The others agreeing, Godfrey very unceremoniously called up the twenty impatient visitors who, along with the two attendants, mounted the ladder and were soon safely aboard. The net was joined, doors were closed, and amidst applause which rolled aloft like thunder, the ship ascended, all the occupants going to the windows to watch the people becoming smaller and smaller, suddenly to vanish as the ship increased speed; and now they saw the rivers and seas like strips of hammered silver; then all was lost in billowy clouds; then all was dark; below them lay the Earth, a great ball, or disc of light, which became smaller and smaller and was even now but the size of a marble, as the _Regina_ shot onwards with terrific speed straight for the gigantic sun. CHAPTER X THE CONSPIRACY “Foul whisp’rings are abroad; unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.” (+Shakespeare.+) Almost the first thing to excite comment amongst the visitors was the appearance of the stars. On Earth stars are seen above and around, as if the spectator were placed in the centre of a great ball, on the inner side of which ball stars are seen, but owing to the Earth intervening and cutting off all sight below the horizon, only the upper half of the dome is visible. But here in space the stars were above, around, and below; in every direction they shone brilliantly, the _Regina_, notwithstanding her rapid movement, being always and at all times the altering centre of a vast and ever-changing space, with ever-changing objects, which appeared weird and awful when viewed in the absence of an atmosphere through which everything in nature must necessarily be seen from Earth, and which softens and beautifies by its moisture and substance and clouds and refraction and dozens of other blessings, or the inhabitants would be driven almost mad to see the wonders of creation and the terrible sun, shorn of the Earth’s beneficent veil of atmosphere. Many of the passengers were appalled, and several intensely regretted their misplaced enthusiasm. They had, all their lives, examined their celestial globes from _without_, as they necessarily were obliged to do, merely bearing in mind, in a casual sort of way, that the Earth was really _within_, and instead of the dome of the heavens being above, the Earth was itself the centre of limitless space. They nearly lost their self-control and were driven to the verge of hysterics to realise that the frail thing on which they stood was actually adrift in immeasurable space, and only the All-seeing Eye could guide them back to their own world.