"I liked the
thing--to be worshipped!--Play the god as you like!
Why, what would any one ask more than that? By-the-way,
the moon did come up, too, and all red, as if she
was in a rage."
While the three friends went on chatting of this and
other things, and Joe examined the luminary of night
from an entirely novel point of view, the heavens became
covered with heavy clouds to the northward, and the lowering
masses assumed a most sinister and threatening look.
Quite a smart breeze, found about three hundred feet from
the earth, drove the balloon toward the north-northeast;
and above it the blue vault was clear; but the atmosphere
felt close and dull.
The aeronauts found themselves, at about eight in the
evening, in thirty-two degrees forty minutes east
longitude, and four degrees seventeen minutes latitude. The
atmospheric currents, under the influence of a tempest
not far off, were driving them at the rate of from thirty
to thirty-five miles an hour; the undulating and fertile
plains of Mfuto were passing swiftly beneath them. The
spectacle was one worthy of admiration--and admire it
they did.
"We are now right in the country of the Moon," said
Dr. Ferguson; "for it has retained the name that antiquity
gave it, undoubtedly, because the moon has been worshipped
there in all ages.
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