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Rh strove to grasp it. Seeing the clanger of our capture, and not knowing how we might fare with these huge beings, for once we felt helpless and overcome. But we had provided for such a possible danger. In our car we had, as I said, vast command of electrical forces. Seeing the peril, I at once set the electricity in full force. As he grasped our car, the shock rolled him back into the waters.

Then we set the full motive-power at work. Up we dashed through the deep. For a moment it seemed as if the Jovians would pursue us, for several noticed our ether-car. But we rushed on, defying pursuit towards the surface. Rapidly we dashed upwards through the waste of dark waters, till at last the great billows of the surface could be felt heaving to and fro, and then we rushed up into the air through masses of hissing foam.

We rose from the surface into the mist-lands beneath the clouds.

"It is well," said Ezariel, "we have escaped those Jovian giants of the deep; but it is sad to think that we cannot hope to know them as we did the Martians. Their nature is too distinct from ours for us to understand them, or to make them understand us. And yet this