earth again. "How should _I_ know? She went back to that machine, and I suppose she can't get through the crowd."