"
We listened to this explanation, so simple and yet so wonderful, with
mingled feelings of astonishment and admiration. And then we turned again
to regard the phenomenon, which now, with our nearer approach, had become
splendid and awful beyond description.
In a few minutes Edmund addressed us again. "I foresee now," he said,
"considerable trouble for us. There has been a warning of that, too, if I
had but heeded it. I've noticed for some time that a wind, getting
gradually stronger, has been following us, sometimes dying out and then
coming on again stronger than before. It is likely that this wind gets to
be a perfect hurricane in the neighborhood of those strange mountains. It
is the back suction, caused, as I have already told you, by the rising of
the heated air on the sunny side of the planet. It may play the deuce
with us when we get into the midst of it. I shall have to be cautious."
He immediately reduced the speed to not more than ten miles an hour, and
at once we noticed the wind of which he had spoken. It came now in great
gusts from behind, rapidly increasing in frequency and fury. Soon it was
strong enough to drive the sleds without any pull upon the cable, and
sometimes they were forced directly under the car, and even ahead of it,
the natives clinging to one another in the utmost terror.
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