ussell? Do you know that its cause is
the despair of the world? Do you know----"

"Oh, it was dreadful! dreadful! dreadful!" interrupted the girl with a
shudder. "I was out in my boat alone and saw it all!"

The lady hid her face. "I was so tired that morning I couldn't breathe.
It was oppressive. The air was over-charged so strangely. You touched an
iron post and a spark shot out and gave you a shock. I couldn't stay, so
I begged off and took my lunch and my work in my little skiff and rowed
two miles out and anchored and tried to write."

"Can you state for the _Planet_, Miss----?"

"Insula Magnet, that's my name, sir."

"Miss Magnet, can you state at what exact hour the catastrophe
occurred?"

The balloon had now come to a standstill, and floated quietly above the
lake and the doomed city. The four wriggled uncomfortably in the
improvised seats. The ropes cut them. The sun beat upon them hotly. They
were exhausted and hungry and parched.

"Can't we go down?" suggested Swift. His brain reeled at the great depth
below him. The person who lost his hold and fell would die before he
reached the earth. The first stage in the Strasburg cathedral is two
hundred and fifty feet high, and it is a terrible sight to look over its
stone balustrade. No one forgets his sensation when he leans over the
top of the Eiffel tower, a thousand feet from the asphalt pavement
below. Judge what it was to those inexperienced travellers to be over
ten thousand feet high, clinging like weather-beaten flies to these
straining ropes!

"No, I wouldn't descend yet in this calm for as many dollars as we are
feet high. We're safe enough here. Look up, man! Look up! Shut your
eyes. That's best!"

But Mr. Ticks pugnaciously returned to his question. What was a little
matter of falling ten thousand feet or so? A fact startling and valuable
was at stake and at hand.

"It was just a quarter of ten," answered Miss Magnet, in a low,
horror-stricken tone. "I was writing. Suddenly a bitter vapor enveloped
everything. There was no wind, no sun, no clouds, only this dense,
strange atmosphere. It prostrated me. There were a number of boats near
me. These were all of the new patent. They were steel. I saw great balls
of fire dance from boat to boat. Then there came from the city a light
such as I never saw before. It flashed like an enormous meteor, like an
incandescent flame. It enveloped Russell. I was scorched even where I
was by the flash. I heard