We're just starting." As he spoke three bells sounded from below, followed, after a pause, by a fourth.

The steersman straightened himself as the first rang out and glanced round him; and upon the fourth, bent himself suddenly over the key board, like a musician addressing himself to a piano.
For the first instant Monsignor was conscious of a slight swaying motion, which resolved itself presently into a faint sensation of constriction on his temples, but no more.

Then this passed, and as he glanced away again from the steersman, who was erect once more, his look happened to fall over the edge of the boat.

He grasped his friend convulsively.
"Look," he said, "what's happened ?" "Yes, we're off," said the priest sedately.
Beneath them, on either side, there now stretched itself an almost illimitable and amazingly beautiful bird's-eye view of a lighted city, separated from them by what seemed an immeasurable gulf.

From the enormous height up to which they had soared the city looked like a complicated flat map, of which the patches were dark and the dividing lines rivers of soft fire.