Prudent and Mr. Evans. What Robur, the Conqueror,
had done with his first airship, he could do even more readily with
this quadruple machine.
At length the first rays of daylight brightened my cabin. Would I be
permitted to go out now, to take my place upon the deck, as I had
done upon Lake Erie?
I pushed upon the hatchway: it opened. I came half way out upon the
deck.
All about was sky and sea. We floated in the air above an ocean, at a
height which I judged to be about a thousand or twelve hundred feet.
I could not see Robur, so he was probably in the engine room. Turner
was at the helm, his companion on the look-out.
Now that I was upon the deck, I saw what I had not been able to see
during our former nocturnal voyage, the action of those powerful
wings which beat upon either side at the same time that the screws
spun beneath the flanks of the machine.
By the position of the sun, as it slowly mounted from the horizon, I
realized that we were advancing toward the south. Hence if this
direction had not been changed during the night this was the Gulf of
Mexico which lay beneath us.
A hot day was announced by the heavy livid clouds which clung to the
horizon. These warnings of a coming storm did not escape the eye of
Robur when toward eight o'clock he came on deck and took Turner's
place at the helm.
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