"Phew!" whistled Jack, suddenly catching sight of it and fixing his eyes
in a stare, "what's _that?_"
"_That's the earth!_"
It was Edmund who spoke, looking at us with a quizzical smile. A shock
ran through my nerves, and for an instant my brain whirled. I saw that it
was the truth that he had uttered, for, as sure as I sit here, his words
had hardly struck my ears when the great cloud rounded out and hardened,
the deception vanished, and I recognized, as clearly as ever I saw them
on a school globe, the outlines of Asia and the Pacific Ocean!
In a second I had become too weak to stand, and I sank trembling upon a
bench. But Jack, whose eyes had not accommodated themselves as rapidly as
mine to the gigantic perspective, remained at the window, exclaiming:
"Fiddlesticks! What are you trying to give us? The earth is down below, I
reckon."
But in another minute he, too, saw it as it really was, and his
astonishment equaled mine. In fact he made so much noise about it that he
awoke Henry, who, jumping out of bed, came running to see, and when we
had explained to him where we were, sank upon a seat with a despairing
groan and covered his face.
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