manoeuvre carefully with the rear light in order to keep clear of
them. Maskull watched the delicacy of his movements, not without
admiration. A long time went by. It grew much colder; the air was
damp and drafty. The fog began to deposit something like snow on
their persons. Maskull kept sweating with terror, not because of the
danger they were in, but because of the cloud banks that continued to
envelop them.

They cleared the first line of precipices. Still mounting, but this
time with a forward motion, as could be seen by the vapours
illuminated by the male stones through which they passed, they were
soon altogether out of sight of solid ground. Suddenly and quite
unexpectedly the moon broke through. In the upper atmosphere thick
masses of fog were seen crawling hither and thither, broken in many
places by thin rifts of sky, through one of which Teargeld was
shining. Below them, to their left, a gigantic peak, glittering with
green ice, showed itself for a few seconds, and was then swallowed up
again. All the rest of the world was hidden by the mist. The moon
went in again. Maskull had seen quite enough to make him long for
the aerial voyage to end.

The light from the male stones presently illuminated the face of a
new cliff. It was grand, rugged, and perpendicular. Upward,
downward, and on both sides, it faded imperceptibly into the night.
After coasting it a little way, they observed a shelf of rock jutting
out. It was square, measuring about a dozen feet each way. Green
snow covered it to a depth of some inches. Immediately behind it was
a dark slit in the rock, which promised to be the mouth of a cave.

Haunte skilfully landed the boat on this platform. Standing up, he