It was written that before this voyage ended we should have another phase
of language without speech presented for our wonderment. It came about
near the end of the trip. We were standing apart in a group, greatly
interested and excited by the discovery, which had just been made, of
land ahead. Far in advance we could see a curving, yellow shore line,
and, dim in the distance behind it, a range of mountains. Edmund had just
called our attention to these, with the remark that now I must admit that
he had reasoned correctly about the existence of elevated regions on this
side of Venus, when Jack, always the first to note a new phenomenon,
exclaimed:
"Hurrah! Here they come! We're going to have a royal reception."
He pointed toward the land in a different direction from that in which we
had been gazing, and immediately we beheld an extraordinary assemblage of
air ships, perhaps ten miles off, but rapidly making toward us. More were
coming up from behind, as if rising out of the land, and soon they
resembled flocks of large birds all converging to a common center. In a
little while they became almost innumerable, but their number soon ceased
to be as great a cause of surprise to us as their peculiar appearance.
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