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Rh negroes, who all took fright, and ran away with the speed of cannon-balls, and took our carriage with them, in spite of the Demon's roars to the contrary, into the thickest of the battle. He was flung out; I saw him flying through the air like an enormous grasshopper, and he fell on a gun at the foot of a pillar, with the inscription upon it "To glory." I was crushed in the ruins of the carriage, and do not know how I escaped instant death.'

The Doctor sat quietly listening to my story, puffing out thick clouds of smoke. When I had finished he stared at me for some time in silence.

At length he spoke.

'It is a great wonder certainly that you were not killed outright. But how on earth did you get down here? It is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of—a living man to come here without having died, and expect to go back again—for that, I believe, is your expectation?'

'It is,' said I. 'The Demon, who took me by surprise on the shore of the Great Lake in Tasmania, and brought me here against my will in a gigantic balloon, promised to take me back again.'

'What!' said the Doctor, 'was he prowling about so far off? Tasmania is a place many thousands of miles to the south of Cape Horn, isn't it? Or is it off the coast of Spitzbergen? I never heard of it before.'

I explained to the worthy Doctor the true position of our beloved little island, and answered a great number of questions respecting its history, and that of the whole world, of which he was profoundly ignorant. At last his thoughts returned to the place where we then were.

'I suppose,' said he, 'that this Demon, or Artabanzanus, as he calls himself, and he generally adds proudly Emperor of the World, took you to the first or sensual department of his own palace?'