near to
'Look out,' or 'Be on the watch.' Two smokes built close together mean,
'Camp here.' Three smokes signal 'Danger.'

Signalling at night was carried on by means of fire arrows. Their
meaning was like that of the smokes. The fiery trail left by the arrow
in its flight through the darkness was the same signal as one smoke. The
others tallied, and a flight of several fiery arrows said, 'The enemy
are too many for us.'

ROSS FRAME.

CRUISERS IN THE CLOUDS.

XII.--SOME WONDERS OF THE SKY.

Behind the clouds there are marvels as endless as those on the earth
itself. Among those who have attempted to describe some of them, few
have done so as vividly as the French astronomer, M. Flammarion. He has
been up in sunshine and clouds, at sunrise and sunset, and looked down
on the sleeping world all through the summer night.

On one of these pleasant voyages, M. Flammarion had for some time been
sailing in a dense cloud, which made even the gas-bag above quite
invisible, when suddenly the air was filled with most beautiful music.
It seemed as though some mysterious band was playing in the very cloud
itself, only a few yards away. M. Flammarion strained his eyes in every
direction, but nothing except the white mist met his gaze. By-and-by,
however, the cloud grew brighter, and a few moments later the haze
seemed to open and let him into a world of dazzling light. He had
ascended right through the rain-cloud, and broken into fine weather on
the other side. On leaving the cloud the mysterious music had ceased. M.
Flammarion learned afterwards that it had been produced by the orchestra
of a small town over which he was sailing at the time. The rising sound
had been caught and retained by the cloud, for, strange to say, while
dead silence is found in the clear sky at a certain height, a cloud at
the same level will often be full of sounds coming from the world below.

The object of M. Flammarion's voyage was to study the secrets of the
air, and to do this properly it was necessary to go up in all sorts of
weather. In a long journey from Paris across the border into Prussia,
most of the distance was done in a dark and rainy night. Finding that
the falling rain had made the balloon so heavy that it was sinking to
the earth, he threw out ballast and rose above the cloud. But the
struggling moon gave little light, and he was greatly struck by hearing,
in the darkness far below, the constant noise of the falling rain. Th