“I say, Ross, she’s a beauty!” he exclaimed, as Ross came and stood beside him. “She travels as sweetly as a swan, and I don’t feel the least motion or vibration in the engines. It was a good thing you joined Dennis, though I’d have found the thing out myself, if he’d asked me. Just fancy such a fine ship being unapproachable for centuries! Great Bona! what is that? She’s struck!” he cried, in horror, as an enormous cloud that they had just cut through burst with an awful simultaneous flash and roar; the same instant the _Regina_ became a mass of living flame which seemed to set fire to the whole heavens, and the clouds around them became one solid sheet of electricity. “Now, how would you deal with that, Godfrey?” queried Ross, quietly. “Say my prayers!” replied Godfrey, briefly, decidedly frightened, though somewhat reassured by the general indifference of his companions who, he saw, were paying no attention to the furies outside, so he turned to Ross and inquired, “Is there not danger?” “Not a bit!” answered Ross. “Every flash that strikes calls out the same, or more, power from the ship to resist it. She has her repulsive force on now, and no matter what force she is passing through, that force is repulsed—unit for unit—and even more, so that it merely amounts to splutter on both sides, and the forces being always equally opposed, the result is nil, for the ship not only takes no hurt, but proceeds in spite of everything.” “It looks frightening enough, anyway,” observed Godfrey, considerably awed by the sight which so engrossed his attention that he did not notice Dennis letting out a small cup-shaped object which he caused to fall, when it sank some distance on a flexible wire which ran off its roller at enormous speed. All at once he saw it and asked what it was, and its object. “It’s a floating light,” replied Dennis; “it will fall till it is a quarter of a mile over the shed, when it will meet its equilibrium and remain poised—see, it is slowing up; now it has stopped and there is slack, for its weight sank it too low and it has now risen and is floating in perfect poise. I fire it through this switch on the roller, which at the same time releases the cord by fusing the soft connecting-wire, and you see the cord is rewinding; the shed and a mile round it will be lit up with a red light for thirty hours. That’s our good-bye signal.” “But they can’t see us, I suppose?” asked Godfrey, looking down and seeing a glow come through the clouds below them like the effulgence of a rising sun. “No,” answered Dennis, “the clouds are too thick, but all will know by the light that we are here, and Gilbert is ‘waving’ soon, so there’ll be a fine scramble for the disk afterwards.” “Really!” said Godfrey. “I read of that paper business the last time you went up, but I thought there was nothing in it.”