The priest crossed his hands upon his breast and said a prayer--then again looked up to where the air-ship floated in the darkening blue. It was now directly over the canon,--immediately above the huge rift made by the earthquake, through which the clamorous rush of water poured. While he watched it, it suddenly stood still, then dived slowly as though bent on descending into the very depths of the gully. He could not forbear uttering an exclamation, which made all the men about him look in the direction where his own gaze was fixed. "That air-ship's going to kingdom-come!" said one--"Nothing can save it if it takes to nose-diving down there!" They all stared amazed--but the dreadful work on which they were engaged left them no time for consideration of any other matter. The priest watched a few minutes longer, more or less held spell-bound with a kind of terror, for he saw that without doubt the great vessel was either purposely descending or being drawn into the vast abyss yawning black beneath it, and that falling thus it must be inevitably doomed to destruction. Whoever piloted it must surely be determined to invite this frightful end to its voyage, for nothing was ever steadier or more resolute than its downward movement towards the whirling waters that rushed through the canon. All suddenly it disappeared, whelmed as it seemed in darkness and the roaring flood, and the watching priest made the sign of the cross in air murmuring-- "God have mercy on their souls!" Had he been able to see what happened he might have thought that the confused brain of the dying boy who had imagined the air-ship to be an angel, was not so far wrong, for no romancer or teller of wild tales could have pictured a stranger or more unearthly sight than the wonderful "White Eagle" poised at ease amid the tossed-up clouds of spray flung from the seething mass of waters, while at her prow stood a woman fair as any fabled goddess--a woman reckless of all danger, and keenly on the alert, with bright eyes searching every nook and cranny that could be discerned through the mist. Clear above the roaring torrent her voice rang like a silver trumpet as she called her instructions to the two men who, equally defying every peril, had ventured on this journey at her command,--Rivardi and Gaspard. "Let her down very gently inch by inch!" she cried; "It must be here that we should seek!"