Page 201 (1/1)

Very near, noas the strange apparition On, on, swift as a falcon, the plane hurtled Stern glanced at Beatrice Never had he seen her more beautiful About her face, rosy and full of life, the luxuriant loose hair hipping Her eyes sparkled with this new excitement, and on her full red lips a smile betrayed her keen enjoy but confidence and strength and joy in the adventure

The pheno else describes it adequately--now appeared distinctly as a jagged line, beyond which nothing showed It differed from the horizon line, inasmuch as it was close at hand Already the adventurers could peer down upon it at an acute angle

Plainly could they see the outlines of trees growing along the verge But beyond the

It differed essentially from a canyon, because there was no other side at all Strain his eye as heso the Pauillac southward Flying parallel to the edge of this treht to solve the her, perhaps I ing up-wind, he spiraled till the baroained another thousand feet

But even this additional view profited hied tree-line still showed as before, with vacancy behind it, and as far as Stern could see to north, to south, it stretched away till the diulf, no land appeared Only the sky itself was visible there, as cal far belohere the horizon-line should have been--down, in fact, to where the tree-line cut it off fro to the edge of a vast plain, beyond which nothing lay, save space, and peering over

"The end of the world, indeed!" thought the engineer, despite himself "But what can it ed it like this? Good Heavens, what a marvel--what a catastrophe!"

Determined at all hazards to know ht be, he banked again, and now, on a descending slant, veered doard the lip of the chas out over it?" cried Beatrice

He nodded

"Ita hundred miles than you can a hundred feet!" he shouted back, above the droning racket of the motor