All about us towered the crystal mountains, their bases—where they were not buried in snow and broken ice—reflecting deep hues of purple and ultramarine; while their upper parts, where the sunlight touched them, sparkled with amazing brilliance. Henry was now able to join us, but not a word was said concerning his outbreak.
Was there ever such a situation as ours?
Twenty-six Millions of Miles from Home
Cast away, in a place wild and wonderful beyond imagination, millions of miles from all human aid or sympathy; millions of miles, even, from the very world that had witnessed our birth!
I could, in bitterness of spirit, have laughed at the mere suggestion that there was any hope for us. And yet, at that very moment, not only was there hope, but there was even the certainty of deliverance. It lay in the brain of the wonderful man who had brought us thither.
I have told you that it was twilight in the valley where we were, But when, as frequently occurred, tempests of snow burst over the mountains above us and filled the air, the twilight was turned to deepest night; and then we had to illumine the electric lamps in the car.
The natives, being used to darkness, needed no artificial illumination. In fact, we found that as soon as the sunlight reached us their great eyes were almost blinded; and they suffered cruelly from an infliction so utterly beyond all their experience.
Edmund never lost his self-command. He tried to cheer us up.
"I'm going to make some hot coffee," he said, "and then I'll sit down and think it out. But first I must see to our fellows there, for we may have to stay here a while; and even with their furry skins, they'll suffer from this kind of weather."
Saving the Natives on the Sleds
Under his directions, we took a lot of extra furs from the car and, stretching them upon the upright stakes attached to the corners of the sleds, we made a kind of tent, under which the natives huddled for protection.
There being no wind to speak of here, this was not so difficult as it might seem. The fellows were very glad of the shelter that we had given them, for some of them were already beginning to shivver. No sooner were they housed than they fell to eating.
We then entered the car and turned on the electric range, and ten minutes later we were enjoying our coffee. When we had finished we got out our pipes and smoked, as if there had been no crystal mountains tottering over us and no howling tempest tearing through the cloud-filled sky a thousand feet or so above our heads.
We talked of our adventure, and of home—home twenty-six million miles away! In fact, it might have been nearer thirty millions by this time, for Edmund had told us that Venus, having passed conjunction, was beginning to recede from the earth.
But Edmund did not join in our conversation now. He sat apart, thinking; and we respected his isolation, knowing that our only chance of escape lay in him. At last, without saying a word, he went outside and remained a long time. Then he came back smiling.
"I've found the solution,” he said. "We'll get out all right, but we shall have to wait a while."
"What is it?" we asked in concert. "What have you found?"
The Libration of Venus to Rescue the Visitants
Afl="}}lbert," he said, turning to me, "you ought to know what libration means. Well, it's libration that is going to save us. As Venus travels around the sun, she turns just once on her axis in making one circuit. The consequence, as you already know, is that she has one side where the sun never rises, while the other side always faces the sun.
"But since her orbit is not a perfect circle, she travels a little faster at certain times, and a little slower at others, while her slow rotation on her axis never varies. The result is that along the border between the day and night hemispheres there is a narrow strip where the sun rises and sets once in each of her years, which are about two hundred and twenty-five of our days in length.
"On this strip the sun shines continuously for about sixteen weeks, gradually rising during eight of those weeks, and gradually sinking for eight weeks more. Then, during the following sixteen weeks, the sun is entirely absent from the strip.
"Now, we are just in that strip, and we may thank our stars for it. By good luck, after we were swept past that blazing peak of ice which nearly shipwrecked us, the wind carried us on so far before the power gave out that we descended on the sunward side of the crest of the icy range.
"The sun is at present just beginning to rise on this part of the planet, and it will continue to rise for several weeks. The result will be that a great melting of ice and snow will take place all around us here; and a river will be formed in this valley, flowing off toward the sunward hemisphere, exactly where we want to go.
"I'm going to take advantage of the torrent and float down with it. It's our only chance, for we couldn't possibly clamber over all this hummocky ice and drag the car with us."
"Why not leave the car behind, then?" asked Henry.
Edmund looked at him and smiled.
"Do you want to stay on Venus all your life?" he asked. "I can repair the mechanism, if I can find certain substances, which I am sure exist on this planet as well as on the earth.
"But there is no use of looking for them in this icy waste. No, we can never abandon the car, we must take it with us, and the only way to take it is with the aid of the river of ice and snow-water which will soon be created by the rising sun."
"But how will you manage to float?" I asked.
"The car, being air-tight, will float like a buoy."
"And how about the natives?"
"Ah! I'll have to think about that. But we'll save them, too, if possible."
Of course Edmund was right; he always was. But I'll cut short the story of our stay in that awful valley.
Every twenty-four hours, by the calendar clock,
