"Before you leave me,"cried Ayrault,"tell me how and when I may see or hear you again.""While you remain on this planet,I shall be near;but beyond Saturn I cannot go.""Yet tell me,Violet,how I may see you?My love unattained,you perceive,makes me wretched,while you always gave me calm and peace.If I may not kiss the hand I almost asked might be mine,let me have but a glance from your sweet eyes,which will comfort me so much now.""If you break the ice in the pool behind you,you shall see me till the frame melts."After this the silence was broken only by the sighing of the wind in the trees.The pool had suddenly become covered with ice several inches thick.Taking an axe,Ayrault hewed out a parallelogram about three feet by four and set it on end against the bank.The cold grey of morning was already colouring the east,and in the growing light Ayrault beheld a vision of Violet within the ice.The face was at about three fourths,and had a contemplative air.The hair was arranged as he had formerly seen it,and the thoughtful look was strongest in the beautiful grey eyes,which were more serious than of yore.Ayrault stood riveted to the spot and gazed."I could have been happy with her,"he mused,and to think she is no more!"As drops fell from the ice,tears rose to his eyes.
.......
"What a pretty girl!"said Bearwarden to Cortlandt,as they came upon it later in the day."The face seems etched or imprinted by some peculiar form of freezing far within the ice."The next morning they again set out,and so tramped,hunted,and investigated with varying success for ten Saturnian days.They found that in the animal and plant forms of life Nature had often,by some seeming accident,struck out in a course very different from any on the earth.Many of the animals were bipeds and tripeds,the latter arranged in tandem,the last leg being evidently an enormously developed tail,by which the creature propelled itself as with a spring.The quadrupeds had also sometimes wings,and their bones were hollow,like those of birds.Whether this great motive and lifting power was the result of the planet's size and the power of gravitation,or whether some creatures had in addition the power of developing a degree of apergetic repulsion to offset it,as they suspected in the case of the boa-constrictor that fell upon Cortlandt on Jupiter,they could not absolutely ascertain.Life was far less prolific on Saturn than on Jupiter,doubtless as a result of its greater distance from the sun,and of its extremes of climate,almost all organic life being driven to the latitudes near the equator.There were,as on Jupiter,many variations from the forms of life to which they were accustomed,and adaptations to the conditions in which they found themselves;but,with the exception of the strange manifestations of spirit life,they found the workings of the fundamental laws the same.Often when they woke at night the air was luminous,and they were convinced that if they remained there long enough it would be easy to devise some telegraphic code of light-flashes by which they could communicate with the spirit world,and so get ideas from the host of spirits that had already solved the problem of life and death,but who were not as yet sufficiently developed to be able to return to the earth.One day they stopped to investigate what they had supposed to be an optical illusion.They observed that leaves and other light substances floated several inches above the surface of the water in the pools.On coming to the edge and making tests,they found a light liquid,as invisible as air,superimposed upon the water,with sufficient buoyancy to sustain dry wood and also some forms of life.They also observed that insects coming close to the surface and apparently inhaling it,rapidly increased in size and weight,from which they concluded it must throw off nitrogen,carbon,or some other nourishment in the form of gas.The depth upon the water was unaffected by rain,which passed through it,but depended rather on the condition of the atmosphere,from which it was evidently condensed.There seemed also to be a relation between the amount of this liquid and the activity of the spirits.Finally,when their ammunition showed signs of running low,they decided to return to the Callisto,go in it to the other side of the planet,and resume their investigations there.Accordingly,they set out to retrace their steps,returning by a course a few miles to one side of the way they had come,and making the cave their objective point.Arriving there one evening about sunset,they pitched their camp.The cave was sheltered and comfortable,and they made preparation for passing the night.
"I shall be sorry,"said Ayrault,as they sat near their fire,"to leave this place without again seeing the bishop.He said we could impress him anywhere,but it may be more difficult to do that at the antipodes than here.""It does seem,"said Bearwarden,"as though we should be missing it in not seeing him again,if that is possible.Nothing but a poison-storm brought him the first time,and it is not certain that even in such an emergency would he come again uncalled.""I think,"said Ayrault,"as none of the spirits here are malevolent,they would warn us of danger if they could.The bishop's spirit seems to have been the only one with sufficiently developed power to reappear as a man.I therefore suggest that to-morrow we try to make him feel our thought and bring him to us."
