"How small the world looks from the air!" said Morgana--"It's not worth half the fuss made about it! And yet--it's such a pretty little God's toy!"
She smiled,--and in her smiling expressed a lovely sweetness. Rivardi raised his eyes from his steering gear.
"You are not tired, Madama?" he asked.
"Tired? No, indeed! How can I be tired with so short a journey!"
"Yet we have travelled a thousand miles since we left Sicily this morning"--said Rivardi--"We have kept up the pace, have we not, Gaspard?--or rather, the 'White Eagle' has proved its speed?"
Gaspard looked up from his place at the end of the ship.
"About two hundred and fifty to three hundred miles an hour,"--he said--"One does not realise it in the movement."
"But you realise that the flight is as safe as it is quick?" said Morgana--"Do you not?"
"Madama, I confess my knowledge is outdistanced by yours,"--replied Gaspard--"I am baffled by your secret--but I freely admit its power and success."
"Good! Now let us dine!" said Morgana, opening a leather case such as is used for provisions in motoring, set plates, glasses, wine and food on the table--"A cold collation--but we'll have hot coffee to finish. We could have dined in Cairo, but it would have been a bore! Marchese, we'll stop here, suspended in mid-air, and the stars shall be our festal lamps, vying with our own!" and she turned on a switch which illumined the whole interior of the air-ship with a soft bright radiance--"Whereabouts are we? Still over the Libyan desert?"
Rivardi consulted the chart which was spread open in his steering-cabin.
"No--I think not. We have passed beyond it. We are over the Sahara. Just now we can take no observations--the sunset is dying rapidly and in a few minutes it will be quite dark."
As he spoke he brought the ship to a standstill--it remained absolutely motionless except for the slight swaying as though touched by wave-like ripples of air. Morgana went to the window aperture of her silken-lined "drawing-room" and looked out. All round the great air-ship were the illimitable spaces of the sky, now of a dense dark violet hue with here and there a streak of dull red remaining of the glow of the vanished sun,--below there was only blackness. For the first time a nervous thrill ran through her frame at the look of this dark chaos--and she turned quickly back to the table where Rivardi and Gaspard awaited her before sitting down to their meal. Something quite foreign to her courageous spirit chilled her blood, but she fought against it, and seating herself became the charming hostess to her two companions as they ate and drank, though she took scarcely anything herself. For most unquestionably there was something uncanny in a meal served under such strange circumstances, and so far as the two men were concerned it was only eaten to sustain strength.