There was no response.

"I say, Carmichael, is anything the matter?" he reiterated in a louder tone.

Still no answer.

We were now thoroughly alarmed, and though it was against the rules, we descended into the machinery room. The cause of Carmichael's silence was only too apparent. We saw him lying on the floor beside his strange machine, with his head leaning against the wall. There was a placid expression on his face, and he appeared to slumber; but we soon found that he was either in a faint or dead. Without loss of time we tried the first simple restoratives at hand, but they proved of no avail.

Gazen went and called Miss Carmichael.

She had been resting in her cabin after her trying experience with the dragon, and although most anxious about her father, and far from well herself, she behaved with calm self-possession.

"I think the heat has overcome him," she said, after a quick examination; and truly the cabin was insufferably hot, thanks to the machinery and the fervid rays of the sun.

We could not open the scuttles and admit fresh air, for there was little or none to admit.

"I shall try oxygen," she said on reflecting a moment.

Accordingly, while Gazen, in obedience to her directions began to work Carmichael's arms up and down, after the method of artificial respiration which had brought me round at the outset of our journey, she and I administered oxygen gas from one of our steel bottles to his lungs by means of a makeshift funnel applied to his mouth. In some fifteen or twenty minutes he began to show signs of returning animation, and soon afterwards, to our great relief, he opened his eyes.

At first he looked about him in a bewildered way, and then he seemed to recollect his whereabouts. After an ineffectual attempt to speak, and move his limbs, he fixed his eyes with a meaning expression on the engines.

We had forgotten their stoppage. Miss Carmichael sprang to investigate the cause.

"They are jammed," she said after a short inspection. "The essential part is jammed with the heat. Whatever is to be done?"

We stared at each other blankly as the terrible import of her words came home to us. Unless we could start the machines again, we must inevitably fall back on Mercury. Perhaps we were falling now!

We endeavoured to think of a ready and practicable means of cooling the engines, but without success. The water and oil on board was lukewarm; none of us knew how to make a freezing mixture even if we had the materials; our stock of liquid air had long been spent.

Miss Carmichael tried to make her father understand the difficulty in hopes that he would suggest a remedy, but all her efforts were in vain.

Carmichael lay with his eyes closed in a kind of lethargy or paralysis.

"Perhaps, when we are falling through the planet's atmosphere," said I, "if we open the scuttles and let the cold air blow through the room, it will cool the engines."

"I'm afraid there will not be time," replied Gazen, shaking his head; "we shall fall much faster than we rose. The friction of the air against the car will generate heat. We shall drop down like a meteoric stone and be smashed to atoms."

"We have parachutes," said Miss Carmichael, "do you think we shall be able to save our lives?"

"I doubt it," answered Gazen sadly. "They would be torn and whirled away."

"So far as I can see there is only one hope for us," said I. "If we should happen to fall into a deep sea or lake, the car would rise to the surface again."

"Yes, that is true," responded Gazen; "the car is hollow and light. It would float. The water would also cool the machines and we might escape."

The bare possibility cheered us with a ray of hope.

"If we only had time, my father might recover, and I believe he would save us yet," said Miss Carmichael.

"I wonder how much time we have," muttered Gazen.

"We can't tell," said I. "It depends on the height we had reached and the speed we were going at when the engines stopped. We shall rise like a ball thrown into the air and then fall back to the ground."

"I wonder if we are still rising," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Gazen. "Let us take a look at the planet."

"Don't be long," pleaded Miss Carmichael, as we turned to go.

"Meanwhile, I shall try and bring my father round."

On getting to the observatory, we consulted the atmospheric pressure gauge and found it out of use, a sign that we had attained an alt.i.tude beyond the atmosphere of Mercury, and were now in empty s.p.a.ce.

We turned to the planet, whose enormous disc, m.u.f.fled in cloud, was shining lividly in the weird sky. At one part of the limb a range of lofty mountain peaks rose above the clouds and chequered them with shadow.

Fixing our eyes upon this landmark we watched it with bated breath. Was it coming nearer, or was it receding from us? That was the momentous question.

My feelings might be compared to those of a prisoner at the bar watching the face of the juryman who is about to deliver the verdict.

After a time--I know not how long--but it seemed an age--the professor exclaimed,

"I believe we are still rising."

It was my own impression, for the peak I was regarding had grown as I thought smaller, but I did not feel sure, and preferred to trust the more experienced eyes of the astronomer.

"I shall try the telescope," he went on; "we are a long way from the planet."

"How far do you think?"

"Many thousand miles at least."

"So much the better. We shall get more time."

"Humph! prolonging the agony, that's all. I begin to wish it was all over."

Gazen directed his instrument on the planet, and we resumed our observations.

"We are no longer rising," said Gazen after a time. "I suppose we are near the turning-point."

As a prisoner scans the countenance of the judge who is about to p.r.o.nounce the sentence of life or death, I scanned the cloudy surface underneath us, to see if I could discover any signs of an ocean that would break our fall, but the vapours were too thick and compact.

Every instant I expected to hear the fatal intelligence that our descent had begun.

"Strange!" muttered Gazen by-and-by, as if speaking to himself.

"What is strange?"

"We are neither rising nor falling now. We don't seem to move."

"Impossible!"

"Nevertheless, it's a fact," he exclaimed at the end of some minutes.