After they had signed these important documents, Anthime and Quiès placed them, one in the case of an aneroid barometer, the other in that of a differential thermometer; then each refolded his arms and threw himself back into his corner

Magloire worked on steadily at his task; but the job was a laborious one, and it was evening once more before he had completed it.

Still the balloon, swept on by the hurricane, pursued its dizzy course. Sometimes it oscillated, whirled round, and twisted itself about under the action of the wind, as though

it were striving to escape from the clutches of the invisible demon that held it fast. Anon, weary of the useless conflict, it desisted, and, being again caught by the current, rushed onward in space. This lasted all night, and for half the following day. Magloire had not slept, he had gone on with his work in the dark, feeling the cords with his fingers. When day dawned he had made eight yards of good strong rope; by midday his task was finished. Then, without uttering a word, he took the rope between his teeth, hoisted himself up to the hoop of the balloon, got his feet into the meshes of the net, and, holding on now by the right, now by the left hand, he succeeded, after half an hour of severe continuous exertion, in fastening the rope that he had twisted to the end of the broken rope which remained above. This done, he let himself down carefully and pulled the rope.

Such

The valve worked! The balloon descended! was his joy that he sang and danced in the car. Anthime and Quiès thought he had gone mad, and looked at him in

terror.

"Saved! Doctor, we are saved ! he cried. "Saved!" They got on their feet mechanically.

"Look," continued Magloire, "we are descending "-he pulled the rope-" we are descending!"

It was true; they could already dimly discern the earth beneath them.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

SHOWS THAT WHAT DID HAPPEN WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF DR. QUIÈS HAD WEIGHED FIFTY POUNDS LESS.

To say that they discerned the earth is perhaps too much; they divined it rather. On the grey immensity beneath the balloon a spot stood out in black, curiously indented, like a stain of ink upon a sheet of blotting-paper.

Was that land? Around it was there fog, or water? It was difficult to say; but slowly, steadily, without jerk or jolt, the balloon still descended, and soon Magloire was. able to exclaim for the second time,—

"We are saved!"

Yes, this was land, or at least a tongue of dry, stony ground, with a few green patches upon its surface here and there. Not a tree, not a house was in sight. On one side a vast stretch of blue water could be plainly distinguished; on the other the mist made it impossible to ascertain whether it was a continent or an island that the balloon was approaching. That, however, was a point totally unimportant to Dr. Quiès and his companions at the moment. It was land, that is to say, it was almost the certainty of not dying of hunger, unless, by a final freak of chance, the wind should have borne them to a barren, uninhabited island, without culture and without vegetation. They never thought of that; their sole anxiety was to avoid injury on reaching the ground, or to escape being carried away again before they reached it.

Magloire, who was leaning over the edge of the car and working the machinery, suddenly uttered an exclamation. "What's the matter?" asked M. Bonamy.

He peered downwards at the two natives.

For some minutes he had been gazing at two white specks on the land beneath, and endeavouring to make out what they could be. The discovery that these specks were human beings was an unspeakable relief. It afforded a full and undeniable proof that the country was not uninhabited, and that on setting foot on land they should find immediate succour, food, beds. Beds! The mere idea sent a delightful thrill through the nerves