Juba, the Venustian Intercessor
Invariably he acted as intercessor and interpreter, and I guess our reputation suffered no belittlement from his accounts of our prowess. It was evident, Edmund said, that there were differences of dialect in the language of the various tribes, which puzzled Juba somewhat; but he also said that he was now convinced that there existed among these people an unexplained power of communicating thought which had no connection with the utterance of sounds.
It wasn't a sign-language like that of deaf mutes, either. The mystery was not solved until we got round on the daylight side of Venus, but it turned out to be one of the most incredible of all our discoveries in that strange world. You'll hear about it when I come to it.
We continued to guide our course by the stars—and they were certainly magnificent, with the earth for a very queen of gems set in the midst of them—until we had traveled some four thousand miles, all the time, of course, approaching the edge of the sunward hemisphere.
And now a new phenomenon struck us. For some time, along the horizon ahead, had stretched a faint streak, like the first light of dawn.
"Look," said Edmund, "there lie the sunlands of Venus. Although the sun never rises on this part of the planet, it will rise for us because we are approaching it."
There was nothing to surprise us in all this; but as we drew nearer, and the arc of dawn rose higher in the sky and glowed more softly beautiful, there appeared at its base those same many colored flames which had astonished us on our approach to the planet, after we had got into its shadow and begun to see its atmosphere as a great ring of light around it, the sun being behind. The reappearance of these flames startled us.
"They've got something to do with the sunrise!" Edmund declared; "but I can't make out what it is."
"Don't run us into a conflagration," said Jack. "We've had enough to do to stand the cold here, and to put up with the company of these furry beasts, but I object to being rushed next into a land of salamanders. They probably are fire-eaters on the other side. If you can show us some temperate or not too torrid land, where the people are as beautiful and attractive as they ought to be on a world called Venus, I'm with you with all my heart."
"That's not fire," replied Edmund.
"Why not inquire of Juba?" I asked.
"A very good idea. I'll try," and Edmund stopped the car. Juba, as he had already been taught to do whenever we stopped, immediately jumped off his sled and came running to us. Edmund took his match-box from his pocket, struck a match, and, while attracting Juba's attention, pointed alternately to match flame and the fiery objects on the horizon.
Juba understood at once, and vigorously shook his head, while his big, luminous eyes almost seemed to speak, if we could have understood their meaning. Phosphorescent waves appeared to chase one another in their depths, and Edmund asserted that it certainly was a language, expressed without sounds.
If it was a language, I positively think that Edmund had begun to understand it, for after a few minutes, during which he and Juba gesticulated and motioned and stared in each other's faces, Edmund turned to us and said:
"I ought to have foreseen this, and I am ashamed of myself because I didn't. Those seeming flames on the horizon are due to—what do you think? Mountains of crystal!"
"Mountains of crystal!" we all exclaimed.
The Mountains of Crystal the Cause of the "Flames"
"Yes, just that. It's all plain enough when you think about it. Venus, being a world half day and half night, is necessarily as hot on one side as it is cold on the other. All the clouds and most of the moisture are on the day side of the planet, where the sunbeams act.
"The hot air, charged with moisture, rises over the middle of the sunward hemisphere and flows off above, on all sides, toward the night hemisphere, while from the latter cold air flows in underneath to take its place. Along the junction between the two hemispheres the clouds and moisture are condensed by the increasing cold, and fall in ceaseless storms of snow.
"This snow, descending uninterruptedly for ages, has piled up in vast mountainous masses. The moisture cannot pass very far into the night hemisphere without being condensed, and so it is all arrested within a great ring, or band, completely encircling the planet and marking the division between perpetual day and perpetual night.
"What look like gigantic flames to us are the sunbeams striking those mountains of solidified snow and ice from behind and breaking into prismatic fire."
The thing seemed simple enough after Edmund had explained it, but the effects were splendid and awful beyond description.
"I foresee now considerable trouble for us," Edmund continued. "There's been a warning of that,too, if I had but heeded it. I've noticed for some time that a wind, gradually getting stronger, has been following us, sometimes dying away and then coming up again. It is likely that this wind gets to be a terrible tempest in the neighborhood of those ice mountains.
"It is the back suction, caused—as I have already told you—by the rising of the heated air in the sunny side of the planet. It may play the deuce with us when we get into the midst of it."
"But did you learn all this from Juba?" I asked.
"Oh, no! Of course not. I only managed to make out from him that his people knew of the existence of these icy barriers. But the explanation flashed upon me as soon as I got hold of the main fact. Now, we've got to be a little cautious in our approach."
Danger of An Irresistible Wind
We slowed down accordingly, and as soon as we did so we began to notice the wind that Edmund had spoken of. It came in great gusts
