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234 that we should make a start first, and then we could converse without losing time.

So we hurried along the platform to the car. It was on the very spot where we saw it first, on the evening when we made our first voyage in it. Everything was ready. One battery was in position, and another lay by it ready to take its place. There was a pocket on one side of the car filled with the lozenge-like articles of diet on which we had lived since we came here. There were two glasses like that with which I had observed the seed-beds, and Jack, after examination, pronounced that there was an abundant store of the matters required for the production of the gas which was needed for the inflation of the balloons. The light by which we saw all this stood in the fore part of the car just over a little binnacle where a compass was fixed. Leäfar had more than fulfilled his promise.

I had noticed before in the cars a framework like this in which the compass was housed, but it never struck me what it was for. The compass card was very like ours. It had sixteen points only instead of thirty-two, and these were distinguished by colours and combinations of colours. The light was no doubt electric, for it was to all appearance produced by a