The result of their adventure, however, was a
discovery of such magnitude that it drove from their minds all thought of
their real errand and we never again heard of that project. After
remaining at an extreme height a few hours, the surface of the planet
being hidden by clouds, they began to descend, and when they were near
enough to see the features of the country below them, everything looked
strange and unknown. They could not account for this, but continued their
fall, fully persuaded that it must be their own world and not some other
which they were approaching. But even if they had not been correct in
that, they could hardly have been more surprised than they were to find,
on landing, that they were almost exactly on the opposite side of the
globe from the place where they made the ascent. They seemed to have
traveled half way around the world in that incredibly short space of time,
when in reality they had remained stationary and the world had traveled
around them. The fact is, they had risen above all the denser portion of
the planet's atmosphere, and had reached a stratum of extremely rarefied
air, which, it seems, does not accompany the globe in its revolution.
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