They were now comparatively close above the earth and, in going around it, had gained the incidental advantage of having acquired the velocity of the planet in its journey around the sun. Only the problem of descent remained. But it was the most serious of all their problems--how to lower themselves in safety into that swirling, boiling mass of vapor that was shooting by so fast as to seem little more than a hideous blur, and left them sick and dizzy at the sight of it. And now, as they sank lower, the blur disintegrated into flying banks of cloud, shot through and through with flashing lights and darting shadows. Poised there, as they were, in space, it was a terrifying thing to watch this fearful rush of the earth's surface from west to east. Could they ever manage to break safely into the circumambient atmosphere and go whirling along with it? How--how, without having their delicate machine wrenched and torn in pieces? "We must break our descent with the tractor, come down gradually," said Bennie, "and trust to luck." Burke inverted the Ring, and they gathered about the deadlight, the cloud-banks sweeping by below them with a thousand times the velocity with which a toy globe can be spun by a playful child. Nearer and nearer rose the clouds toward them. A faint, humming sound filled the car--the wind! They had entered the earth's outer atmosphere. The hum rose gradually to a whine and then to a roar. The car shook, and the steel covering thundered. The noise increased to the crash of a hurricane, and they could scarcely hear one another's voices. Cautiously they descended, increasing the lift of the tractor when the movement of the clouds seemed too fast, and slacking off a bit when their speed held constant, until the Ring, gradually acquiring the velocity of the gale, was carried swiftly along by the atmosphere, and the cloud-banks below them began to move more slowly and at length not at all. They had pierced the envelope of the earth and were once more in the life-giving element of the air. Slowly, they dropped through the masses of cumulo-cirrus which, suddenly opening beneath them, revealed the rollers of a sunlit ocean. The breaking crests seemed perilously near after limitless distances of the firmament through which they had been voyaging, and they gave the Ring more lift and rose to a safer distance above the waves. Far to the west, close to the horizon, they could see a distant mountain peak, and for it they steered their craft. They were flying now with a speed a hundred times greater than that of the swiftest gull, the ray churning the sea into a boiling vortex that followed them like a white foam-monster, spurting great geysers of froth and steam fifty feet into the air. The mountain reared its head higher and higher, and soon the shore of a green island, sprinkled with white houses, rose toward them. "Fayal!" shouted Atterbury, from the control-room. "I've been there!"