was pointed at both ends, the forward end being shaped something like a spur or ram. At the after end were two flickering, interlacing circles of a glittering greenish-yellow color, apparently formed by two intersecting propellers driven at an enormous velocity. Behind these was a vertical fan of triangular shape. The craft appeared to be flat-bottomed, and for about a third of her length amidships the upper half of her hull was covered with a curving, domelike roof of glass.

"She's an air-ship of some sort, there's no doubt about that," said the Captain, "so I guess the great problem has got solved at last. And yet it ain't a balloon because it's coming against the wind, and it's nothing of the aeroplane sort neither, because it hasn't planes or kites or any fixings of that kind. Still it's made of something like metal and glass, and it must take a lot of keeping up. It's traveling at a pretty healthy speed too. Getting on for a hundred miles an hour, I should guess. Ah! he's going to speak us! Hope he's honest."Everybody on board the _St. Louis_ was up on deck by this time, and the
excitement rose to fever-heat as the strange vessel swept down towards
them from the middle sky, passed them like a flash of light, swung round
the stern, and ranged up alongside to starboard some twenty feet from
the bridge rail.

She was about a hundred and twenty feet long, with some twenty feet of
depth and thirty of beam, and the Captain and many of his officers and
passengers were very much relieved to find that, as far as could be
seen, she carried no weapons of offence.

As she ranged up alongside, a sliding door opened in the glass-domed
roof amidships, just opposite to the end of the _St. Louis'_ bridge. A
tall, fair-haired, clean-featured man, of about thirty, in grey
flannels, tipped up his golf cap with his thumb, and said:

"Good morning, Captain! You remember me, I suppose? Had a fine passage,
so far? I thought I should meet you somewhere about here."

The Captain of the _St. Louis_, in common with every one else on board,
had already had his credulity stretched about as far as it would go, and
he was beginning to wonder whether he was really awake; but when he
heard the hail and recognised the speaker he stared at him in blank and,
for the moment, speechless bewilderment. Then he got hold of his voice
again and said, keeping as steady as he could:

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