“I have been wondering for the last two or three hours,” replied Congreve, musingly. “It may be that the foul gases on the ground have caught fire, or that there is some great electric disturbance; which it is I cannot understand.” “Not the _Regina!_” exclaimed Hewitt. “No, certainly not!” broke in Holt. “Oakland would come to the old orbit between Venus and the sun, and would never look for us here.” “It would be an utter impossibility,” rejoined Bolford; “the last view we had of the sun was as of a star of the fifth magnitude; that was some months since, and it will be about the seventh now, or invisible without a glass.” “What can have caused us to shoot off? the _Regina?_” asked Keeth. “There’s no doubt about it to my mind,” returned Bolford; “but only those in the ship could tell us why; perhaps only the owners.” Too exhausted to talk any more, they languidly rolled over, too ill to care what happened, and they dropped off to sleep one after the other, in fitful dozings, from which they were awakened a few hours later by water dripping on their faces from the cracks in the roof above. On going to the hidden chink in the rocks, from which they had an extended view of the shore, they saw rain. It was falling in a deluge, heavy, pouring rain; descending like long rods of polished steel, boring holes in the sand and the motionless sea, breaking the now feeble, lanky and colourless grass and pouring down the rocks in a flood, carrying the electricity with it in rainbows innumerable—floods of prismatic, fiery water. For hours it came down unceasingly, wetting them to the skin, as from every niche and cranny tiny and then strong streams raced down the cave floor and mixed with the stinking salt water at the entrance; but their hope revived as the rain continued. At last it ceased, and there came a freshened feeling in the air as the first puff of wind blew through the slit in the rock. “You know what that means!” cried Bolford, joyfully. “Yes, thank heaven!” they exclaimed. “Yes, thank heaven!” he repeated, fervently; “we are drawing near to the planet or source that has been pulling us all this time, and the atmosphere is moving.” “That rain has come in the nick of time,” said Keeth; “one day later and we should have been dead, every one of us.” “Let us get to the mouth of the cave to breathe the air, and bring Dawson,” said Siddall; “we can dive under the water.”