“We approached the planet from between it and Venus, and we must have left it with a repulsive force and sent it off; it was quite an accident.” “But if you approached between it and Venus, and gave it a repulsive force, it would have gone into the sun!” said Bolford. “I don’t understand.” “If you remember,” continued Ross, “we had to go round the world, and we left it at the side near the sun. The attraction of the sun was so enormous that we had to steady ourselves by converting some of the attraction into repulsion, and the planet being then in our wake, must by that have been projected out of its system, away from the sun.” “Then how did you find us?” asked several, much interested. “Rollsborough suggested this solution when we found you’d bolted. Knowing the exact position when we left, and the planet’s gravity, speed of travel, and orbit, and all the rest of it, he cleverly worked out the direction in which you had been hurled and—here you are!” While Ross was talking, the rest had gathered round, and as he finished, they asked the mutineers for their story; Holt related the account of their adventures, that is to say, the version which, while in the cave, had been agreed upon to present to sympathising friends,— “On our arrival, the first thing we did was to attach ourselves to the various departments of science, for Siddall at once suggested that as we had fallen we must, in the short time we should have to live, do our best to work well and try to retrieve the past, and in this we all concurred. We were doing excellent work when the people discovered they were out of their orbit and blamed us for it. Fearing this was correct, yet not knowing how, or why, we made light of it, and their fears were allayed for the time being. However, time passed, and as the climatic changes which were sure to follow such an event on a world not intended to be so far away from the sun came along, we were blamed more and more. To so sorry a pass did matters come that, although we had been presented with no end of wealth, we had to leave it all, and fly suddenly for our very lives. They hunted for us everywhere, and we should have been killed months since, but for the cave. “We found it by watching an animal dive in; eventually we killed the beast and then one of us dived under to see if there was any shelter, and, finding a cave, we lived there in terrible suffering through all the changes the sudden departure from the sun brought about, till you came and saved our lives.”