bushes of cactus and oleander; and scared away the hundreds of
parrots that perch on the telegraph wires and seem to wait for the
messages to pass to bear them away beneath their wings.

Two hours after sunset the helm was put up and the "Albatross" bore
off to the southeast; and on the morrow, after clearing the Tell
Mountains, she saw the rising of the morning star over the sands of
the Sahara.

On the 30th of July there was seen from the aeronef the little
village of Geryville, founded like Laghouat on the frontier of the
desert to facilitate the future conquest of Kabylia. Next, not
without difficulty, the peaks of Stillero were passed against a
somewhat boisterous wind. Then the desert was crossed, sometimes
leisurely over the Ksars or green oases, sometimes at terrific speed
that far outstripped the flight of the vultures. Often the crew had
to fire into the flocks of these birds which, a dozen or so at a
time, fearlessly hurled them selves on to the aeronef to the extreme
terror of Frycollin.

But if the vultures could only reply with cries and blows of beaks
and talons, the natives, in no way less savage, were not sparing of
their musket-shots, particularly when crossing the Mountain of Sel,
whose green and violet slope bore its cape of white. Then the
"Albatross" was at last over the grand Sahara; and at once she rose
into the higher zones so as to escape from a simoom which was
sweeping a wave of ruddy sand along the surface of the ground like a
bore on the surface of the sea.

Then the desolate tablelands of Chetka scattered their ballast in