A dog accompanied the voyagers, and was held pressed close to his master in the meshes of the net.
"Top has seen something," cried one of the men.

Then immediately a loud voice shouted,-- "Land! land!" The balloon, which the wind still drove towards the southwest, had since daybreak gone a considerable distance, which might be reckoned by hundreds of miles, and a tolerably high land had, in fact, appeared in that direction.

But this land was still thirty miles off.

It would not take less than an hour to get to it, and then there was the chance of falling to leeward.
An hour! Might not the balloon before that be emptied of all the fluid it yet retained?
Such was the terrible question! The voyagers could distinctly see that solid spot which they must reach at any cost.

They were ignorant of what it was, whether an island or a continent, for they did not know to what part of the world the hurricane had driven them.