“A hopeless darkness settles o’er my fate; • • • • • My doom is closed.” (+Count Basil.+) From the moon Luna the good ship sailed straight for the brilliant Jupiter, the giant planet of the solar system, passing Mars and numerous planetoids on the way. It was almost overwhelming to be flying through space as silently and as steadily as if standing, and to see the various worlds suspended in the black heavens, each turning more or less rapidly and at the same time travelling in a fixed orbit in the race round its governing sun. Words cannot describe the feeling of vastness which seemed to crush the travellers with its awful solemnity and power. As far as the powerful observatory telescope could reach, and beyond that, myriads and myriads of stars; stars everywhere! all lost in the immensity of space. Space and stars! each vista opening out still more stars and still more space, up and down, to right and left, every space bounded by still greater space. And the natural thought came into their minds that if anything went wrong with the ship, what would become of them? where would they go? for they and their puny ship were not of so much moment in that infinite vastness as is one of the thousands of microbes on a pin’s point in comparison to the size of the whole Earth. And ever as they flew through space a large world or planetoid would glide swiftly past them—stately and silent as a ghost—so near that through the glasses they could distinguish on its surface moving life, apparently unconscious of the enormous speed at which the world was spinning and travelling through space; people who, perhaps, as a whole, could not realise that such simple laws as gravity and motion and a thin atmosphere kept them in safety on what might be likened to a single speck of dust floating in a sunbeam. And as the adventurers had all these things impressed upon their hearts and minds by their unique position, they felt that but for the Divine Love, combined with the blessings of mental and physical strength, their intellects must have given way at the mere thought of their littleness amongst so much grandeur. They were seeing something of the Mind of the Creator, and they were compelled to exercise the greatest self-control to prevent hysteria or insanity, as all this glorious mystery was unfolded before them, as they rushed with enormous speed across the vast expanse of heaven, every hour the mighty Jupiter becoming larger and larger as they approached him.