famine among us.

Inside the car we soon had things organized very much as they were during
our voyage from the earth. We read, talked, and smoked to our hearts'
content, almost forgetting the icy mountains that tottered over us, and
the howling tempest which, with hardly an intermission, tore through the
cloud-choked air a thousand or two thousand feet above our heads. We
talked of our adventure with the meteors, which seemed an event of long
ago, and then we talked of home--home twenty-six million miles away! In
fact, it may have been thirty millions by this time, for Edmund had told
us that Venus, having passed conjunction while we were at the caverns,
was now receding from the earth.

But while we thus strove to kill the time and banish thoughts of our
actual situation, Edmund sat apart much of the time absorbed in thought,
and we respected his privacy, knowing that our only chance of escape lay
in him. One day (I speak always of "days," because we religiously counted
the passage of time by our clock) he issued alone from the car and was
absent a long time, so that we began to be concerned, and, going outside
looked everywhere for signs of him. At length, to our infinite relief, he
appeared stumbling and crawling along the foot of an icy mountain. As he
drew nearer we saw that he was smiling, and as soon as he was within easy
earshot he called out:

"It's all right. I've found the solution."

Then upon joining us he continued:

"We'll get out all right, but we shall have to be patient for a while
longer."