miles, perfectly helpless to arrest our mad rush because, Edmund said,
the atomic reaction partly refused to work, and he could not rise as he
had expected to do. We were pitched hither and thither, and were
sprawling on the floor more than half the time. The noise was awful, and
nobody tried to speak after Edmund had shouted his single communication
about the power, which would have filled us with dismay if we had had
leisure to think.

The shutters were open, and suddenly I saw through one of the windows a
sight which I thought must surely be my last. The car had been sweeping
through a dense cloud of boiling vapors, and these had without warning
split open before my eyes--and there, almost in contact with the car, was
a glittering precipice of solid ice, gleaming with wicked blue flashes,
and we were rushing upon it as if shot out of a cannon!

The next instant came a terrific shock, which I thought must have crushed
the car like an eggshell, and down we fell--down and down!



CHAPTER VI


LOST IN THE CRYSTAL MOUNTAINS

If we had seen the danger earlier, and had not been so tumbled about by
the pitching of the car, it is possible that Edmund would have prevented
the collision, in spite of the partial disablement of his apparatus. The
blow against the precipice of ice was not as severe as it had seemed to
me, and the car was not smashed; but the fall was terrible! There was