o withdraw my eyes, I saw imaginary forms
revealing themselves amid the flaming meteors. They seemed like creatures
in agony, tossing their arms, bewailing in their attitudes the awful fate
that had overtaken them, and fairly chilling my blood with the pantomime
of torture which they exhibited. I thought of an old superstition which
I had often heard about the earth, and exclaimed: "Yes, surely, this is
a flying hell!"

As the electric activity of the comet increased, its continued changes
of potential and polarity became more frequent, and the electrical ships
darted about with even greater confusion than before. Occasionally one
of them, seized with a sudden impulse, would spring forward toward the
nucleus of the comet with a sudden access of velocity that would fling
every one of its crew from his feet, and all would lie sprawling on
the floor of the car while it rushed, as it seemed, to inevitable and
instant destruction.

Saved on Ruin's Brink.

Then, either through the frantic efforts of the electrician struggling
with the controller or through another change in the polarity of the
comet, the ship would be saved on the very brink of ruin and stagger
away out of immediate danger.

Thus the captured squadron was swept, swaying and darting hither and
thither, but never able to get sufficiently far from the comet to break
the bond of its fatal attraction.

The Earth Again!

So great was our excitement and so complete our absorption in the fearful
peril that we had not noticed the precise direction in which the comet
was carrying us. It was enough to know that the goal of the journey was
the furnace of the sun. But presently someone in the flagship recalled
us to a more accurate sense of our situation in space by exclaiming:

"Why, there is the earth!"

Thrilling Adventures Crowd Each Other In the Great War Upon Mars.

And there, indeed, it was, its great globe rolling under our eyes, with
the contrasted colors of the continents and clouds and the watery gleam
of the ocean spread beneath us.

"We are going to strike it!" exclaimed somebody. "The comet is going to
dash into the earth."

Such a collision at first seemed inevitable, but presently it was noticed
that the direction of the comet's motion was such that while it might
graze the earth it would not actually strike it.

And so, like a swarm of giant insects circling about an electric light
from whose magic influence they cannot escape, our sh