the current threatened to drag them over
the falls. At that moment, night was closing in, and what could be
thought on board the destroyers but that the "Terror" had been
engulfed in the abyss of the cataract? It was scarce possible that
our machine had been seen when, amid the shades of night, it rose
above the Horseshoe Falls, or when it winged its way high above the
mountains on its route to the Great Eyrie.

With regard to my own fate, should I resolve to question Robur? Would
he consent even to appear to hear me? Was he not content with having
hurled at me his name? Would not that name seem to him to answer
everything?

That day wore away without bringing the least change to the
situation. Robur and his men continued actively at work upon the
machine, which apparently needed considerable repair. I concluded
that they meant to start forth again very shortly, and to take me
with them. It would, however, have been quite possible to leave me at
the bottom of the Eyrie. There would have been no way by which I
could have escaped, and there were provisions at hand sufficient to
keep me alive for many days.

What I studied particularly during this period was the mental state
of Robur. He seemed to me under the dominance of a continuous
excitement. What was it that his ever-seething brain now meditated?
What projects was he forming for the future? Toward what region would
he now turn? Would he put in execution the menaces expressed in his
letter--the menaces of a madman!

The night of that first day, I slept on a couch of dry grass in one
of the grottoes of the Great Eyrie. Food was set for me in this
grotto each succeeding day. On the second and third of August, the
three men continued at their work scarcely once, however, exchanging
any words, even in the midst of their labors. When the engines were
all repaired to Robur's satisfaction, the men began putting stores
aboard their craft, as if expecting a long absence. Perhaps the
"Terror" was about to traverse immense distances; perhaps even, the
captain intended to regain his Island X, in the midst of the Pacific.

Sometimes I saw him wander about the Eyrie buried in thought, or he
would stop and raise his arm toward heaven as if in defiance of that
God with Whom he assumed to divide the empire of the world. Was not
his overweening pride leading him toward insanity? An insanity which
his two companions, hardly less excited than he, could do nothing to
subdue! Had h