All her
frame quivered, as the human frame quivers under the electric fluid.
Struck by the lightning in the very middle of her powerful batteries,
the air-ship spread out on all sides and went to pieces.
With her wings fallen, her screws broken, with bolt after bolt of the
lightning darting amid her ruins, the "Terror" fell from the height
of more than a thousand feet into the ocean beneath.
Chapter 18
THE OLD HOUSEKEEPER'S LAST COMMENT
When I came to myself after having been unconscious for many hours, a
group of sailors whose care had restored me to life surrounded the
door of a cabin in which I lay. By my pillow sat an officer who
questioned me; and as my senses slowly returned, I answered to his
questioning.
I told them everything. Yes, everything! And assuredly my listeners
must have thought that they had upon their hands an unfortunate whose
reason had not returned with his consciousness.
I was on board the steamer Ottawa, in the Gulf of Mexico, headed for
the port of New Orleans. This ship, while flying before the same
terrific thunder-storm which destroyed the "Terror," had encountered
some wreckage, among whose fragments was entangled my helpless body.
Thus I found myself back among humankind once more, while Robur the
Conqueror and his two companions had ended their adventurous careers
in the waters of the Gulf.
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