The current that
had carried us out of the crystal mountains gradually disappeared in a
vast waste of waters, and we were driven hither and thither by the
tempestuous wind. Its force increased hour by hour, and at last the sky,
which at brief intervals had been clear and exquisitely blue, became
choked with black clouds, sweeping down upon the face of the waters, and
often whirled into great _trombes_ by the tornadic blasts. Several times
the car was deluged by waterspouts, and once it was actually lifted up
into the air by the mighty suction. An ordinary vessel would not have
lived five minutes in that hell of winds and waters. But the car, if it
had been built for this kind of navigation, could not have behaved
better.
I do not know how long all this lasted. It grew worse and worse.
Sometimes a flood of rain fell, and then would come a storm of lightning,
and a downpour of gigantic hailstones that rattled upon the steel shell
of the car like a rain of bullets from a battery of machine guns. Half
the time one window or the other was submerged by the waves, and when we
got an opportunity to glance out, we saw nothing but torn streamers of
cloud whipping the face of the waters.
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