After some minutes spent in useless speculation I rose from my knees and proceeded to explore the building, for I knew I must hasten. With feelings compact of awe and interest I approached the weird monsters of metal that stood reposing on their sustaining rails, and growing bolder I actually entered the vessel that was nearest to the broad eastern exit. I experienced no difficulty in descending into what I can best describe as a moderate-sized cabin with two smaller closets adjoining. Standing on its hinges at right angles to the cabin was the great lid of the airship. In this modified twilight I had no trouble in picking my steps, but a minute survey of details demanded a much stronger light. Nevertheless, I could distinguish directions in Latin painted on various parts of the cabin, and it was during a strained examination of one of these notices that I must have inadvertently touched or trodden on the concealed spring, which again was destined by my abiding good angel to prove my next instrument of salvation. A gentle humming or whirring seemed to vibrate around me, beginning very softly but gradually rising in intensity so that in alarm I prepared to quit the ship and regain the floor. But before I could collect my dazed thoughts into sufficient concert to act at all, I became aware of a soft gliding motion and actually perceived the long vista of the hall recede from my eyes, as I was slowly drifting through some unseen mechanical force out of the edifice and was being launched into the infinite beyond. With a joyful bound, so it seemed to me, my craft passed out of the open arching portal and was now running swiftly as though borne on invisible wires. I watched, as in a vision, the temple, mountain and shores of Meleager dwindle and diminish in my track, until they became mere outlines in the grey dimness that precedes the dawn. Still, as one fascinated, I could only stare and marvel, for the superfluity of adventures and wonders of this night had caused a sort of mental congestion of my brain. Suddenly I was once more recalled to the necessity of action, when I felt something hard pressing on my neck, and realised it was the cover of the airship closing gently of its own volition. Hurriedly I subsided into the well of the cabin with my eyes fixed on the slow descending cover, which finally settled down on the lower portion of the vessel like the lid of some Brobdingnagian snuff-box. Meanwhile I lay below, stupefied in an atmosphere which I soon found unpleasantly warm and also permeated with a subtle indescribable odour that at first produced a sense of nausea and of suffocation. However, by lying prone on a couch, for the cabin was furnished with tolerable comfort, these disagreeable symptoms were mitigated, though throughout my long journey I never felt any desire to rise and move about by reason of my giddiness. I could see that the vessel was well supplied with provisions, mostly in liquid form; and in