ower
forward.

"Why every one under cover, Captain Arnold?" asked Natasha, as soon
as the two were ensconced in the wheel-house and the door shut.

"Because I am going to put the _Ariel_ through her paces, and enter
Aeria in style," replied he, signalling for the fan-wheels to
revolve. "The fact is that, so far as I can see, these mountains are
too high for us to rise over them by means of the lifting-wheels,
which are only calculated to carry the ship to a height of about five
thousand feet. After that the air gets too rarefied for them to get a
solid grip. Now, these mountains look to me more like seven thousand
feet high."

"Then how will you get over them?"

"I shall first take a cruise and see if I can find a negotiable gap,
and then leap it."

"What! Leap seven thousand feet?"

"No; you forget that we shall be over five thousand up when we take
the jump, and I have no doubt that we shall find a place where a
thousand feet or so more will take us over. That we shall rise easily
with the planes and propellers, and you will see such a leap as man
never made in the world before."

While he was speaking the _Ariel_ had risen from the ground, and was
hanging a few hundred feet above the little plateau. He gave the
signal for the wheels to be lowered, and the propellers to set to
work at half-speed. Then he pulled the lever which moved the
air-planes, and the vessel sped away forwards and upwards at about
sixty miles an hour.

Arnold headed her away from the mountains until he had got an offing
of a couple of miles, and then he swung her round and skirted the
cliffs, rising ever higher and higher, and keeping a sharp look-out
for a depression among the ridges that still towered nearly three
thousand feet above them.

When he had explored some twenty miles of the mountain wall, Arnold
suddenly pointed towards it, and said--

"There is a place that I think will do. Look yonder, between those
two high peaks away to the southward. That ridge is not more than six
thousand feet from the earth, and the _Ariel_ can leap that as easily
as an Irish hunter would take a five-barred gate."

"It looks dreadfully high from here," said Natasha, in spite of
herself turning a shade paler at the idea of taking a six thousand
foot ridge at a flying leap. She had splendid nerves, but this was
her first aerial voyage, and it was also the first time that she had
ever been brought so closely face to face with the awful grandeur