So she mused, while her "White Eagle" ship sailed serenely on with a leisurely, majestic motion through a seeming wilderness of stars. Courageous as she was, with a veritable lion-heart beating in her delicate little body, and firm as was her resolve to discover what no woman had ever discovered before, to-night she was conscious of actual fear. Something--she knew not what--crept with a compelling influence through her blood,--she felt that some mysterious force she had never reckoned with was insidiously surrounding her with an invisible ring. She called to Rivardi-"Are we not flying too high? Have you altered the course?"
"No, Madama," he replied at once--"We are on the same level."
She turned towards him. Her face was very pale.
"Well--be careful! To my mind we seem to be in a new atmosphere--there is a sensation of greater tension in the air--or--it is my fancy. We must not be too adventurous,--we must avoid the Great Nebula in Orion for example!"
"Madama, you jest! We are trillions upon trillions of miles distant from any great constellation--"
"Do I not know it? You are too literal, Marchese! Of course I jest--you could not suppose me to be in earnest! But I am sure we are passing through the waves of a new ether--not altogether suited to the average human being. The average human being is not made to inhabit the higher spaces of the upper air--hark!--What was that?"
She held up a warning hand, and listened. There was a distinct and persistent chiming of bells. Bells loud and soft,--bells mellow and deep, clear and silvery--clanging in bass and treble shocks of rising and falling rhythm and tune! "Do you hear?"
Rivardi and Gaspard simultaneously rose to their feet, amazed. Undoubtedly they heard! It was impossible NOT to hear such a clamour of concordant sound! Startled beyond all expression, Morgana sprang to the window of her cabin, and looking out uttered a cry of mingled terror and rapture... for there below her, in the previously inky blackness of the Great Desert, lay a great City, stretching out for miles, and glittering from end to end with a peculiarly deep golden light which seemed to bathe it in the lustre of a setting sun. Towers, cupolas, bridges, streets, squares, parks and gardens could be plainly seen from the air-ship, which had suddenly stopped, and now hung immovably in mid-air; though for some moments Morgana was too excited to notice this. Again she called to her companions-"Look! Look!" she exclaimed--"We have found it! The Brazen City!"