oothold, fell into a crevice
and breaking through a thin crust I landed in the outer passageway which
finally led me into this room. I must confess that everything here is as
inexplicable to me as I appear to you." As I spoke she seemed to be
laboring under intense mental excitement and tears came to her eyes.

"I understand it all now," she made known to me in her mysterious way,
"the experiment failed."

"What experiment was that?" questioned I in surprise.

Looking me straight in the eye as though trying to impress upon my mind
the importance of her communication, she answered, "the attempt of man
to change the course of the earth in space."

CHAPTER VII

"And so you inform me that there is nothing left of beautiful Sageland
but a heap of ruins surrounded by the sea," mused the lovely--the idea
struck me to name her Arletta--"tell me what happened to the rest of my
people."

"Not knowing anything about the matter it is impossible for me to answer
that question," replied I; "and although I have traveled through nearly
every country on earth still no such people as you or the magnificent
objects represented in that picture have ever come to my attention
before. In fact I have never read of such a race or even heard of a
country by the name of Sageland."

At this remark she turned abruptly and walked--or rather flew, so easy
and graceful were her movements--over to a portion of the wall and
looked long and earnestly into a peculiar instrument, then returning she
said: (without the use of words) "according to my chronometer, more than
four thousand two hundred and thirty years have elapsed since the awful
catastrophe."

"Four thousand, two hundred and thirty years!" ejaculated I, "great
heavens, that must have been about the time of the flood." "What flood?"
inquired she.

Then I proceeded to tell her how in those days the people of the world
being so wicked that God during a terrible fit of anger made it rain for
forty days and forty nights, causing the destruction of every living
thing on earth except one Noah, his family and a male and female of
every animal, bird and insect, who were saved by being taken aboard of a
huge ark built for the purpose by Noah. And then after every living
thing not aboard the boat was destroyed, how the waves receded, Noah and
his flock were safely landed upon a mountain peak, and God put a bow
into the sky as a pledge that he would never do such a thing again.
Arletta appeared