ascended at
their invitation.

Bearwarden and Ayrault immediately set about combining the chemicals
that were to produce the force necessary to repel them from Saturn.
Bubbles of hydrogen were given off from the lead and zinc plates, and
the viscous primary batteries quickly had the wires passing through a
vacuum at a white heat.

"I see you are nearly ready to start," said the spirit, "so I must say
farewell."

"Will you not come with us?" asked Ayrault.

"No," replied the spirit. "I do not wish to be away as long as it will
take you to reach the earth. The Callisto's atmosphere could not
absorb my body, so that, should I leave you before your arrival, you
would be burdened with a corpse. I may visit you in the spirit, though
the desire and effort for communion with spirits, to be of most good,
must needs come from the earth. Ere long, my intuition tells me, we
shall meet again.

"The vision of your own grave," he continued, addressing Cortlandt,
"may not come true for many years, but however long your lives may be,
according to earthly reckoning, remember that when they are past they
will seem to have been hardly more than a moment, for they are the
personification of frailty and evanescence."

He held up his hands and blessed them; and then repeating, "Farewell
and a happy return!" descended as he had come up.

The air was filled with misty shadows, and the pulsating hearts,
luminous brains, and centres of spiritual activity quivered with
motion. They surrounded the incarnate spirit of the bishop and set up
the soft, musical hum the travellers had heard so often since their
arrival on Saturn.

"I now understand," thought Ayrault, "why the spirits I met kept
repeating that I should be happy. They perceived I was to be
translated, and though they doubtless knew what suffering it would
cause, they also knew I should be awakened to a sense of great
realities, of which I understood but little."

They drew up the ladder and turned on the current, and the Callisto
slowly began to rise, while the three friends crowded the window.

"Good-bye!" called the spirit's pleasant voice, to which the men
replied in chorus.

The sun had set on the surface of the planet while they made their
preparations; but as the Callisto rose higher, it seemed to rise again,
making the sides of their car shine like silver, and, carefully closing
the two open windows, they watched the fast-receding world, so many
times larger an