At the professor’s suggestion they strolled along for some distance.  They were now about three miles from the airship, and found that what they had supposed was a rather level plain, was becoming a succession of hills and hollows.  It was while descending into a rather deep valley that Jack pointed ahead and exclaimed: 

“I guess there’s our peach orchard, but I never saw one like it before.”

Nor had any of the others.  Instead of trees the peaches were attached to vines growing along the ground.  They covered a large part of the valley, and the peaches, some bigger than the one they first discovered, some small and green, rose up amid the vines, just as pumpkins do in a corn field.

“Stranger and stranger,” the professor murmured.  “Peaches grow on vines.  I suppose potatoes will grow on trees.  Everything seems to be reversed here.”

They made their way down toward the peach “orchard” as Jack called it, though “patch” would have been a better name.  Besides peaches they found plums, apples, and pears growing in the same way, and all of a size proportionate to the first-named fruit.

“Well, one thing is evident,” Mr. Henderson remarked, “we shall not starve here.  There is plenty to eat, even if we have to turn vegetarians.”

“I wonder what time it is getting to be,” Jack remarked.  “My watch says twelve o’clock but whether it’s noon or midnight I can’t tell, with this colored light coming and going.  I wonder if it ever sets as the sun does.”

“That is something we’ll have to get used to,” the professor said.  “But I think we had better go back to the ship now.  We have many things to do to get it in order again.  Besides, I am a little afraid to leave it unguarded so long.  No telling but what some strange beast—­ or persons, for that matter—­ might injure it.”

“I’m going to take back some slices of peaches with me, anyhow,” Mark said, and he and Jack cut off enough to make several meals, while Bill, Tom and Washington took along all they could carry.

As they walked back toward the ship the strange lights seemed to be dying out.  At first they hardly noticed this, but as they continued on it became quite gloomy, and an odd sort of gloom it was too, first green, then yellow, then red and then blue.

“I believe whatever serves as a sun down here is setting,” the professor observed.  “We must hurry.  I don’t want to be caught out here after dark.”

They hurried on, the lights dying out more and more, until, as they came in sight of their ship, it was so black they could hardly see.

Mark who was in the rear turned around, glancing behind him.  As he did so he caught sight of a gigantic shadow moving along on top of the nearest hill.  The shadow was not unlike that of a man in shape, but of such gigantic stature that Mark knew it could be like no human being he had ever seen.  At the same time it bore a curious resemblance to the weird shadow he had seen slip into the Mermaid that night before they sailed.