that fatigue has
never any hold upon this metal organism, driven by the inexhaustible
electricity!

The whole vast ocean around us was empty. Not a sail nor a trail of
smoke was visible even on the limits of the horizon. Hence our
passage through the clouds had not been seen and signaled ahead.

The afternoon was not marked by any incident. The "Terror" advanced
at easy speed. What her captain intended to do, I could not guess. If
he continued in this direction, we should reach some one of the West
Indies, or beyond that, at the end of the Gulf, the shore of
Venezuela or Colombia. But when night came, perhaps we would again
rise in the air to clear the mountainous barrier of Guatemala and
Nicaragua, and take flight toward Island X, somewhere in the unknown
regions of the Pacific.

Evening came. The sun sank in an horizon red as blood. The sea
glistened around the "Terror," which seemed to raise a shower of
sparks in its passage. There was a storm at hand. Evidently our
captain thought so. Instead of being allowed to remain on deck, I was
compelled to re-enter my cabin, and the hatchway was closed above me.

In a few moments from the noises that followed, I knew that the
machine was about to be submerged. In fact, five minutes later, we
were moving peacefully forward through the ocean's depths.

Thoroughly worn out, less by fatigue than by excitement and anxious
thought, I fell into a profound sleep, natural this time and not
provoked by any soporific drug. When I awoke, after a length of time
which I could not reckon, the "Terror" had not yet returned to the
surface of the sea.

This maneuver was executed a little later. The daylight pierced my
porthole; and at the same moment I felt the pitching and tossing to
which we were subjected by a heavy sea.

I was allowed to take my place once more outside the hatchway; where
my first thought was for the weather. A storm was approaching from
the northwest. Vivid lightning darted amid the dense, black clouds.
Already we could hear the rumbling of thunder echoing continuously
through space. I was surprised--more than surprised, frightened!--by
the rapidity with which the storm rushed upward toward the zenith.
Scarcely would a ship have had time to furl her sails to escape the
shock of the blast, before it was upon her! The advance was as swift
as it was terrible.

Suddenly the wind was unchained with unheard of violence, as if it
had suddenly burst from this prison o