four
o'clock in the morning
Immediately the `` Albatross '' shot upwards , and past her , higher still , there mounted the noisy cheering of the crowd then thick on the boulevards -- a hurrah of stupefaction to greet the imaginary meteor . The lamps of the aeronef were turned off , and the darkness and the silence closed in around as the voyage was resumed at the rate of one hundred and twenty miles an hour . This was all that was to be seen of the French capital . At four o'clock in the morning the `` Albatross '' had crossed the whole country obliquely ; and so as to lose no time in traversing the Alps or the Pyrenees , she flew over the face of Provence to the cape of Antibes . At nine o'clock next morning the San Pietrini assembled on the terrace of St. Peter at Rome were astounded to see her pass over the eternal city . Two hours afterwards she crossed the Bay of Naples and hovered for an instant over the fuliginous wreaths of Vesuvius . Then , after cutting obliquely across the Mediterranean , in the early hours of the afternoon she was signaled by the look-outs at La Goulette on the Tunisian coast .