Gone now was the caravan, gone the desert! Sana and he were in a huge aeroplane. It was their first flight together in the “Meteor,” as he had named it. Long had he worked to perfect this machine. Nothing similar had ever before been devised. Its large bullet-shaped body and spreading wings gave it the appearance of a gigantic bird. It flew without an engine, propelled by an invisible force, the secret of which was his, alighting and soaring at will, through wind or calm. It would hover in the air like a hawk and at the pressure of his hand on a lever would rush through space at an unlimited speed. He had gotten a thousand miles an hour out of it, but that was nothing compared to what it could do! Below them lay what was once the great Sahara Desert. But how different now! The great canal had been dug and the waters of the sea let in but a short year before. Already the country had changed--great fertile fields had sprung up on all sides. Gone were the sand hills--gone too, Sana cried, was her Gurara Oasis. Swinging southward they soon passed over the great jungles of Africa. Here, too, a mighty change had been wrought. The tropical climate had gone, the jungle life was dying. Ice was forming on some of the swamps. Strange beasts were wandering about aimlessly, seeking a warmer land. Among these were animals of which modern man knew little or nothing--the unicorn for instance, an animal existing only in the imagination of writers and artists, or as Carl noted, through his powerful field glasses, a monstrous dinosaur, walking on its high legs. He had seen many skeletons of that primitive beast in museums all over the world, but he had believed, with the rest of the world, that no such animal existed in modern times. Yet here it was, driven from its jungle haunts by the ever increasing cold. The natives, too, he saw bewildered and afraid--huddled close to their fires, filled with wonder and dismay. In Europe they found similar climatic changes. It was July, but everywhere the people were wearing their heaviest clothing to keep warm. The vegetation of the land was being slowly but surely destroyed by the terrible frosts. People were dying by millions because of the lack of food and the diseases that swept the land. Forgotten were the hatreds of war--forgotten the enmities of society. Nations were striving with each other to maintain life. In Germany Carl found the entire resources devoted to the manufacture and distribution of a chemical preparation which was to take the place of food for the Germans and other peoples of Europe. Throughout Europe all communication by wireless, by telegraph or telephone was halted. This was caused by the continual display of the so-called “Northern Lights,” now of much greater intensity in Europe than ever witnessed before even at the North Pole. In a flight over the Arctic regions they saw the great ice flows break up and drift southward, exposing land that had never been known to exist.