was directed strongly
against the lower ring, and the _Astronef_ descended rapidly in a
slanting direction through the cloud-bands towards the southern
temperate zone of the planet.

They passed through the second, or dark, cloud-band at the rate of about
three thousand miles an hour, aided by the repulsion against the Rings
and the attraction of the planets, and soon after lunch, the materials
of which now consented to remain on the table, they passed through the
clouds and found themselves in a new world of wonders.

On a far vaster scale, it was the Earth during that period of its
development which is called the Reptilian Age. The atmosphere was still
dense and loaded with aqueous vapour, but the waters had already been
divided from the land.

They passed over vast, marshy continents and islands, and warm seas,
above which thin clouds of steam still hung, and as they swept southward
with the propellers working at their utmost speed they caught glimpses
of giant forms rising out of the steamy waters near the land, of others
crawling slowly over it, dragging their huge bulk through a tremendous
vegetation, which they crushed down as they passed, as a sheep on Earth
might push its way through a field of standing corn.

Other and even stranger shapes, broad-winged and ungainly, fluttered
with a slow, bat-like motion through the lower strata of the atmosphere.

Every now and then during the voyage across the temperate zone the
propellers were slowed down to enable them to witness some Titanic
conflict between the gigantic denizens of land and sea and air. But
Zaidie had had enough of horrors on the Saturnian equator, and so she
was content to watch this phase of evolution working itself out (as it
had done on the Earth thousands of ages ago) from a convenient distance.
Wherefore the _Astronef_ sped on without approaching the surface nearer
than was necessary to get a clear general view.

"It'll be all very nice to see and remember and dream about afterwards,"
she said, "but I don't think I can stand any more monsters just now, at
least not at close quarters, and I'm quite sure that if those things can
live there we couldn't, any more than we could have lived on Earth a
million years or so ago. No, really I don't want to land, Lenox; let's
go on."

They went on at a speed of about a hundred miles an hour, and, as they
progressed southward, both the atmosphere and the landscape rapidly
changed. The air grew clearer