As there was now no danger of damage from outer heat, the net had been drawn back from before the windows, and with everything open and most of the explorers on the outer deck, the vessel sailed along some twenty feet above the ground. For some distance the country continued flat, but before very long the ship had to rise to avoid some hills over which they passed; then came a wooded valley where their presence startled thousands of birds not unlike our wild pigeons, which rose out of the trees and encircled the ship, many of them entering fearlessly. Beyond the momentary alarm at the enclosed place, they seemed not in the least afraid, when several of the fellows stroked their heads and their tiny ears almost hidden by minute feathers. They followed the ship for miles, flying inside and out, devouring the food offered them with avidity, and making themselves so perfectly at home that a dozen or more, finding things to their liking, stayed and became general favourites, walking and flying about in all parts of the ship except the laboratory and engine-room; either the aroma or a sense of danger caused them to shun these two places. They, like terrestrial creatures, required sleep, during which they crushed up together in circles with their heads and bodies touching. In a short time there dawned on the horizon a long, dark streak of blue-grey, with touches of white, unmistakably sea, and here they pulled up for a day or so, during which they obtained dredgings and samples of the water at various depths. The water was salt and contained a considerable quantity of iodine. Several small fishes had found their way into the boxes which collected the samples of water, and amongst them were numbers of many new varieties of spirilla, radiata and the like, while the dredgings in various places brought up corals, pearl-oysters, granite, gravel, iron pyrites and the like, as well as many new forms of deep-sea life, all of which added considerably to the unique collection already on board.