o a thin silver thread-like crescent,
had followed the sun into the sky, and hung a few degrees only above the
eastern horizon.

So lost in wonder were the travellers at this most extraordinary sight
that it was several minutes before they could withdraw their gaze from
the heavens and allow it to travel earthward. When at length they did
so a scarcely less enchanting spectacle greeted them. They were
hovering just over the inner extremity of an arm of the sea, which the
colonel--who was well acquainted with the south-west of Ireland--at once
identified as Dingle Bay. Westward of them stretched the broad
Atlantic, its foam-flecked waters tinted a lovely sea-green immediately
below them, which gradually changed to a delicate sapphire blue as it
stretched away toward the invisible horizon (the atmosphere not proving
sufficiently clear to allow of their seeing to the utmost possible
limits of distance), the colour growing gradually fainter and more faint
until it became lost in a soft silvery grey mist. Northward lay the
Dingle peninsula, and beyond it again could be seen Tralee Bay, the
mouth of the Shannon, and Loop Head; then Galway Bay and the Isles of
Arran, and, further on, just discernible in the misty distance, the
indented shore and hills of Connemara. From thence, all round to the
eastern point of the compass, could be seen, with more or less
distinctness, the whole of county Clare, with part of county Galway, the
Doon Mountains, and a considerable portion of Tipperary; the Galtee and
Knockmeledown Mountains, and, in the extreme distance, a faint misty
blue, which the colonel declared was the sea just about Dungarvan
harbour. And from thence, round to the southward, the sea and the
southern coast-line became more and more distinctly visible as the eye
travelled round the compass, Cork Harbour being just discernible, whilst
Cape Clear Island, Bantry Bay, and the Kenmare river seemed little more
than a stone's-throw distant. Altogether it was perhaps the most
magnificent prospect upon which the human eye had ever rested; it
certainly exceeded anything which the travellers had ever witnessed
before, and their expressions of admiration and delight were unbounded.

When at last they had become somewhat accustomed to even this unique
experience, and had found leisure to take note of themselves, as it
were, the baronet remarked to the professor:

"But how is this, professor? The engines are working, yet we do