Our nights now became shorter and shorter--with great rapidity, until, at the end of the third week of our departure from Earth, when we had accomplished a distance of 800,000 miles, we reached those remote regions of space where the mighty shadow, cast by our planet, tapers down to a point, and the sun in all his glory reigns eternally supreme.
Our sensations were almost beyond description when the _Sirius_ was at last fairly launched into the vast, boundless void of silent space. So long as we felt the influence of Earth, and journeyed on our way under the shelter of her mighty shadow, the bonds that held us to our mother world were still unbroken.
Then, things at least seemed earthly. Now, every Earth-tie was severed; surrounded by a solemn, limitless sea of space, unconceivable, unfathomable, filled with brilliant and eternal light, such as no man had beheld before, every one of us was filled with awe; and even the ever-cool and dauntless Doctor himself was well-nigh overwhelmed with the majestic splendour of the scene around us. We felt as if we had now ceased to be human; that we no longer belonged to Earth, but were outcasts, with no home or bond of human fellowship away from our floating carriage; doomed to live for ever, and to spend eternity in crossing this radiant ether sea! The silence was profound. The calmest stillness of Earth is as the tempest-roar in comparison with the awe-inspiring quietness of Here! The very beating of our pulses rang clearly out on space; the ticking of our watches became even painful in its loud intensity. Our hearts and our courage began to fail us. Only the Doctor, with his nerves of steel, refrained from uttering words of regret for thus rashly leaving Earth for the sake of prying into the very laboratory of the Universe! Supernatural influences seemed to surround us. We started as men; we seemed to be fast evolving into new beings, governed by no human impulses--controlled by no human forces. Still the _Sirius_ sped on. Upwards the good air-ship flashed with terrible velocity, bearing us whither--ah, whither? When we became more familiar with the vastness around us, the feelings of dread passed gradually away.
The view from the windows was impressively grand. The sun shone with a brilliancy unknown on Earth, even in the tropics, but the heat was by no means oppressive. Far as the eye could reach, all was brilliant yellow light, endless, profound!