The cube collided with an asteroid and received a dreadful thump. The thermometer indicated a temperature of minus seventy-six degrees centigrade.

“How are you keeping, sir?” Dr. Dunderheadus finally asked Lund on the fifth day, breaking the silence.

“Thank you for your concern,” Lund replied, touched by the doctor’s solicitude. “I am suffering most profusely. Where is my trusted manservant?”

“He is sitting in a corner chewing tobacco, and attempting to look like a man married to ten women at the same time.”

“Ha ha, I say, that’s a good one, Dr. Dunderheadus!”

“Thank you, sir.”

The doctor was about to shake Lund’s hand when something terrible happened. There was a great rattling and a shattering bang, the thunder of a thousand cannons, a frenzied, howling piping noise. The brass cube, having fallen into a layer of thin space, could not bear the inner pressure and exploded, its shreds hurtling into endless distances.

It was a terrible moment, the most singular in history!

Dr. Dunderheadus grabbed hold of Tom Snipe’s legs, who in turn grabbed hold of John Lund’s legs, and the three of them, with lightning speed, plummeted into endless depths. One after the other the balloons tore away, and, freed from all weight, spun in circles, exploding with deafening bangs.

“Where are we, sir?” John Lund inquired of the doctor.

“In the ethers.”

“I say, if we are in the ethers, what are we to breathe?”

“Where, Sir John, is your strength of will?”

“Gentlemen,” Tom Snipe called out, “I have the honor of informing you that for some reason we are not falling downward, but upward!”

“I see . . . Damn it all! That means we are no longer within the earth’s gravitational pull . . . That means our goal is drawing us toward it! Hurrah! Sir John, how is your health holding up?”

“Thank you for your concern. But, sir, I see the earth above us.”

“That isn’t the earth—it is one of our spots. We will crash into it any moment now.”

Bang!

CHAPTER V

Prince Meshchersky Island

The first to regain consciousness was Tom Snipe. He rubbed his eyes and let them wander over the terrain on which he, Dr. Dunderheadus, and John Lund were lying. He took off one of his stockings, and with it began rubbing the gentlemen down, who immediately regained consciousness.

“Where are we?” John Lund asked.

“We are on an island that belongs to a group of flying islands!” the doctor replied. “Hurrah!”

“Hurrah! Look up there, doctor!” Lund called out. “We have outshone Columbus!”

Above them a number of other islands were floating (a description follows that would only make sense to Englishmen). The three men set out to reconnoiter the island. Its measurements were (Verne gives us numbers and more numbers—to hell with them!). Tom Snipe managed to find a tree whose sap was redolent of Russian vodka. Strangely enough, the trees were no taller than grass. (Balderdash!) The island was uninhabited. No living creature had ever set foot on it before.

“I say, doctor, what might this be?” Lund said to Dr.