ts the world that was in the making. Through
floating seas of misty steam they beheld what seemed to them to be vast
continents shape themselves and melt away into oceans of flames. Whole
mountain ranges of glowing lava were hurled up miles high to take shape
for an instant and then fall away again, leaving fathomless gulfs of
fiery mist in their place.

[Illustration: _Whole mountain ranges of glowing lava were hurled up
miles high._]

Then waves of molten matter rose up again out of the gulfs, tens of
miles high and hundreds of miles long, surged forward, and met with a
concussion like that of millions of earthly thunder-clouds. Minute after
minute they remained writhing and struggling with each other, flinging
up spurts of flaming matter far above their crests. Other waves followed
them, climbing up their bases as a sea-surge runs up the side of a
smooth, slanting rock. Then from the midst of them a jet of living fire
leapt up hundreds of miles into the lurid atmosphere above, and then,
with a crash and a roar which shook the vast Jovian firmament, the
battling lava-waves would split apart and sink down into the
all-surrounding fire-ocean, like two grappling giants who had strangled
each other in their final struggle.

"It's just Hell let loose!" said Murgatroyd to himself as he looked down
upon the terrific scene through one of the port-holes of the
engine-room; "and, with all respect to my lord and her ladyship, those
that come this near almost deserve to stop in it."

Meanwhile, Redgrave and Zaidie and their three guests were so absorbed
in the tremendous spectacle, that for a few moments no one noticed that
they were dropping faster and faster towards the world which Murgatroyd,
according to his lights, had not inaptly described. As for Zaidie, all
her fears were for the time being lost in wonder, until she saw her
husband take a swift glance round upwards and downwards, and then go up
into the conning-tower. She followed him quickly, and said:

"What is the matter, Lenox, are we falling too quickly?"

"Much faster than we should," he replied, sending a signal to Murgatroyd
to increase the force by three-tenths.

The answering signal came back, but still the _Astronef_ continued to
fall with terrific rapidity, and the awful landscape beneath them--a
landscape of fire and chaos--broadened out and became more and more
distinct.

He sent two more signals down in quick succession. Three-fourths of the
who