They were vaporous, soft as St.Elmo's fire, the witch lights that cling at times to the spars of ships, weird gleaming visitors from the invisible ocean of atmospheric electricity.
When they disappeared, as they did frequently, it was instantaneously, completely, with a disconcerting sleight-of-hand finality.

I noted, though, that when they did vanish, immediately close to where they had been other orbs swam forth with that same astonishing abruptness; sometimes only one, larger it might be than that which had gone; sometimes a cluster of smaller globes, their frozen, crocused rays impinging.
What could they be, I wondered--how fixed, and what the source of their light?
Products of electro-magnetic currents and born of the interpenetration of such streams flowing above us?
Such a theory might account for their disappearance, and reappearance, shiftings of the flows that changed the light producing points of contact.

Wireless lights?
If so here was an idea that human science might elaborate if ever we returned to-- "Now which way ?" Drake broke in upon my musing.

The hall had ended.

We stood before a blank wall vanishing into the soft mists hiding the roof of the chamber.
"I thought we had been going along the way They went," I said in amazement.
"So did I," he answered.