e a bluish-grey
twilight. Suddenly we are enveloped in a dense fog. We look around,
above us. Everything has disappeared in the mist. The balloon itself is
no longer visible. We can see nothing except the ropes which suspend
us, and these are only visible for a few feet above our heads, when they
lose themselves in the fog. We are alone with our wickerwork house in an
unfathomable vault.

"We still ascend, however, through the compact and terrible fog, which
is so solid-looking as to seem capable of being carved into forms with
a knife. As we were without a moon, and had no light at all, in fact,
we were unable to distinguish nicely the different shades of colour in
these thick clouds. Now and then, when the clouds seemed to be
lighter, they had a bluish tinge; but the thicker ones were dirty and
muddy-looking. Dante must have seen some like these.

"Water trickled down our faces, hands, and clothes, and the ropes and
sides of our car.

"The water did not fall in rain-drops or in flakes, as it sometimes
does in the tropics; but we were as completely saturated by this heavy,
penetrating mist as if we had been under a waterfall. We still continued
to traverse these rainy regions. The thick fog which the balloon
dislodged in forcing a passage closed immediately after it. At one
moment I thought I felt something press against my cheek, which could
only be compared to the points of a thousand needles, or to floating
particles of ice. We were all of us too much absorbed with our situation
to think of the hour or of the height to which we had attained. Suddenly
the Prince of Wittgenstein, who was standing at my left hand, cried out
under his breath--

"'Look at the balloon, sir! look at the balloon!'

"I raised my eyes, in company with several others, and shall never
forget the magnificent sight which awaited them. I saw the balloon,
for which I had been searching in vain a few minutes before. It had
undergone a transformation. It looked now as if coated with silver,
and floating in a pale phosphorescent glimmer. All the ropes and cords
seemed to be of new, bright, and liquid silver, like mercury, caused
by the mist which had rested on them becoming suddenly congealed. Two
luminous arcs intervened between us, in a sea of mother-of-pearl and
opal, the lower one being the colour of red ochre and the upper one
orange. Both of them, blinding in their brilliancy, seemed about to
embrace one another.

"'How far are they off?