had been gazing, and immediately we beheld an extraordinary assemblage of
air ships, perhaps ten miles off, but rapidly making toward us. More were
coming up from behind, as if rising out of the land, and soon they
resembled flocks of large birds all converging to a common center. In a
little while they became almost innumerable, but their number soon ceased
to be as great a cause of surprise to us as their peculiar appearance.
Viewed with our binoculars they showed an infinite variety of shapes and
sizes. Chinese kites could not, for a moment, be compared in
grotesqueness with the forms which many of them presented. Some soared in
vast circles at a great height, with the steady flight of eagles; others
spread out to right and left, as if to flank us on either hand; and in
the center, directly ahead, about a hundred advanced in column deployed
in a semicircle, each keeping its place with the precision of a soldier
in line of battle.

As we continued to gaze, fascinated by the splendor and strangeness of
the spectacle, suddenly the air was filled with fluttering colors. I do
not mean flags and streamers, but _colors in the air itself_! Colors the
most exquisite that ever the eye looked upon! They changed, flickered,
melted, brightened, flowed over one another in iridescent waves, mingled,
separated, turned the whole atmosphere into a spectral kaleidoscope. And
it was evident that, in some inexplicable way, the approaching squadrons
were the sources of this marvelous display. Presently from the craft that
carried us, answering colors flashed out, as if the air around us had
suddenly been changed to crystal with a thousand quivering rainbows shot
through it, their beautiful arches shifting and interchanging so rapidly
that the eye could not follow them.

Then I began to notice that all this incessant play of colors was based
upon an unmistakable rhythm. I can think of no better way to describe it