ed was Astrakhan, situated at the
north end of the Caspian Sea. The Star of the Desert--it must have
been a poet who so called it--has now sunk from the first rank to
the fifth or sixth. A momentary glance was afforded at its old walls,
with their useless battlements, the ancient towers in the center of
the city, the mosques and modern churches, the cathedral with its
five domes, gilded and dotted with stars as if it were a piece of the
sky, as they rose from the bank of the Volga, which here, as it joins
the sea, is over a mile in width.

Thenceforward the flight of the "Albatross" became quite a race
through the heights of the sky, as if she had been harnessed to one
of those fabulous hippogriffs which cleared a league at every sweep
of the wing.

At ten o'clock in the morning, of the 4th of July the aeronef,
heading northwest, followed for a little the valley of the Volga. The
steppes of the Don and the Ural stretched away on each side of the
river. Even if it had been possible to get a glimpse of these vast
territories there would have been no time to count the towns and
villages. In the evening the aeronef passed over Moscow without
saluting the flag on the Kremlin. In ten hours she had covered the
twelve hundred miles which separate Astrakhan from the ancient
capital of all the Russias.

From Moscow to St. Petersburg the railway line measures about seven
hundred and fifty miles. This was but a half-day's journey, and the
"Albatross," as punctual as the mail, reached St. Petersburg and the
banks of the Neva at two o'clock in the morning.

Then came the Gulf of Finland, the Archipelago of Abo, the Baltic,
Sweden in the latitude of Stockholm, and Norway in the latitude of
Christiania. Ten hours only for these twelve hundred miles! Verily it
might be thought that no human power would henceforth be able to
check the speed of the "Albatross," and as if the resultant of her
force of projection and the attraction of the earth would maintain
her in an unvarying trajectory round the globe.

But she did stop nevertheless, and that was over the famous fall of
the Rjukanfos in Norway. Gousta, whose summit dominates this
wonderful region of Tellermarken, stood in the west like a gigantic
barrier apparently impassable. And when the "Albatross" resumed her
journey at full speed her head had been turned to the south.

And during this extraordinary flight what was Frycollin doing? He
remained silent in a corner of his cabin