It would be needless to relate in detail the sufferings, mental and physical, that they underwent during the next ten days. While they were hanging there on the mountain the seaboard cities of the world were drowned, and Cosmo Versál's Ark departed on the remarkable voyage that has been described in a former chapter. They had plenty of provisions, for the aero had been well stored, but partly through precaution and partly because of lack of appetite they ate sparingly. The electric generators of the aero had not been injured in the wreck of the craft, and they were able to supply themselves with sufficient heat, and with light inside the cabin at night. Once they had a strange visitor--a half-drowned bear, which had struggled up the mountain from its den somewhere below--but that was the only living creature beside themselves that they saw. After gazing wistfully at the aero from the top of a rock the poor bear, fighting the choking rain with its soaked paws, stumbled into one of the torrents that poured furiously down on each side, and was swept from their sight. Fortunately, the wind that they had anticipated did not come, but frequently they saw or heard the roaring downpours of solid watery columns like those that had so much astonished Cosmo Versál and Captain Arms in the midst of the Atlantic, but none came very near them. Professor Pludder ventured out from time to time, clambering a little way up and down the projecting ridge of the mountain on which they were lodged, and at length was able to assure his companions that they were on the northwestern face of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak of the Appalachian range. With the aid of his pocket aneroid, making allowance for the effect of the lifting of the whole atmosphere by the flood, and summoning his knowledge of the locality--for he had explored, in former years, all the mountains in this region--he arrived at the conclusion that their place of refuge was elevated about four thousand feet above the former level of the sea. At first their range of vision did not allow them to see the condition of the valleys below them, but as the water crept higher it gradually came into view. It rose steadily up the slopes beneath, which had already been stripped of their covering of trees and vegetation by the force of the descending torrents, until on the tenth day it had arrived almost within reach. Since, as has just been said, they were four thousand feet above the former level of the sea, it will be observed that the water must have been rising much more rapidly than the measurements of Cosmo Versál indicated. Its average rate of rise had been three instead of two inches per minute, and the world was buried deeper than Cosmo thought. The cause of his error will be explained later.