"By Jove, it is a store house," said Colonel Smith. "We must get more
force and carry it all off. Gracious, but this is a lucky night. We can
reprovision the whole fleet from this room."

"I thought it singular," I said, "that with the exception of the girl
whom we have rescued no women were seen in the house. Evidently the
lights over yonder indicate the location of a considerable town, and it
is quite probable that this building, without windows, and so strongly
constructed, is the common storehouse, where the provisions for the town
are kept. The fellows we killed must have been the watchmen in charge
of the storehouse, and they were treating themselves to a little music
from the slave girl when we happened to come upon them."

A New Food Supply.

With the utmost haste several of the other electrical ships, waiting
above the cloud curtain, were summoned to descend, and, with more than a
hundred men, we returned to the building, and this time almost entirely
exhausted its stores, each man carrying as much as he could stagger under.

Fortunately our proceedings had been conducted without much noise,
and the storehouse being situated at a considerable distance from other
buildings, none of the Martians, except those who would never tell the
story, had known of our arrival or of our doings on the planet.

"Now, we'll return and surprise Edison with the news," said Colonel Smith.

Our ship was the last to pass up through the clouds, and it was a strange
sight to watch the others as one after another they rose toward the
great dome, entered it, though from below it resembled a solid vault of
grayish-pink marble, and disappeared.

Sunshine Again.

We quickly followed them, and having penetrated the enormous curtain,
were considerably surprised on emerging at the upper side to find that
the sun was shining brilliantly upon us. It will be remembered that it
was night on this side of Mars when we went down, but our adventure had
occupied several hours, and now Mars had so far turned upon its axis
that the portion of its surface over which we were had come around into
the sunlight.

We knew that the squadron which we had left besieging the Lake of the Sun
must also have been carried around in a similar manner, passing into the
night while the side of the planet where we were was emerging into day.

Our shortest way back would be by travelling westward, because then
we should be moving in a direction opposite to