The Log of the Flying Fish

Harry Collingwood

Table of Contents

Contents

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

Chapter Three.

Chapter Four.

Chapter Five.

Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven.

Chapter Eight.

Chapter Nine.

Chapter Ten.

Chapter Eleven.

Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Thirteen.

Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fifteen.

Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Nineteen.

Chapter Twenty.

Chapter Twenty One.

Chapter Twenty Two.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Illustrator: Gordon Browne

Chapter One.

Professor Von Schalckenberg makes a startling Suggestion.

The “Migrants’” Club stands on the most delightful site in all London; and it is, as the few who are intimately acquainted with it know full well, one of the most cosy and comfortable clubs in the great metropolis.

It is by no means a famous club; the building itself has a very simple, unpretentious elevation, with nothing whatever about it to attract the attention of the passer-by; but its interior is fitted up in such a style of combined elegance and comfort, and its domestic arrangements are so perfect, as to leave nothing to be desired.

Its numerous members are essentially wanderers upon the face of the earth—that is the one distinguishing characteristic wherein they most widely differ from their fellow-men—they are ceaseless travellers; mighty hunters in far-off lands; adventurous yachtsmen; eager explorers; with a small sprinkling of army and navy men. Their visits to their club are infrequent in the extreme; but, during the brief and widely separated intervals when they have the opportunity to put in an appearance there, they like to be made thoroughly comfortable; and no pains are spared to secure their complete gratification in this respect.

The smoke-room of the “Migrants’” presented an appearance of especial comfort and attractiveness on a certain cold and stormy February evening a few years ago. A large fire blazed in the polished steel grate and roared cheerfully up the chimney, in rivalry of the wind, which howled and scuffled and rumbled in the flue higher up. An agreeable temperature pervaded the room, making the lashing of the fierce rain on the window-panes sound almost pleasant as one basked in the light and warmth of the apartment and contrasted it with the state of cold and wet and misery which reigned supreme outside. A dozen opal-shaded gas-burners brilliantly lighted the room, and revealed the fact that it was handsomely and liberally furnished with luxurious divans, capacious easy-chairs, a piano, a table loaded with the papers and periodicals of the day, an enormous mirror over the black marble mantel-piece, a clock with a set of silvery chimes for the quarters, and a deep, mellow-toned gong for the hours, and so many pictures that the whole available surface of the walls was completely covered with them. These pictures—executed in both oil and water-colour—represented out-of-the-way scenes visited, or incidents participated in by the members who had executed them, and all possessed a considerable amount of artistic merit; it being a rule of the club that every picture should be submitted to a hanging committee of distinctly artistic members before it could be allowed a place upon the smoke-room walls.

The occupants of the room on the evening in question were four in number. One, a German, known as the Professor Heinrich von Schalckenberg, was half buried in the recesses of a huge arm-chair, from the depths of which he perused the pages of the Science Monthly, smoking meanwhile a pipe with a huge elaborately carved meerschaum bowl and a long cherry-wood stem. From the ferocious manner in which he glared through his spectacles at the pages of the magazine, from the impatience with which he from time to time dashed his disengaged hand through the masses of his iron-grey hair, and from the frequent ejaculations of “Pish!” “Psha!” “Ach!” and so on which escaped his lips, accompanied by vast volumes of smoke, it seemed evident that he was not altogether at one with the author whose article he was perusing. He was an explorer and a scientist.

Near the Herr Professor there reclined upon a divan the form of Sir Reginald Elphinstone, sometimes called by his friends “the handsome baronet,” said to be the richest commoner in England. At the age of thirty-five, having freely exposed himself to all known sources of peril, except those involved in a trip to the Polar regions, in his eager pursuit of sport and adventure, Sir Reginald seemed, for the moment, to have no object left him in life but to shoot as many rings as possible of cigar-smoke through each other, as he lay there on the divan in an attitude more easy than elegant.

Square in front of the fire, dreamily puffing at his cigar and apparently studying the merits of a painting hanging behind him, and on the reflected image of which in the mirror before him his eyes lazily rested, sat Cyril Lethbridge, ex-colonel of the Royal Engineers, a successful gold-seeker, and almost everything else to which a spice of adventure could possibly attach itself.

And next him again, on the side of the fire-place opposite to the Herr Professor, lounged Lieutenant Edward Mildmay, R.N.

The lieutenant was skimming through the daily papers. Presently he looked up and remarked to the colonel:

“I see that some Frenchmen have been making experiments in the navigation of balloons.”

“Ah, indeed!” responded the colonel, with his head thrown critically on one side, and his eyes still fixed on the reflection of the picture. “And with what result?”

“Oh, failure, of course.”

“And failure it always will be. The thing is simply an impossibility,” remarked the colonel.

“No, bardon me, colonel, id is not an imbossibilidy by any means.”

This from the professor.

“Indeed? Then how do you account for it, professor, that all attempts to navigate a balloon have hitherto failed?” asked the colonel.

“Begause, my dear zir, the aeronauts have never yed realised all the requiremends of zuccess,” replied the professor, laying down his magazine as though quite prepared to go thoroughly into the question.

The colonel accepted the challenge, and, rousing himself from his semi-recumbent posture, said:

“That is quite possible; but what are the requirements of success?”

The professor knocked the ashes out of his meerschaum, refilled it with the utmost deliberation, carefully lighted it, gave a few vigorous puffs, and replied:

“The requiremends of zuccess in balloon navigation are very zimilar to those which enable a man to draverse the ocean. If a man wants to make a voyage agross the ocean he embargs in a ship, not on a life-buoy. Now a balloon is nothing more than a life-buoy; id zusdains a man, but that is all. Id drifts aboud with the currends of air jusd as a life-buoy drifts aboud with the currends of ocean, and the only advandage which the aeronaud has over the man with the life-buoy is thad the former can ascend or descend in search of a favourable air currend, whereas the ladder is obliged do dake the ocean currends as they come.”

“Very true,” remarked the colonel; “and what do you deduce from that, professor?”

“I deduse from thad thad the man who wands to navigade the air musd do as his brother the sailor does, he musd have a ship.”

“Well, is not a balloon a sort of air ship?”

“You may gall it zo iv you like, colonel, I do nod; I call it merely a buoy,” returned the professor. “A ship is a zomething gabable of moving in the elemend which zustains it; a balloon is ingabable of any indebendend movement in the air; it drifts aboud at the mercy of every idle wind that blows. Id is like a ship on a breathless sea; withoud any means of brobulsion the ship lies motionless, or drifts at the mercy of the currends. Bud give the ship a means of brobulsion, and navigation ad once begomes bossible. And zo will it be with balloons.”

“Well, that has already been tried,” remarked the colonel; “but the buoyancy of a balloon is too slight to permit of its being fitted with engines and a boiler.”

“My vriendt,” said the professor impressively, “whad would you think of the man who tried to pud the engines and boilers of an Atlantic liner in a leedle boad?”

“I should think him an unmitigated ass,” retorted the colonel.

“Jusd so. Yed thad is whad the aeronauds have been doing; they have been drying to make the leedle boad-balloon garry the brobelling bower of the aerial ship. In other words, they have not made their balloons large enough.”

“Then you think they have not yet reached the practical limit to the size of a balloon?” asked the colonel.

“They have—very nearly—if balloons are do be made only of silk,” was the reply. “Bud if navigable balloons are to be gonsdrugded, aeronauds musd durn do other maderials and adobd another form. As I said before, they musd build a shib, and she musd be of sufficiend size to float in the air and to garry all her eguipments.”

“But such an aerial ship would be a veritable monster” protested the colonel.

“Zo are the Adlandic liners of the presend day,” quietly answered the professor.

“Phew!” whistled the colonel. The baronet rose from the divan, flung away the stump of his cigar, and settled himself to listen, and perhaps take part in the singular conversation.

“And of what would you build your aerial ship, professor?” asked the colonel when he had in some measure recovered from his astonishment.

“Of the lighdesd and, ad the zame dime, sdrongesd maderial I gould find,” answered the professor. “Once get the aeronaud to realise thad greadly ingreased bulk and a differend form are necessary, and id will nod be long before he will find a suitable building maderial. Iv I were an aeronaud I should dry medal.”

“Metal!” exclaimed the colonel. “Oh, come, professor; now you are romancing, you know. A ship of metal would never float in the atmosphere.”

“A zimilar remarg was made nod zo very many years ago when id was suggesded that ocean shibs could be buildt of medal,” retorted the professor. “Yed there are thousands of medal shibs in exisdenze do-day; and there can be no doubt as do the facd thad they fload. And zo will an aerial shib. The gread—in facd the only diffiguldy in the madder is thad air is eight hundred dimes lighder than wader; and an air shib of given dimensions musd therefore be ad leasd eight hundred dimes lighder than her ocean sisder do enable her do fload in the atmosphere. The broblem, then, is this: How are you to gonsdrugt a medal shib, of given dimensions, sdrong enough do hold dogether and withsdand the shock of goming do earth, yed of less weighd than her own bulk of air? With the medals hitherdoo ad our disbosal, I admid thad the dask is a diffiguld one; bud I maindain thad id is by no means an imbossibilidy. An ocean shib musd be buildt sdrong enough nod only do susdain the weighd of her gargo—often amounding do upwards of a thousand dons—bud also do withstand the dremendous and incessandly varying sdrain do which she is exbosed when garrying thad gargo through a moundainous sea. This enormous sdrength necessidades the use of a gorresbonding thickness—and therefore weighd—of the medal used in her gonsdruction. Such brovision would of gourse be unnecessary in the gase of an aerial shib; begause no one would dream of garrying an ounze of unnecessary weighd through the air; and there are no moundain seas in the admosphere to sdrain a shib. A vasd saving in weighd would resuld from these zirgumsdances alone; and a further saving—zufficiend, I believe, to aggomblish the desired object—gan, no doubd, be effecded by skilful engineers, one of whose greadesd driumphs id is do design sdrugdures in which the maximum of sdrength is zecured with the minimum of weighd. Id musd nod be forgodden, either, thad an air shib musd, in one imbordand bardigular, be dreated exactly like her ocean sisder. An ocean shib gonsdrugded, say, of sdeel, will sink if filled with wader, begause sdeel is heavier than wader, bulk for bulk; bud bump oud all the wader from her inderior, and if she be proberly gonsdrugded, she will fload on the elemend she is indended do navigade. And the same with an air shib: bump out all or nearly all the air which she gondains, and if she be gonsdrugded in aggordanze with the brincibles I have indigaded, she will fload in the lighder elemend.”

“Upon my word, professor, you have argued your case extremely well,” exclaimed the colonel. “I can see only one difficulty in the way; and that is in the matter of weight.”

“Which diffiguldy I have gombledely gonquered,” triumphantly exclaimed the professor, rising excitedly from his seat with flushed cheeks and flashing eyes. “Do me, Heinrich von Schalckenberg, belongs the honour and glory of having made dwo mosd imbordand disgoveries, disgoveries of ingalgulable value do the worldt, disgoveries which will enable me do soar ad will indo the highesd regions of the embyrean, do skim the surface of the ocean, or do blunge do ids lowesd debths.”

“Bravo, professor; that was positively dramatic!” exclaimed the baronet. “You have mistaken your business, my dear sir; you were undoubtedly born to be an actor. But what are these two most important discoveries of which you so exultantly speak?”

“They are a new medal and a new power,” exclaimed the professor. Then, fumbling in his breast-pocket, he drew forth a wallet from which he extracted a small rectangular plate of—apparently—polished silver. It measured about five inches long by four inches broad, and was about a quarter of an inch thick.

“There, Sir Reginald,” he exclaimed, offering the plate to the baronet, “dell me whad you think of thad.”

“Very pretty indeed,” commented Sir Reginald, as he held out his hand to take it. “What is it? Silver? Phew! No; it can’t be that,” as his fingers closed upon it; “it is far too light for silver. Why, it seems to be absolutely devoid of weight altogether. What is it, professor?”

“Thad, my good sir, is my new medal, which I gall ‘aethereum’ begause of ids wonderful lighdness. See here.”

There was a very handsome cut glass water-jug, full, standing on the table in a capacious salver of hammered brass. The professor took up the jug and emptied it into the salver, almost filling the latter. Then he laid the glittering slab of metal down on the surface of the water, where it floated as buoyantly as though it had been an empty box constructed of the lightest cardboard. The professor raised the salver from the table and agitated the water, to show that the metal actually floated.

“Why, it floats as lightly as a cork!” exclaimed the colonel in the utmost astonishment.

“Korg!” exclaimed the professor disdainfully, “korg is heavy gombared with this. This is the lighdesd solid known. Loog ad this.”

The professor lifted the plate of metal out of the water, and, wiping it dry very carefully with his silk pocket-handkerchief, held it suspended, flat side downwards, between his finger and thumb. Then, when he had poised it as nearly horizontal as he could guess at, he let it go. It wavered about in the air as a thin sheet of paper would have done, and finally sailed aslant and very gently to the ground, amid the astonished exclamations of the beholders, by whom it was immediately examined with the utmost curiosity.

“You have seen for yourselves and gan therefore judge how marvellously lighd this medal is,” continued the professor when the plate had been handed back to him; “bud ids sdrength you musd dake my word for, as I have no means ad hand do illusdrade id. Ids sdrength is as wonderful as ids lighdness, being—zo var as I have had obbordunidy do desd id—exactly one hundred dimes thad of the besd sdeel.”

“If that be the case, professor, then I should say you have solved the problem of aerial navigation,” remarked the colonel. “But you spoke of having also discovered a new power. What is it?”

The professor once more instituted a search in his pockets, and at length produced a small paper packet, which, on being opened, was found to contain about a table-spoonful of green metallic-looking crystals.

“There id is,” he said, handing the packet to the colonel for inspection.

“Um!” ejaculated the colonel, turning the crystals over slowly with his finger. “Quite new to me; I don’t recognise them at all. And what is the nature of the power derivable from these crystals?”

“Dreated in one way they give off elegdricidy; dreated in another way they yield an exbansive gas, which may be subsdiduded for either gunbowder or sdeam,” answered the professor.

“Are they explosive, then?” asked the colonel.

“Nod in their bresend form. You mighd doss all those crysdals indo the fire with imbunidy; but bowder them and mix indo a baste with a zerdain acid, and whad you now hold in your hand would develop exblosive bower enough to demolish this building,” was the quiet reply.

The professor’s little audience looked at him incredulously; a look to which he responded by saying:

“Id is quide drue, I assure you,” in such convincing tones as left no room for further doubt. They knew the professor well; knew him to be quite incapable of the slightest attempt at deception or exaggeration.

“Then, if I have understood you aright, you will construct your aerial ship of your new metal, and apply your new power to give motion to her machinery?” said the colonel.

“Yes. Thad is do say, I would if I bossessed the means do build such a ship as I have described. Bud I am a scientist, and therefore boor. Never mind; I have no doubt thad, when I make my discoveries known, I shall find some wealthy man who, for the sake of science, will find der money,” said the professor hopefully.

“How much would it cost to build an aerial ship such as you have been speaking of?” asked the baronet.

“Oh! I cannod say. Nod zo very much. Berhabs a hundred thousandt bounds,” was the reply.

“Phew! That’s rather ‘steep,’ as the Yankees say. But—‘a fool and his money are soon parted’—if you are convinced that your scheme is really practicable, professor, I will find the needful,” remarked the baronet.

“Bragdigable! My dear sir, id is as bragdigable as id is to build a shib which will navigade the ocean. I have thoughd the madder oudt, and there is nod a single weak boindt anywhere in my scheme. Led me have der money and I will brovide you with the means of zoaring above the grest of Mount Everest, or of exbloring the deepest ocean valleys,” exclaimed the professor enthusiastically.

“Good!” remarked the baronet quietly. “That is a bargain. Meet me here at noon to-morrow, and we will go together to my bankers, where I will transfer one hundred thousand pounds to your account. And—what say you, gentlemen?—when this wonderful ship is completed will you join the professor and me in an experimental trip round the world?”

“I shall be delighted,” exclaimed the colonel.

“Nothing would please me better,” remarked the lieutenant.

And so it was agreed.

“Well,” remarked the baronet reflectively, and as though he already began to feel doubtful as to the wisdom of his agreement with the professor, “if it has no other good result it will at least afford employment to a few of the unfortunate fellows who are now hanging about idle day after day.”

The professor looked up sharply.

“What!” he exclaimed. “Of whom are you sbeaging, my dear Sir Reginald?”

“I am speaking of the unfortunate individual known as ‘the British Workman,’” was the baronet’s quiet reply.

“Am I do understandt thad you make the embloymend of English workmen a gondition of the underdaking?” asked the professor somewhat sharply.

“By no means, my dear sir,” answered Sir Reginald; “I shall not attempt to impose conditions of any kind upon you. But I should naturally expect that, if English workmen are as capable of executing the work as foreigners, the former would be given the preference in a matter involving the expenditure of say a hundred thousand pounds of an Englishman’s money.”

“Quide zo,” concurred the professor; “and you would be perfectly justified in such an expegdation if the Bridish workman was the steady, indusdrious, reliable fellow he once was. Bud, unfordunadely, he is nod the same, zo var ad leasd as reliabilidy is concerned. You gannod any longer debend ubon him. Id is no longer bossible to underdake a work of any imbordance withoudt the gonsdand haunting fear that your brogress will be inderrubted—berhaps ad a most cridical juncture—by a ‘sdrike,’ The greadt quesdion which, above all others, do-day agidades the British mind is: ‘Do whadt cause is the bresendt debression of drade addribudable?’ And, in my obinion, gendlemen, the answer to that quesdion is thad id is very largely due do the consdandly recurring sdrikes which have become almosdt a habid with the Bridish workman. The ‘sdrike’ is the most formidable engine which has ever been brought indo oberation do seddle the differences bedween embloyer and embloyed; and, whilst I am willing to admid thad in certain cases id has resulded in the repression and redress of long-sdanding oppression and injusdice, id has been used with such a lack of discrimination as do have almost ruined the drade of the goundry. With the invention of the ‘sdrike’ the workman thoughd he had ad lasd discovered the means of enriching himself ad the expense of his embloyer, or of securing his fair and righdful share of the brofids of his labour, as he described id; and, udderly ignorand of the laws of bolidigal egonomy, recognising in the ‘sdrike’ merely an insdrumend for forcing a higher rade of wages from his embloyer, he has gone on recklessly using id undil the unfordunade gabidalist, finding himself unable do produce his wares ad a cost which will enable him do successfully gompede with the manufagdurers of other goundries, has been gombelled to glose his works and remove his gabidal and his energies to a spodt where he gan find workmen less unreasonable in their demands. There is no more capable or valuable workman in existence than the English artisan, if he gould only be induced to do his honest best for his embloyer; there is hardly any branch of industry in which he is nod ad leasd the equal, if not very greadly the suberior of the foreigner; and id is even yet in his power to recover the command of the world’s market by the suberior excellence of his broductions, if he could only be brevailed upon do abandon sdrikes and do be satisfied with a wage which will allow the cabidalist a fair and moderade redurn for the use of his money and brains and for the risks he has do run. If the British workman would gollecdively make up his mind to do this, and would acquaindt the gabidalist with his decision, we should speedily see a revival of drade and embloymend for every really capable workman. Bud in the meantime there unfordunadely seems do be very little chance of this; and in so delicade a madder as the gonsdrugdion of this ship of ours, it would be nod only unwise, but also unfair to you to run the risk of a failure through the embloymendt of untractable or unreliable workmen; and if, therefore, you had insisted on my embloying Englishmen, I should have been relugdandly gombelled do wash my hands of the whole affair. Ad the same dime I feel id due do myself do say thad, even had you nod mendioned the madder, I should have done my best to secure Englishmen for the work, as of course I shall now; bud I do nod feel very sanguine as do the resuldt.”

“My dear professor!” exclaimed the baronet, smiling at the intense earnestness of the German, “are you not laying on the colour rather thickly? I admit with sorrow that your portrait is only too truthful—as a portrait—still I cannot help thinking it rather highly coloured. They are surely not all as despicable as you have painted them?”

“No,” answered the professor with enthusiasm, “no they are nod. Id was only a few weeks ago thad I read of the workmen of a cerdain firm bresending their employers with a full week’s work free, in order to helb the firm out of their beguniary diffiguldies. Now, they, I admid, were fine, noble, sensible fellows; they had indelligence enough to regognize the diffiguldies of the siduation, and do grabble with them in a sensible way. I warrand you they always worked honesdly and efficiendly whether their embloyer’s eye was on them or nod. And they will find their reward in due time; their embloyers will never rest until they have recouped the men for their generous sacrifice. But where will you find another body of men like them? They are only the one noble, grand exception which goes do brove my rule.”

“Well, professor, though what you have said is, in the main, only too true, I cannot agree with you altogether; I believe there are a few good, intelligent, reliable men to be found here and there, in addition to those splendid fellows of whom you have just told us,” said the baronet. “But,” he continued, “I will not attempt to constrain you in any way. If you cannot find exactly what you want here, import men from abroad, by all means. I have a great deal of sympathy for want and suffering when they are the result of misfortune; but when they are brought on by a man’s own laziness or perversity he must go elsewhere for sympathy and help; I have none to spare for people of that sort.”

Chapter Two.

The Realisation of a Scientist’s Dream.

Punctual to the moment, Professor von Schalckenberg opened the door of the smoke-room at the “Migrants’,” and entered the apartment as the deep-toned notes of Big Ben were heard sounding the hour of noon on the day following that upon which occurred the conversation recorded in the preceding chapter. Sir Reginald Elphinstone was already there; and after a few words of greeting the two men left the club together, and, entering the baronet’s cab, which was in waiting, drove away to the banker’s, where the business of the money transfer was soon concluded.

The pair then separated; and for the next fortnight the professor was busy all day, and during a great part of the night, with his drawings and calculations. At the end of that time, having completed his work on paper to his satisfaction, he took advantage of a fine day to make a little excursion. Proceeding to London Bridge, he embarked in a river steamer, about ten o’clock in the morning, and indulged himself in a run down the river. He kept his eyes sharply about him as the boat sped down the stream; and just before reaching Blackwall he saw what he thought would suit him. It was a ship-building yard, “for sale, or to let, with immediate possession”, as an immense notice-board informed him. Landing at the pier, he made his way back to the yard, and, having with some difficulty found the man in charge of the keys, proceeded to inspect the premises. They turned out to be as nearly what he wanted as he could reasonably hope to find, being very spacious, with a full supply of “plant,” in perfect working order, and with enough spare room to allow of the laying down of the special “plant” necessary for the manufacture of his new metal. Having satisfied himself upon this point, he next obtained the address of the parties who had the letting of the yard and works, and proceeded back to town by rail. The parties of whom he was now in search proved to be a firm of solicitors having offices in Lincoln’s Inn; and by them, when he had stated the object of his call, he was received with—figuratively—open arms. The premises had been lying idle and profitless for some time; and they were only too glad to let them to him upon a two years’ lease upon terms highly advantageous to him and his client the baronet.

This important business settled, the next thing was to lay down the special plant already referred to; and so energetic was the professor in his management of this and the other necessary preliminaries that six months sufficed to place the yard in a fit state for the commencement of actual operations.

And now the professor’s troubles began in real earnest. Impressed with the idea that he was perhaps wrong after all, and the baronet right, in his judgment of the British workman, Herr von Schalckenberg determined to run the risk of giving the Englishmen another trial. He had no difficulty whatever in engaging an efficient office staff; but when it came to securing the services of foremen, mechanics, and labourers, the unhappy German was driven almost to despair. He advertised his wants widely, of course, and, in response to his advertisements, the applications for employment poured in almost literally without number. The great entrance-gates of the works were fairly besieged, and the roadway outside blocked by the great army of applicants, who were admitted into the presence of the professor in gangs of twenty at a time. The professor had set out with the resolve that he would deal as liberally with his employés as he possibly could, consistently with justice to his client, the baronet; and with this object he had spared no pains to ascertain the rate of wages then ruling for such men as he wanted. With the data thus obtained he had drawn up a scale of pay which he was prepared to offer, and beyond which he had resolved not to go. Armed with this, he interviewed the countless applicants as they presented themselves before him; and the result was enough to drive to distraction even a more patient man than Herr von Schalckenberg. The applicants proved to be, almost without exception, trades-unionists, out on strike because their employers had declined or had been unable to accede to the exorbitant demands of the workmen. These workmen had in many cases been idle for months; yet they now unhesitatingly refused employment, and refused it insolently too, because the wages offered by the professor, though fully equal to those paid by other employers, were less than they chose to consider themselves entitled to. Their wives and children were, by their own admission, naked and starving, and here was an opportunity to clothe and feed them, yet they rejected it scornfully. And naked, starving though the families of these wretches might be and actually were, almost every man of them, bearing out the professor’s criticism of them, had a short dirty pipe in his mouth and smelt strongly of drink. There were a few exceptions to this rule—about one in every fifty applicants, perhaps—and they were almost all non-union men, who eagerly and thankfully accepted employment, careless of the sneers, gibes, and threats of the others; and these proved to be, with scarcely a single exception, steady, reliable, honest, and capable men, who soon worked themselves into leading positions. The professor wanted about two hundred men, and he succeeded in securing twenty; after which his overtasked patience gave out, and in despair he obtained the remainder from Germany.

All this took time; and it was not until nearly eight months after the conversation in the “Migrants’” smoke-room that the professor was actually able to commence work in the building yard. Then, however, the operations proceeded apace. Day after day long mineral trains jolted and clanked noisily along the siding and into the yard, where they disgorged their loads and made way for still other trains; day after day clumsy steam colliers hauled in alongside the yard wharf and under the fussy steam-cranes to discharge their cargoes; and very soon the lofty furnace chimneys began to belch forth a never-ending cloud of inky smoke. Very soon, too, the belated wayfarer might possibly, had he been so disposed, have obtained a chance glimpse, through accidental chinks in the close palisading, of a long range of brilliantly lighted buildings, wherein, if the doors happened to be inadvertently left open, he would have witnessed huge outpourings of dazzling molten metal, which, after being subjected to the action of certain chemicals, and passing through divers strange processes, was passed as it solidified through a series of powerful rolling mills, which relentlessly squeezed and flattened it out, until it finally emerged, still glowing red with fervent heat, in the shape of long flat symmetrically shaped sheets, or angle-bars and girders of various sections. And, a little later on, an inquisitive individual, could he have obtained a peep into the jealously boarded-in building shed, might have seen a far-reaching series of light circular ribs of glittering silver-like metal, of gradually decreasing diameter as they spread each way from the central rib, rearing themselves far aloft toward the ground-glass skylight which surmounted the roof of the building. But perhaps the strangest sight of all, could one but have gained admission into the forge to see it, was the huge main shaft of the ship, which, after having been mercilessly pounded and battered into shape by the giant Nasmith hammers, was coolly seized by only a couple of men, and by them easily carried into the machine-shop, there to receive its finishing touches in the lathe.

And so the work went on, steadily yet rapidly, until at length it so nearly approached completion that the professor was every week enabled to dispense with the services of and pay off an increasingly large number of men. Finally, the day arrived when the score or so of painters and decorators, who then constituted the sole remnant of the professor’s late army of workmen, completed their task of beautifying the interior of the aerial ship, and, receiving their pay, were dismissed to seek a new field of labour. The official staff now alone remained, and to these, after making them a pleasant little complimentary speech expressing his appreciation of the zeal and ability with which they had discharged their duties, Herr von Schalckenberg announced the pleasant intelligence that, although he had now no further need of their services, Sir Reginald Elphinstone had, upon his—the professor’s—earnest recommendation, successfully used his influence to secure them other and immediate employment. The professor then handed each man a cheque for his salary, including three months’ extra pay in lieu of the usual notice of dismissal to which he was entitled, together with a letter of introduction to his new employer, and, shaking hands with the staff all round, bade them good-bye, wishing them individually success in their new posts. Then, watching them file out of the office for the last time, he waited until all had left the premises, when he turned the key in the door, and making his way into the interior of the building shed, found himself at length alone with his completed work.

How the professor spent the next few hours no man but himself can say; but it is reasonable to suppose that, man of science though he was, he was still sufficiently human to regard with critical yet innocent pride and exultation the wonderful fabric which owed its existence to the inventive ingenuity of his fertile brain. It is probable, too, that when he had at length gratified himself with an exhaustive contemplation of its many points of interest, he went on board the ship, and with his own eyes and hands made a final inspection and trial of all her machinery, to satisfy himself that everything was complete and ready. At all events, however the professor may have passed those few hours of precious solitude, when he finally handed over the keys to the yard watchman and bade him “good-night” late on that summer evening, his whole bearing and appearance was that of a thoroughly happy and satisfied man.

Chapter Three.

The “Flying Fish.”

During the whole of the following week stores of various kinds necessary to the comfort and sustenance of the voyagers were being constantly delivered at the building yard, where they were received by the valet and cook of Sir Reginald Elphinstone—the only servants or assistants of any kind who were to accompany the expedition—and promptly stowed away by them, under the direction of the professor, who was exceedingly anxious to accurately preserve the proper “trim” of the vessel—a much more important and difficult matter than it would have been had she been designed to navigate the ocean only. By mid-day on Saturday the last article had been received, including the personal belongings of the travellers, the stowage was completed, and everything was ready for an immediate start.

At three o’clock on the following Monday afternoon the voyagers met in the smoke-room of the “Migrants’” as a convenient and appropriate rendezvous, and, without having dropped the slightest hint to anyone respecting the novel nature of their intended journey, quietly said “Good-bye” to the two or three men who happened to be there, and, chartering a couple of hansoms, made the best of their way to Fenchurch Street railway station, from whence they took the train to Blackwall. On emerging from the latter station they placed themselves under the guidance of the professor, and were by him conducted in a few minutes to the building yard. The professor was the only one of the quartette who had as yet set eyes on the vessel in which they were about to embark; and the remaining three naturally felt a little flutter of curiosity as they passed through the gateway and saw before them the enormous closely-boarded shed which jealously hid from all unprivileged eyes the latest marvel of science. But they were Englishmen, and as such it was a part of their creed to preserve an absolutely unruffled equanimity under every conceivable combination of circumstances, so between the whiffs of their cigars they chatted carelessly about anything and everything but the object upon which their thoughts were just then centred.

But the baronet’s equanimity was for a moment upset when the professor, after a perhaps unnecessarily prolonged fumbling with the key, threw open the wicket which gave admission to the interior of the shed, and, stepping back to allow his companions to precede him, exclaimed in tones of exultant pride, in that broken English of his which it is unnecessary to further reproduce:

“Behold, gentlemen, the embodiment of a scientist’s dream—the Flying Fish!”

The baronet advanced a pace or two, then stopped short, aghast.

“Good heavens!” he ejaculated. “What, in the name of madness, have you done, professor? That huge object will never float in the air; and I should say it will be a pretty expensive business to get her into the water, if indeed it is worth while to put her there.”

The other two, the representatives of the army and of the navy, though probably as much astonished as the baronet, said nothing. They knew considerably more than the latter about the capabilities of science; and though they might possibly entertain grave doubts as to the success of the professor’s experiment, they did not feel called upon to express an off-hand opinion that it would prove a failure.

The baronet might well be excused his hasty expression of incredulity. Towering above and in front of him, filling up the entire space of the enormous shed from end to end and from ground to roof-timbers, he saw an immense cylinder, pointed at both ends, and constructed entirely of the polished silver-like metal which the professor had called aethereum. The sides of the ship from stem to stern formed a series of faultless curves; the conical bow or fore body of the ship being somewhat longer, and therefore sharper, than the after body, which partook more of the form of an ellipse than of a cone; the curvilinear hull was supported steadily in position by two deep broad bilge-keels, one on either side and about one-third the extreme length of the ship; and, attached to the stern of the vessel by an ingeniously devised ball-and-socket joint in such a manner as to render a rudder unnecessary, was to be seen a huge propeller having four tremendously broad sickle-shaped blades, the palms of which were hollowed in such a manner as to gather in and concentrate the air, or water, about the boss and powerfully project it thence in a direct line with the longitudinal axis of the ship. Crowning the whole there was a low superstructure immediately over and of the same length as the bilge-keels, very much resembling the upper works of a double-bowed vessel such as are some of the small Thames river steamers. This was decked over, and afforded a promenade about two hundred feet long by thirty feet wide. And, lastly, rising from the centre of this deck there was a spacious pilot-house with a dome-like roof, from the interior of which the movements of the vessel could be completely controlled. The entire hull of the vessel, excepting the double-bowed superstructure, was left unpainted, and it shone like a polished mirror. The superstructure, however, was painted a delicate grey tint, with the relief of a massive richly gilded cable moulding all round the shear-strake and the further adornment of a broad ribbon of a rich crimson hue rippling through graceful wreaths of gilded scroll-work at bow and stern, the name Flying Fish being inscribed on the ribbon in gold letters. Altogether, notwithstanding her unusual form, the aerial ship was an exceedingly graceful and elegant object, and, but for her enormous proportions, looked admirably adapted for her work.

Under other circumstances the professor would probably have been seriously offended at the baronet’s incredulous exclamation; but as it was he was so confident of his success—so gratified and triumphant altogether—that he could afford to be not only forgiving but actually tolerant. He therefore replied to Sir Reginald only with a mute smile of amused compassion for the baronet’s lamentable ignorance and unbelief.

The professor’s smile somewhat reassured Sir Reginald, though he still continued to eye his novel possession very dubiously.

“You once spoke of Atlantic liners,” he at last remarked to the professor; “but surely this craft is larger than the largest Atlantic liner afloat. What are her dimensions?”

“She is six hundred feet long, by sixty feet diameter at the point of her greatest girth,” quietly replied the professor.

“And do you mean to tell me that such a monster will ever float in the air?” ejaculated the baronet, his incredulity returning and taking possession of him with tenfold tenacity.

“I do,” answered the professor firmly, his self-love at length becoming slightly ruffled. “In that ship you shall to-night soar higher into the empyrean than mortal has ever soared before; and after that you shall, if you choose, sleep calmly until morning at the bottom of the English Channel. By and by at the dinner-table I will endeavour to demonstrate to you, my dear friend, that it is her immense proportions alone which will enable her to float in so thin a fluid as air.”

“Very well,” said the baronet in the tones of a man still utterly unconvinced; “if you say so, I suppose I must doubt no more. Now, please, introduce to us the novel details of this wonderful craft of yours.”

“With pleasure,” answered the professor, his brow clearing and a gratified smile suffusing his countenance. “A few minutes will suffice to show you all that can be seen from the outside. Those small circular pieces of glass which you perceive let into the hull here and there are, as you have no doubt already surmised, windows to enable us to observe what is passing outside. The larger windows at the bow and stern protect powerful electric lamps, and are exclusively for the purpose of lighting up our surroundings when we are at the bottom of the sea. This,”—pointing to what looked like a circular trap-door in the bottom of the ship, some fifteen feet from the centre on the port side—“is the anchor recess; and this,”—pointing to a corresponding arrangement on the starboard side—“is the door through which we shall obtain egress from and access to the ship when she is at the bottom of the sea.”

“Do you mean by that, that we are going to leave the ship and walk about on the bed of the ocean?” asked the baronet.

“Certainly,” answered the professor with a look of surprise. “Our exploration of the ocean’s bed will probably be one of the most interesting incidents of the expedition.”

The baronet shrugged his shoulders and the professor continued:

“These bilge-keels serve a threefold purpose; they enable the ship to rest steadily and firmly on the ground, as you see, which, from her peculiar form, she could not otherwise do; they also form the sheaths, so to speak, of four anchors to fasten her securely to the ground either above or beneath the water—a most necessary precaution, believe me; and they also add considerably to the cubical contents of the water-chambers, with which they communicate, which will help to sink the ship to the bottom. Lastly, there is the propeller, the only peculiarities of which are its great diameter—fifty feet—its enormous surface area, and the fact that it is attached to the hull in such a way as to admit of its being turned freely in any direction, thus dispensing with all necessity for a rudder.”

“Why have you left the hull unpainted, professor? I suppose you had some good reason for so doing?” remarked the colonel, chiming into the conversation.

“I had no less than three good reasons for leaving the hull of the ship unpainted,” answered the professor. “In the first place, aethereum is quite insensible to the attacks of air and water—it never oxidises, and paint was therefore unnecessary for its preservation. In the next place, the quantity of paint necessary to cover that enormous surface would weigh something considerable; and, as I have throughout the work taken the utmost pains to keep down all the weight to the lowest ounce consistent with absolute safety, I rejected it on that account. And lastly, I take it that we are anxious to avoid all unnecessary observation; and I believe this cannot be better accomplished than by preserving the brilliant metallic lustre of the hull, which, especially when we are floating in mid-air, will reflect the tints of the surrounding atmosphere, and so make it almost impossible to distinguish us.”

“Except when the sun’s rays fall directly upon us, eh, professor?” remarked Mildmay.

“In that case,” returned the professor, “observers will see a dazzling flash of light in which all shape will be indistinguishable.”

“And we shall thus be mistaken for a meteorite,” exclaimed the baronet somewhat sarcastically. “Excellent! admirable! I really must congratulate you, professor, upon the wonderful foresight with which you seem to have provided for every possible and impossible emergency. Now, what is the next marvel?”

“There is nothing more down here. We will now proceed on board, if you please, gentlemen,” said the professor; and he forthwith led the way up a ladder which leaned against the vessel’s lofty side. This conducted them as far as the upper curve of her cylindrical bilge, at which point they encountered a flight of light ornamental openwork steps permanently attached to the ship’s side, up which they passed to the gangway in the stout metal railing which served instead of bulwark, and so reached the spacious promenade deck. Looking down into the yard from this coign of vantage, they seemed to be an enormous height from the ground; and the baronet shrugged his shoulders more expressively than ever as he glanced first below and then around him, realising more fully than ever, as he did so, the immense proportions of his new possession. He said nothing, however, but turned inquiringly to the professor.

“This way, gentlemen, if you please,” said the German, in answer to the look; and he led them aft to what may be styled the quarter-deck.

“You spoke about the weight of a coat of paint on the hull just now, but I see you have planked the deck. The weight of all this planking must be something considerable,” remarked Mildmay.

“A mere trifle; it is only a thin veneering just to give a secure and comfortable foothold,” remarked the professor. He paused at what looked like a trap-door in the deck and said:

“We shall not be always soaring in the air nor groping about at the bottom of the sea; we shall sometimes be riding on the surface; and I have therefore thought it advisable to provide a couple of boats. Here is one of them.”

He stooped down, seized hold of and turned a ring in the flap, and raised the trap-door, disclosing a dark pit-like recess of considerable dimensions. Letting the flap fold back flat on the deck, the professor then stooped down and grasped the handle of a horizontal lever which lay just below the level of the deck, and drew it up into a perpendicular position, and, as he did so, a pair of davits, the upper portions of which had been plainly visible, rose through the aperture close to the protecting railing, bringing with them a handsomely modelled boat hanging from the tackles. The professor deftly turned the davits outward, and there hung the boat at the quarter in the exact position she would have occupied in an ordinary ship.

“Bravo, professor; very clever indeed!” exclaimed Mildmay. “But what is the object of those four curved tubes projecting through the boat’s bottom?”

“Those tubes,” answered the professor, “are the boat’s means of propulsion. You see,” he explained, “being built of aethereum, the boat is extremely light, and draws so little water that a screw propeller would be quite useless to her. So I have substituted those tubes instead. One pair, you will observe, points toward the stern, and one pair toward the bow. The boat’s engine is a powerful three-cylinder pump, and it sucks the water strongly in through the tubes which point forward, discharging it as powerfully out through those which point astern; thus drawing and driving the boat along at a speed of about twelve knots per hour, which is as fast, I fancy, as we shall ever want her to go. If you want to go astern the movement of a single lever reverses the whole process. There is a similar boat on the other side.”

The boat having been returned to her hiding-place, the professor next led his friends to the structure which occupied the centre of the deck. It was a perfectly plain erection, with curved sides meeting in a kind of stem and stern-post at its forward and after ends, with a curved dome-like roof, several small circular windows all round its sides, and no apparent means of entry.

“Why, how is this, professor? You have actually built your pilot-house—for such I suppose it is—without a door,” exclaimed the baronet with returning good-humour as he perceived that, even in the event of the Flying Fish failing to fly, he would still have a very wonderful ship for his money.

“As you have rightly supposed, this is the pilot-house,” answered the professor, with one hand pressing lightly against the gleaming wall of the structure. “But as to its being without a door, you are mistaken, for there it is.”

And as he spoke a door, hitherto unnoticed in the side of the building, flew open.

“Why, you are a veritable magician, professor! How on earth did you manage that?” exclaimed the colonel.

“Easily enough,” answered the professor. “Just look here, all of you. This is a secret door which it is necessary you should all know how to open. Now, there are four of us, are there not? Very well; find the fourth rivet from the bottom in the fourth row from the after end of the building—here it is—push it to your left—not press it; pressing is no good—and open flies the door. Push the rivet to the right when the door is open, and you shut it—so,” suiting the action to the word. “Now, Sir Reginald, let me see if you can open that door.”

The baronet opened and closed the door without difficulty; and then the other two essayed the attempt with similarly successful results.

“That is all right,” commented the professor. “Now step inside, please; and close the door—so: when you want to open it from the inside you simply turn this handle—so, and open it comes.”

The quartette now found themselves inside the pilothouse, which proved to be two stories in height. On their right hand they beheld the companion-way leading to the interior of the ship, with a wide flight of stairs of delightfully easy descent, handsomely carpeted, and a magnificent massive handrail and balusters of gleaming aethereum. The square opening to the companion-way was also protected by a similar handrail and balusters, producing an exceedingly rich effect and seeming to promise a corresponding sumptuousness of fitting in the saloons below.

Just clear of the head of the companion staircase and leading up one side of the pilot-house was another light staircase of open grid-work leading to the floor above, which, at a height of seven feet, spanned the building from side to side. This floor was also of light open gridwork, affording easy verbal communication between persons occupying the different stories in the pilot-house. Through this open grid-floor could be seen various apparatus, the objects of which the new-comers were naturally anxious to learn; and to this floor the professor accordingly led his companions up the staircase.

The first object to which he directed attention was a long straight bar of aethereum handsomely moulded into the form of a thick cable, and finished off at the outer end with the semblance of a “Matthew Walker” knot. This bar issued at its inner end from a handsomely panelled and moulded casing which extended down through both floors of the pilot-house, presumably covering in and protecting the mechanism with which the bar was obviously connected.

“This,” said the professor, laying his hand on the bar, “is the steering apparatus—the tiller as you call it—of the ship. It moves, as you see, in all directions, and communicates a corresponding movement to the propeller—as you may see, if you will take the trouble to look out through one of those windows.”

The trio immediately did so, and saw, as the professor had stated, that with every movement of the tiller, right or left, up or down, the propeller inclined itself at a corresponding angle. A handsome binnacle compass stood immediately in front of the tiller, but the professor did not call attention to it, rightly assuming that his companions were fully acquainted with its use and purpose.

On the professor’s right, as he stood at the tiller, was an upright lever working in a quadrant, and communicating, like the tiller—and indeed all the other apparatus—with the interior of the ship.

“This,” said the professor, directing attention to the lever, “is the lever which controls the valves of the main engines. I have fashioned and arranged it exactly like the corresponding lever in a locomotive. Placed vertically, thus, the engines remain motionless. Thrown forward, thus, the engines will turn ahead. And thrown backward, thus, they will turn astern. That is simple enough. And so is this,” directing attention to a dial on his left hand which stood facing him. The dial had a single hand which was obviously intended to travel over a carefully graduated arc of ninety degrees painted on the dial-face, and which, in addition to the graduations, was marked in the proper positions with the words “Stop;” “Quarter speed;” “Half speed;” “Full speed;” and also with two arrows pointing in opposite directions marked “On” and “Off” respectively. Just beneath the dial was a small wheel with a crank-handle projecting from one of its spokes, and on this crank-handle the professor now laid his hand.

“This,” he said, “regulates the valve which admits vapour into the engine; and the dial-hand shows the extent to which the valve is opened. Turn the wheel in the direction of the arrow marked ‘On’—thus, and you admit vapour into the engine. You will observe that, as I turn the wheel, the hand on the dial travels over the arc and indicates the extent to which the valve is open. There; now it is fully open, and the cylinders are full of vapour.” Then he quickly reversed the wheel and sent the index hand back to “Stop,” keeping a wary eye on his companions as he did so.

“These are dangerous things to meddle with,” he remarked apologetically. “The engines are of one hundred thousand horse-power; and, full as the ship now is of air at the atmospheric pressure, they would drive her irresistibly along the ground and through all obstacles. I must beg that none of you will meddle with the machinery until you are fully acquainted with its tremendous power.”

“What is this pendulum-looking affair, professor?” asked the colonel, pointing to a pendulum the point of which hung in a shallow basin-like depression thickly studded with needle-points which the pendulum just cleared by a hair’s-breadth.

“That,” explained the professor, “is a device for automatically regulating the balance, or ‘trim’ as you call it, of the ship when she is floating in the air. You will readily understand that when freed of air, and thus deprived of weight, as it were, the most trifling matter will suffice to derange her equilibrium; one of us, walking from side to side, or from one end of the deck to the other, would very seriously incline her from the horizontal, and thus alter the direction of her flight, possibly with disastrous results; so I have devised this little apparatus to prevent all that. This pendulum, as you see, is so delicately poised that it will instantly respond to the slightest deviation from a horizontal position, and, swaying over one of these needle-points, will send an electric current to the air-pump, causing it to promptly inject a sufficient quantity of air into the proper chamber to restore the equilibrium. But, as we may desire occasionally to direct the flight of the ship in an upward or a downward direction, I have so arranged matters that the apparatus shall be thrown out of gear when the tiller is sloped in either direction out of the horizontal; and as we shall not require it when the ship is on or below the surface of the ocean, I have here provided a small knob by pressing which inwards the apparatus can also be thrown out of gear until it is again wanted.”

“Excellent!” exclaimed the baronet. “I must again congratulate you, professor, on your truly wonderful forethought. And what is this, pray?”

“That,” said the German, “is the controlling lever of the air-pump. When we want to sink into the depths of the ocean, I thrust this lever over—so; and the pump at once begins to pump air into the air-chambers.”

“Out of them, I suppose you mean,” interrupted the baronet.

“Into them, I mean,” insisted the professor. “You must understand,” he continued, noting the baronet’s look of astonishment, “that air, like everything else, has weight. Feathers are light; but you may pack them so tightly into a receptacle as to make them very weighty; and so is it with air: the more air you force into a receptacle of given size the heavier you make that receptacle; and, provided that both your forcing apparatus and your receptacle are strong enough to endure the tremendous pressure, you may at last force enough air into the receptacle to sink it. And that is precisely what we shall do; we shall force air into our air-chambers until the ship is on the point of sinking, and we shall then close the valves, stop the air-pump, and, opening the sea-cocks of the water-chambers, admit water enough into the ship to send her to the bottom like a stone.”

“Well! you astonish me, I freely admit,” gasped the baronet. “This is the first time I ever heard of a ship being sunk by filling her with air. And then the cool way in which you talk of our ‘sinking to the bottom like a stone!’ I undertook this enterprise because I wanted to experience a new sensation; and it appears to me that there are a good many of them in store for me. However, it is all right; go on with your explanations, my dear sir.”

“These,” said the professor, indicating several levers marked with distinguishing labels ranged all along one side of the pilot-house, “are the levers opening and closing the valves of the air and water chambers, and need no further description. This,” he continued, pointing to a small box with a little knob projecting out of the top of it, “is the apparatus for firing our torpedo shells.”

The baronet glanced mutely round at his companions, and shrugged his shoulders expressively, as who should say, “What next?”

The colonel and the lieutenant nodded approvingly, however, and the latter said:

“That is capital, professor; we ought to have the means of fighting the ship, if necessary; but I was beginning to fear you had overlooked that matter, having seen no provision for anything of the kind. But where is your torpedo port? you omitted to point that out to us when we were under the ship’s bottom.”

“There was nothing to show,” replied the professor; “and I can explain the matter just as well up here as I could have done when we were down below. The conical point which forms the extreme forward end of the ship is solid and movable. Under ordinary circumstances it remains firmly fixed in position; but when it becomes necessary to fire a torpedo-shell the solid point is made to slide in along a grooved tube for a certain distance; the shell is then placed in the tube and fired, when the solid point follows it out and becomes again securely fixed in its former position. In addition to this arrangement, I have two large guns which can be worked through ports in the dining-saloon, and six wonderful magazine rifles invented by a Mr Maxim, a friend of mine. They are perhaps the most wonderful pieces of mechanism in the ship, for when the first shot has been fired they will go on firing themselves at the marvellous rate of six hundred shots per minute so long as you keep them supplied with cartridges. Then I have also provided an ample supply of ordinary guns and rifles, swords, pikes, pistols, and in fact everything we are likely to require for the purposes of sport or defence. These small knobs afford the means of lighting the electric lamp in the lantern on the top of the pilot-house and those in the bow and stern of the ship. And that is all to which I think I need direct your attention here at present. Now, if you please, we will go down and look at the machinery.”

The party accordingly left the pilot-house and directed their steps below by way of the grand staircase. At the bottom of this they found themselves upon a spacious landing magnificently carpeted, and lighted at each end by a circular window in the side of the ship. In front of them as they descended the staircase, and at a distance of about twelve feet from its base, a partition stretched from side to side of the ship, evidently forming one of the saloon bulkheads. Along the face of this a series of Corinthian pilasters, supporting a noble cornice at the junction of wall and ceiling, divided up the partition into a corresponding number of panels, which were enriched with elegant mouldings of fanciful scroll-work and painted in creamy white and gold. In two instances, however, at points which divided the partition into three equal parts, the panels were replaced by handsome massively moulded doors of unpainted aethereum, imparting a very rich and handsome effect. These doors were, however, closed, and the curiosity of the new-comers as to what was to be seen on the other side of them had to remain for a short time ungratified.

Passing round to the back of the grand staircase (in which direction lay the sleeping apartments, bath-rooms, and domestic offices) they found themselves at the head of another staircase much narrower than the former. The one now before them was only about four feet wide, winding cork-screw fashion round the tube which encased the communications between the pilot-house and the engine-room, etcetera, and it was in its turn encased in a cylindrical bulk-head, in which, on their way below, they passed several doors giving access, as the professor explained, to the different decks.

Winding their way downward for a considerable distance they at length reached the foot of the staircase and passed at once through a doorway marked “Engine Room.” The first sensation of those who now visited this apartment for the first time was disappointment. The room, though full of machinery, was small, absurdly so, it seemed to them. So also with the machinery itself. The main engines, consisting of a pair of three-cylinder compound engines, though made throughout of aethereum, and consequently presenting an exceedingly handsome appearance, suggested more the idea of an exquisite model in silver than anything else, the pair occupying very little more space than those of one of the larger Thames river steamers. The impression of diminutiveness and inadequacy of power passed away, however, when the professor informed his companions that the vapour would enter the high-pressure cylinder at the astounding pressure of five thousand pounds to the square inch, and that, though the engines themselves would only make fifty revolutions per minute, the propeller, would be made, by means of speed-multiplying gear, to revolve at the rate of one thousand times per minute in air of ordinary atmospheric pressure.

“But how on earth do you manage to get your vapour up to that tremendous pressure?” asked the colonel.

“Oh!” answered the professor, “that is a mere matter of mixing. According to the proportions in which the crystals and the acid are mingled together, so is the pressure of the vapour.”

“And how do you mingle them together?” asked the lieutenant.

“This,” said the professor, leading them up to a small boiler-like vessel, “is the generator. The crystals are placed in a hopper at one end, and the acid in that small tank at the other, from whence they are respectively conducted along tubes into a small well in the bottom of the generator, where, their proportions being regulated by the size of the tubes through which they pass, they mingle and generate a vapour having a pressure of five thousand pounds on the square inch. See, there is the gauge, and it is now registering a pressure of five thousand pounds.”

“Good Heavens, man!” exclaimed the baronet, starting back; “you don’t mean to say that your generator is now, at this moment, subjected to that enormous pressure of more than two tons per square inch? Supposing it exploded, what would become of us?”

“We should be consumed in an instant by the fierce heat of the liberated vapour,” replied the professor calmly. “But,” he continued, “you need have no apprehension of an explosion. When that generator was being made I had a second one constructed at the same time, precisely similar in every respect, and this second one I tested to destruction, with the satisfactory result that it endured without distress a pressure of thirty-five tons per square inch, showed the first signs of weakness when it became subjected to a pressure of thirty-eight tons, and burst at a joint when under a pressure of forty-three tons per square inch. You may therefore feel quite satisfied that the generator is fully equal to a continuous pressure of at least fifteen tons, instead of the trifle over two which it will have to sustain.”

The remainder of the machinery possessing no very startling or novel features, it was passed by with merely an admiring glance at its exquisite finish; and the quartette, leaving the engine-room, passed round on the other side of the spiral staircase to a room marked “Diving Room.”

Entering this they found themselves in an apartment about twenty feet square, one side of which was wholly occupied by four cupboards labelled respectively “Sir Reginald Elphinstone,” “Colonel Lethbridge,” “Lieutenant Mildmay,” and “Von Schalckenberg.”

“This,” explained the professor, “is the room wherein we shall equip ourselves for our submarine rambles; and here,” opening one of the cupboards, “are the costumes which we shall wear upon such occasions.”

The opened cupboard contained an ordinary indiarubber diving-dress, a sort of double knapsack, a number of heterogeneous articles, and, lastly, a suit of armour.

“Why, professor, what, in the name of all that is comical, is the meaning of this? Are we to walk forth among the fishes equipped like the knights of old?” asked the baronet, pointing to the armour.

“I will explain,” said the professor. “In an ordinary diving-dress a man can only descend to a depth of something like fifteen fathoms. Instances have certainly occurred where this depth has been exceeded, a Liverpool diver named Hooper having descended as far as thirty-four fathoms, if my information is correct; but this was quite an exceptional circumstance; and, as I have said, fifteen fathoms may be taken as the average depth at which a man can move about and work in comfort. The reason for this limit is that beyond it the pressure of the water on the exposed hands is so great as to drive the blood to the head and bring on a fainting fit, if nothing worse; besides which, the volume of air inside the dress necessary to counteract the outside pressure of the water would be so great as to speedily result in suffocation. Now, if our explorations were limited to a depth of fifteen fathoms only they would hardly be worth the undertaking; so I have devised these suits of armour, in which we may safely explore the profoundest depths of the ocean to which the Flying Fish can penetrate. The armour is, as you see, composed of a number of small scales or plates of aethereum, and is so constructed that, whilst it is perfectly flexible, permitting the utmost freedom of movement to the wearer, it is also absolutely water-tight and incompressible, no matter how great the exterior pressure to which it is subjected. The wearer of it will consequently be perfectly protected at all points from the enormous water pressure; and he will be able to breathe in comfort, his air being supplied to him at the normal atmospheric pressure. In equipping himself the diver will first don the india-rubber diving-dress in the usual way. Then he will assume this double-haversack, the larger chamber of which, worn on the back, will contain a supply of air, whilst the smaller of the two, worn on the chest, is charged with a supply of chemicals for the purification of the air after it has been breathed. The two are connected together by a pair of flexible tubes, as you may perceive, and the mere expansion and contraction of the chest, in the act of breathing, sets in motion the simple apparatus which produces the necessary circulation of air between the two chambers. Having secured this haversack in position the diver next dons his body armour, and straps about his waist this belt, with its electric lamp and its dagger. The dagger, as you see, is double-bladed; it has a haft of insulating material, and the blades have connected to them this insulated wire at the point where the blades and the handle unite. You thus have a weapon which, on being plunged into the body of a foe, not only inflicts a severe wound, but also administers an electric shock of such terrible intensity as must result in instant death. The last portion of the armour to be assumed is the helmet, on the top of which is securely fixed an electric lamp, which, with the aid of the one at the belt, will give us, I imagine, as much light as we are likely to need.

“Having donned our armour we pass out of this chamber into the next, which I call the chamber of egress, carefully closing the door behind us.”

The professor, suiting the action to the word, ushered his companions into the next chamber, closing the door behind him, and they found themselves in a small room some ten feet square by seven feet in height. This room, in common with the diving-room, was brilliantly lighted by an electric lamp inclosed in a lantern of abnormally thick glass.

“Arrived here,” continued the professor, “we are all ready to sally forth upon our submarine explorations; all we have to do therefore is, first to fill the chamber with water by means of this valve, then open the trap-door and step forth upon the bottom of the sea.”

As the professor said this he released the fastenings of the door, and it fell down, forming a sort of inclined plane, over which they passed, to find themselves once more on the solid earth, under the ship’s bottom, with the starboard bilge-keel rising like a wall of silver before them. They passed along the lane formed by this keel and the cylindrical bottom of the ship, and then stepped back with one accord to take another glance aloft at the huge bulk of the ship as she towered high above them. They now became conscious of the sounds of vigorous hammering and of men’s voices in the direction of the river gable of the building shed, and on looking in that direction they saw that the contractor, whom the professor had engaged for the purpose, was already at work with his men removing the boarding which had hitherto concealed the Flying Fish from passers-by on the river, thus making a way for the exit of the ship a little later on.

The little party had re-entered the hull by way of the trap-door, and the professor had just made the fastenings once more secure, when, far away aloft from somewhere within the recesses of the ship, they heard the loud, sonorous, sustained note of a gong.

“Ah, that is good!” exclaimed Herr von Schalckenberg, rubbing his hands; “that is the dinner gong; and I am hungry. Come, my friends, to the dining saloon, and let us partake of the first of, I hope, many pleasant meals on board the Flying Fish.”

Chapter Four.

The Novel Beginning of a Singular Voyage.

On reaching the head of the spiral staircase the professor paused for a moment to direct the attention of his companions to a long passage which extended apparently along the middle of the ship to the fore-end of the superstructure. The passage was about five feet wide, and the ceiling was of ground glass, through which a flood of light streamed brilliantly down.

“In that direction,” said the professor, “are to be found, first, the kitchen, pantry, larder, and store-room; then next to them come my laboratory and workshop, with the armoury and magazine on the opposite side; then the quarters of the cook and the valet; next these again are the bath-rooms and lavatories; and finally, at the extreme end of the passage, there are the state-rooms or sleeping apartments, eight in number—four for ourselves and four spare ones.”

George, the valet—whose duties, however, on board the Flying Fish were to be rather those of steward and general handy man—stood during the progress of this brief explanation with his hand on the handle of the saloon door; and now, as the professor turned and nodded, he flung the door wide open and stood aside for the baronet and his friends to enter.

They now found themselves in the dining-saloon, an apartment thirty feet square and about ten feet high to the lower edge of the cornice. The walls, of unpainted aethereum, were broken up into panels by fluted pilasters with richly-moulded capitals, each panel having a frosted border covered with delicate tracery, whilst the central portion of the panel was left plain and polished, serving the purpose of a mirror, in which the room and its multiplied reflections on the opposite wall was again reflected in a long perspective. The floor was covered with a rich Turkey carpet, into which one sank ankle deep; the chairs, sofas, the massive sideboard, the wide table, in fact all the furniture in the room, was constructed of aethereum and modelled after the choicest designs, the upholstery being in rich embossed velvet of a delicate light-blue shade. The table glittered with a brilliant array of plate and glass; and the entire apartment was suffused with rich, soft, rainbow-tinted light, streaming down through the magnificent coved skylight of stained glass, which served instead of ceiling to the saloon.

“Superb!”

“Magnificent!”

“Exquisite!”

Such were the exclamations which burst from the professor’s companions as they paused to look about them and take in all the details of the splendidly furnished and decorated apartment. A dozen eager questions rushed from their lips; but Herr von Schalckenberg was hungry, and the dinner was served, he therefore contented himself with bowing profoundly and pointing to the dinner-table.

“Come, gentlemen,” exclaimed the baronet laughingly, “take your seats, I beg. It is evident that we have quite exhausted both the professor’s patience and his strength, and that we shall get no more information out of him until both have been restored by a good dinner.”

With which remark Sir Reginald set the example by taking his place at the head of the table, as he was entitled to do in virtue of his ownership of the Flying Fish.

The dinner was an admirable one, in all respects quite worthy the exceptional nature of the occasion; and under its genial influence, and that of the choice wines which accompanied it, the conversation soon grew extremely animated. The topic was, of course, the aerial ship and the novel and interesting character of her various equipments. The professor speedily redeemed his afternoon’s promise to the baronet, and at length succeeded in completely convincing that hitherto sceptical individual that, so far from the enormous proportions of the Flying Fish being detrimental to her, they constituted the principal basis upon which he was justified in his anticipations of her success as an aerial ship.

Having at length made this perfectly plain, he was next called upon by Lieutenant Mildmay to explain a certain peculiarity in the binnacle compass, which had attracted that gentleman’s notice and excited his curiosity.

“I observed,” he said, “that the compass-card bore round its outer rim, at every quarter point, a small upright needle. As everything on board here, however apparently insignificant, seems to have its own especial purpose, I should like to know the purpose which those small needles are designed to serve.”

“Ha, ha, my friend! so you noticed them, did you? I quite expected that, as a seaman, you very soon would,” said the professor. “Well, I will tell you what they are. They form part of a little device of mine to render the ship self-steering, or, more correctly, to make the compass itself steer her in any given direction. Having noticed those needles, you doubtless also noticed that across the ‘lubber’s mark’ there was a small slit some six inches long in the side of the compass-box?”

The lieutenant nodded.

“Good!” ejaculated the professor. “Had you looked outside the box you would also have observed two long slender arms pivoted close together, their outer and longer extremities being united, and carrying a small needle which travels, point downwards, along the arc of a circle. Now the action of the instrument is this. Supposing that you wish the ship to travel along, say, a southerly course, you manipulate the helm in the usual manner until the south point of the compass-card swings round to the lubber’s mark. The moment that these two accurately coincide you pull toward you a small lever within easy reach of your hand, and the two arms glide in through the slit in the side of the compass-box, passing one on each side of the needle on the edge of the card, and your apparatus is then connected up ready for action. Now, so long as the ship’s bows remain pointed accurately to the south, the south point on the compass-card continues coincident with the lubber’s mark, and nothing happens. But should the ship deviate ever so slightly from her proper course the heavy, yet sensitive, compass needle at once swings round in sympathy; the small needle on the edge of the card moves the two slender arms which embrace it; the downward-pointing needle at the further extremity of these arms travels along the arc; and electric communication is at once established with the steering machinery, which promptly acts in such a way as to bring back the ship to her original course.”

“Capital! Admirable!” ejaculated Sir Reginald and the lieutenant together, the former continuing:

“Upon my word, professor, you are a veritable wizard—a magician with powers exceeding those of the most potent of your brethren referred to in the ‘Arabian Nights.’”

The professor made a laughing disclaimer. “No, no, my dear sir,” said he, “I am no magician, but only a poor scientist. Nevertheless, the wonders of science far exceed those of the ‘Arabian Nights,’ and will well repay the man who cares to patiently study them.”

Enlivened by conversation of a character so interesting to all present, the sitting was prolonged to quite an inordinate length, and though no one, except perhaps the professor, noted the fact, it was past midnight when the adventurous quartette rose from the table, and taking their wine and cigars with them, moved into the music-room, at the same time dismissing the patient George for the night.

The music-room was a much larger apartment than the dining saloon, being, like the latter, the full width of the superstructure, and measuring forty feet between the fore and the after bulkheads. It was the next room abaft the dining saloon, and was even more elaborately furnished and decorated than the latter. The walls, divided up in the same manner as those of the other apartment, were adorned with choice pictures, and exquisite statues of frosted aethereum were grouped on pedestals at frequent intervals all round the room. A coved and panelled ceiling of decorated aethereum sprang from the upper edge of the richly moulded cornice; and a skylight of magnificent stained glass, somewhat similar to that of the dining saloon, surmounted the whole. A grand piano and a noble chamber organ, both in superbly modelled aethereum cases, occupied opposite sides of the apartment; a very handsome clock, with a set of silvery chimes for the quarters and a deep rich-toned gong for the hours, occupied a conspicuous position on a wall bracket; chairs, couches, and divans of seductive shape and ample capacity were dotted here and there about the rich carpet; and a handsome table occupied the centre of the room, supporting and reflecting in the silvery depths of its undraped top a noble épergne of choice hot-house flowers.

“Why, how is this?” exclaimed the colonel as he sank into the luxurious depths of a most inviting arm-chair; “my watch must be all wrong, and your clock there is also wrong, professor; they both assert that it is half-past twelve o’clock, yet the sun has not yet set,” pointing aloft to the skylight, through which a brilliant flood of sunshine was streaming down into the magnificent apartment.

“The sun has not yet set? Then we will soon make it do so,” laughingly remarked the professor, rising from his seat and approaching one of the walls of the apartment, whilst the baronet and the lieutenant stared in dismay at their own watch-faces. The German began to manipulate a couple of tiny knobs which occupied unobtrusive positions in the base of one of the pilasters, and the sunlight gradually deepened into a rich orange hue, then changed to a soft pearly grey, which gradually deepened into a dim delicious twilight in which little was visible save the pictured glass in the skylight above; then it gradually brightened again, and presently a flood of glorious silvery moonlight streamed down through the skylight and suffused the room. Finally, with an instantaneous change, the brilliant sunlight was again restored. “Another wonder!” exclaimed Sir Reginald. “How do you manage it, professor?”

“Oh! that is a very simple matter,” was the reply; “it is merely a cunning arrangement of variously tinted glass shades interposed between the electric light above the centre of the skylight and the mirrors which reflect the light down through the stained glass into the room. As you probably noticed when on the deck, there are no actual skylights in the usual acceptation of the term; ours are only make-believes; but they struck me as affording an agreeable means of lighting the saloons, so I introduced them.”

In further conversation, diversified by music, the time slipped rapidly away; and at length the clock on the bracket proclaimed that it was two hours after midnight.

As the sonorous strokes of the gong announced the fact, the professor rose to his feet, and in a voice tremulous with sudden nervous excitement, said:

“Gentlemen, the hour for our departure, the hour which is to witness the success or failure of our grand experiment, has arrived. The river and the streets of the great city are by this time nearly or quite deserted; and we may therefore hope that our movements will attract little or no notice. Are you ready?”

“Ready!” ejaculated the baronet; “of course we are, my dear sir. Is not this the moment to which we have all been anxiously looking forward for more than two years? Proceed, professor, we will follow you; and whatever orders you may give us shall be obeyed to the letter.”

“Come, then,” said the professor; and he led the way through the dining saloon and up the grand staircase to the lower compartment of the pilot-house, and thence out on deck.

To their eyes, fresh from the brilliantly lighted saloons, the night appeared intensely dark; but in a minute or two, becoming accustomed to the gloom, they were able to perceive that the ladder had been taken away from the ship’s side, and also that the contractor had completed his task of removing the planking at the river end of the shed, thus clearing a way for the exit of the great ship. They walked to the after extremity of the deck, and from that point were not only able, in the breathless stillness then prevailing, to distinctly hear the gurgle and rush of the river, but also to dimly make out the shining, swirling surface of the water as the flood-tide swept past them.

“The air is absolutely motionless,” said the professor. “No more favourable moment could possibly have been chosen for the difficult task of moving the Flying Fish out of her present cramped quarters, and we will at once avail ourselves of it. Lieutenant, I will ask you to return here presently on the ‘look-out,’ as you sailors term it. Your duty will be to see that when we move out of the shed we do not come into collision with anything. Perhaps you, colonel, will kindly go to the other end the deck, also on the ‘look-out;’ and, as for you, Sir Reginald, I must ask you to stand on the deck just outside the pilothouse, to see that the electric lamp on the top of it does not come into collision with the roof-timbers, and so drag the roof off the shed. But as it is necessary that you should all become acquainted with the working of the ship, you had better be with me in the pilot-house until we are actually ready to move.”

“Now,” continued the professor when the quartette had made their way to the upper floor of the pilot-house, which was moderately illuminated by an electric lamp of small power, “the first thing to be done is to place the tiller of the ship in a horizontal position, and thus bring into action the automatic balancing gear. So! It is done. The next thing is to expel the air from the entire hull of the ship, excepting, of course, the comparatively insignificant portion reserved for habitation, and this I do by injecting vapour into the several compartments. The vapour drives out the air, and then, condensing like steam, creates, if required, a perfect vacuum. This large wheel controls the valve which we now want to open. I turn it this way, so—and now we shall see what will happen.”

Two large dials were attached to the side of the pilothouse, close together; and upon these the professor now intently fixed his gaze. The index-hands of both were seen to be moving. A period of perhaps half a minute elapsed, and then the professor, suddenly shutting off the vapour, went over and closely inspected both dials.

“Good!” he exclaimed, after a single keen glance at each of them. “Gentlemen, let us congratulate each other. Our experiment is a Signal Success!”

“How do you know that, professor? How can you tell?” eagerly asked his companions.

“Look at these two dials; they will tell you,” replied the professor. “This dial,” tapping one with his finger, “indicates the weight of the ship, or the pressure with which she bears upon the ground. This one,” indicating the other, “shows the pressure of air inside the hull of the ship. The first, as you see, shows that the ship is now pressing upon the ground with a force of less than a single ton—in other words, she now weighs less than one ton. The air-gauge shows that there is still an air pressure of six pounds per square inch inside the hull, and we therefore have, as I expected we should, a large margin of buoyancy. Now, lieutenant, do me the favour to turn on the vapour once more, very cautiously. Steady! Stop! There, Sir Reginald, the index has reached zero, and your ship is now as nearly as possible without weight; and if a man were now underneath her, he might, notwithstanding her gigantic proportions, easily raise her upon his shoulders. Now comes the delicate part of our operation. To your stations on the deck quickly, gentlemen, if you please.”

The professor’s companions, just a trifle excited, perhaps, hurried away to their posts, and the scientist was left alone. The circular windows in the sides of the pilothouse were all left open, and in through them presently floated the voice of the lieutenant shouting:

“All ready abaft, professor.”

“All ready at this end,” replied the colonel.

The professor reversed the engines, turned on the vapour very cautiously indeed, and simultaneously, with the engines below only just barely moving, the huge propeller began to whirl round at a speed of some sixty revolutions a minute.

A breathless pause of perhaps two seconds followed, and then the professor, his forehead damp with nervous perspiration, heard:

“Hurrah! She’s away!” from the lieutenant.

“She moves; she moves!” from the colonel.

And, “By Jove, she is actually moving!” from the baronet.

Slowly but surely the Flying Fish backed out of the building-shed, until nearly half her immense length projected beyond the walls. Then the voice of the baronet was heard exclaiming:

“Ho! stop her! The electric lamp will not clear the roof, I am afraid. Can you give us a little light on the subject, professor?”

By way of reply the professor pressed a knob, and the lamp itself flashed its dazzling light upon the scene, when it became apparent that the ship had gradually risen from the ground, bringing the top of her lamp just above the level of the last tie-rod of the roof.

“Can you drop her a little? Six inches will do it,” said the baronet.

The professor opened the air-valve and the ship at once began to settle down.

“So! That will do; all clear. You may go astern again now as fast as you please,” said the baronet.

Once more the great propeller began to revolve, and presently the baronet, from his position under the foremost end of the pilot-house, remarked:

“Now she is all clear, professor; the whole of the pilothouse is outside the shed. A bold dash astern now and we shall be clear fore and aft in another moment.”

The professor extinguished the electric lamp; gave the wheel connected with the vapour-valve another turn; the engines increased their speed; and the great ship at once shot rapidly out over the stream and clear of everything. Then the professor stopped the engines, turned a thin stream of vapour into the air chambers, and the huge fabric began to slowly rise perpendicularly in the air. Herr von Schalckenberg waited until he saw that they were fairly above the level of the roofs on both sides of the river; then he left the pilot-house and, joining the baronet on the deck outside, said, in a voice of undisguised exultation:

“Well, Sir Reginald, what think you now of the Flying Fish?”

“I think her, professor, a wonderful creation of a still more wonderful man. I see that we are steadily rising in the air, as you assured us would be the case, but I cannot yet fully realise the fact; I feel like a man in a dream; you must give me time to become familiar with this new marvel—this new triumph of science. But there can no longer be any doubt as to the success of your labours; and I accordingly offer you my most hearty thanks and congratulations.”

The colonel and the lieutenant also hastened to offer theirs, and then the whole party sauntered to the side, and, leaning upon the guard-rail which took the place of bulwarks, stood gazing upon the scene below. Not that there was very much to see; the sky was obscured by a thin almost motionless canopy of cloud, and the moon, in her last quarter, had not yet risen; the darkness was therefore profound. At the same time it was novel and interesting to watch how, as the huge ship rose steadily higher in the air, the long lines of lighted gas-lamps in street after street became visible, until gradually the whole of the great city lay spread out below them like a map, with the thoroughfares indicated by faint twinkling lines of fire. And, as they continued to rise, the various disjointed sounds which, even at that early hour, pervaded the city, began to reach their ears: the rumbling of a wagon or the rattle of a cab over the stone-paved streets, the barking of a dog, the crow of some unnaturally wakeful rooster, the clank of shunting trucks at one or another of the many goods stations dotted here and there all over the metropolis, the distant whistle and rattle of a train speeding along in the open country beyond; all floated up to them with almost startling distinctness at first, then fainter and fainter, until at length they died completely away as the Flying Fish gradually attained a higher altitude. Then they entered the bank of cloud which overspread the city, and the air, which had hitherto been warm, became suddenly chill and damp.

“Now, my friends,” said the professor, “there will be little or nothing more to see until we again descend; I therefore propose that we return to the pilot-house, shut ourselves in, and at once test the soaring powers of the ship by rising to the highest attainable altitude.”

“Agreed!” said the baronet. “But why shut ourselves in?”

“Because,” answered the professor, “it will not only grow rapidly colder as we rise, but, if we remain outside, we shall also find it increasingly difficult to breathe as we reach the more rarefied air; whereas, by remaining inside, we shall be sheltered from the cold and shall be able to breathe the denser air which we shall take up with us.”

They accordingly entered the pilot-house, shutting the door after them, and closing all the windows; then the professor turned a full jet of vapour into the air-chambers for a moment, producing a perfect vacuum therein, and the ship at once began to mount into the ether with greatly accelerated speed, as they could easily see by watching the barometer, the bulb of which, completely protected, was situate outside the walls of the pilot-house.

It was no very easy matter for cold to penetrate through the thin yet obdurate walls of the pilot-house; but by the time that the barometer had fallen to fifteen inches the voyagers experienced a distinct sensation of chilliness, whilst the windows of the pilot-house were thickly coated with a delicate frost tracery. Still the barometer continued to fall steadily, though not so rapidly as at first, indicating that the ship was still soaring upward; and with every inch fall of the mercury the professor became an increasingly interesting study of mingled delight and anxiety. At length the mercury, still falling, registered a height of eleven inches only, and the professor gave vent to a great sigh of relief. And when it further dropped to ten inches he could no longer contain himself.

“Gentlemen,” he exclaimed, “rejoice with me. The conquest of the mountains is ours. We are now as nearly as possible on a level with the topmost peak of Everest, the most lofty projection on the earth’s surface; and in due time I hope we shall have the unique felicity of planting our feet on that as yet untrodden spot, and of leaving a record to that effect behind us.”

At length the mercury fell to a little below eight inches, and there it stopped; the limit of the Flying Fish’s buoyancy was reached.

The professor stood intently regarding the barometer tube for some time; then he turned and said to his companions:

“Gentlemen, behold the indisputably lowest reading of the barometer which man has ever witnessed, and which indicates that we are at this moment farther from our mother earth than mortal has ever journeyed before. Humboldt and Bonpland ascended Chimborazo to a height of eighteen thousand five hundred and seventy-six feet. Gay-Lussac rose in his balloon to the much higher elevation of twenty-three thousand feet, only to be eclipsed by your own countryman, Green, who soared to the astounding height of twenty-seven thousand six hundred feet. But it was left for us, my friends, to achieve the crowning feat of aeronautical science, by attaining to the extraordinary altitude of thirty-four thousand six hundred feet, or more than six and a half miles of perpendicular elevation above the sea-level. Now, Sir Reginald, what think you of your latest acquisition, the Flying Fish?”

“I think her by far the most wonderful creation of which I have ever heard or read, and,” (with a bow to the professor) “every way worthy of the truly remarkable man to whom she owes her existence. If her power to penetrate the hitherto unexplored depths of the ocean is at all commensurate with her ability to reach the higher regions of the air, I foresee that our voyage is likely to be fruitful in startling incident and in the discovery of many hitherto unsuspected secrets of nature. Now, what do you propose that we shall next do, professor?”

“I propose,” said von Schalckenberg, “that, having tested the Flying Fish’s capabilities of merely rising into the air, we should now ascertain what she can do in the way of navigating the atmosphere; after which we will try her powers as a submarine ship. The lowest depression in the English Channel is to be found in a submarine valley called the ‘Hurd Deep;’ it is situate about six miles north of the ‘Casquets,’ and lies ninety-four fathoms (or five hundred and sixty-four feet) below the surface of the water. I propose (subject to your approval) to make for this spot and there sink to the bottom, taking advantage of our presence there to make a first trial of our diving armour. Does this meet with your approval?”

The baronet and his companions thought it a very capital idea, and the professor took immediate steps for carrying it out. Opening a case he produced therefrom a chart of the English Channel, and, directing his companions’ attention to the spot which he proposed to visit, requested Lieutenant Mildmay to lay off the course and measure the distance in a straight line. The latter was found to be about one hundred and fifty miles.

“Which distance,” remarked the professor, “I expect we shall accomplish, in the present calm state of the atmosphere, in about an hour and a quarter. This high rate of speed will necessitate our remaining in the pilothouse; but it will, perhaps, be worth while to put up with that temporary inconvenience on the present occasion, since we have so exceptionally favourable an opportunity of testing the actual speed of the ship through the air. If, however, you prefer to be on deck in the open air, we can of course moderate our speed sufficiently to render such a mode of travelling pleasant.”

It was unanimously decided, however, to remain inside and give the speed of the ship a fair trial. The professor accordingly turned the vapour into the engines, slowly at first, but in gradually increasing volume, until they were revolving at full speed, and the ship’s head was pointed in the proper direction, the automatic steering gear being at the same time thrown into action to test its capabilities. This done the professor opened the main air-valve, gradually admitting a certain quantity of air into the ship’s interior, and she at once began to drop once more earthward.

“We will descend to within about a thousand feet of the sea level,” said the professor. “This will restore us to a more genial temperature, will give the propeller a denser atmosphere in which to work, and will also enable us to see somewhat of the country over which we are flying; whilst our elevation will be ample to take us clear of everything. Leith Hill, nine hundred and sixty-seven feet in height, is the greatest elevation at all near our path; but we shall pass some three miles or so to the westward of it, if the air remains calm; and Saint Catherine’s Point, over which we shall pass, is only seven hundred and seventy-five feet high. So that we have nothing to fear.”

In a few minutes the Flying Fish had dropped to within the proposed distance of the earth; and, on clearing the windows of the accumulated frost, it was discovered that the moon (then in her third quarter) had risen and was suffusing the earth with her feeble ghostly light, which, slight as it was, enabled the voyagers to perceive that they were skimming through the air at a tremendous speed. The engines, though working at their full power, were perfectly noiseless; and the propeller, though revolving at a rate of fully one thousand revolutions per minute, caused not the slightest perceptible vibration in the hull of the ship. A loud humming sound, however, proceeded from it, audible even above the rush of the air against the sides of the pilot-house.

Leith Hill was soon passed, the waters of the Channel—distinguished in the faint light only by a thin tremulous line of glimmering silver under the crescent moon—were sighted, and, almost before they had time to realise the fact, they had skimmed over the anchorage at Spithead, across the Isle of Wight, and were floating above the waters of the Channel. By this time the eastern sky had begun to pale perceptibly before the coming dawn; the lights of Saint Catherine behind them and the Casquets ahead gleamed with steadily diminishing power in the gathering daylight; the half-dozen or so of ships and steamers in sight, one after the other extinguished their signal lamps; and, just as they reached their destination and settled lightly as a snow-flake upon the glassy surface of the water, up rose the glorious sun, flashing his brilliant beams over land and sea, and awakening all nature into light and life once more.

As the Flying Fish alighted on the surface of the water, the professor pulled out his watch and remarked, with evident satisfaction:

“One hundred and fifty miles in just one hour and a quarter! That is good travelling, and proves the speed of our ship to be exactly what I estimated it would be. We will now set the force-pump to work; and I hope, that by the time we are ready to descend, that brilliant sun will have enshrouded our movements in a concealing mist. We are surrounded by fishing-boats, as you see, and I have no doubt that we have also been observed by the light-keepers on the Casquets. It will never do to disappear before so many curious eyes; they would be filled with horror at the supposed catastrophe. In the meantime we may as well go out on deck to enjoy the fresh morning air. As for me, I propose to indulge in the luxury of a swim.”

The main engines had, in the meantime, been stopped, and the force-pump put slowly in motion, so that the submersion of the hull might be sufficiently gradual to escape notice.

Five minutes later the professor and his three companions were gambolling round the ship like so many porpoises—or dolphins, if they would prefer the latter metaphor—enjoying to the full the invigorating luxury of their bath in the cool, pure sea-water.

By the time that they were on board again and dressed, the intelligent George had arranged for them on deck a nice little light breakfast of chocolate, biscuits, and fruit, for which their swim had given them an unbounded relish. The meal was partaken of at leisure, and followed by a cigar, over which they dawdled so long that the Flying Fish was submerged to the deck before the last stump had been reluctantly thrown away. The mist which the professor had prognosticated having, meanwhile, gathered sufficiently to cloak their movements, a cast of the lead was taken and the ship was found to be in ninety fathoms of water. The professor, for reasons of his own, deemed this sufficiently near the deepest point to justify an immediate descent. They accordingly entered the pilot-house forthwith, closing the door securely after them—the air-pump was stopped, the sea-cock communicating with the water-chambers was opened, and the Flying Fish, with an easy imperceptible motion, sank gently beneath the placid waters, to rest, a minute or two later, on a bed of gravel at the bottom of the Channel.

“Now,” said the professor, looking at his watch when the ship had fairly settled into her strange berth, and had been securely anchored there, “it is just eight o’clock. We are all somewhat fatigued, and our bath and breakfast have prepared us nicely to enjoy a few hours’ repose. I therefore propose, gentlemen, that we retire to our sleeping apartments until two o’clock p.m. George shall call us at that hour and have a bit of luncheon ready for us, after which we shall have ample time to test our diving apparatus before dinner.”

This proposal met with a very cordial reception, and was duly carried out, with the result that, half an hour later, the four adventurous voyagers were sleeping as calmly in their novel resting-place as though they had been accustomed from their earliest infancy to take their repose at the bottom of the sea.

Chapter Five.

A Submarine Excursion.

At the appointed hour the imperturbable George, who never could be betrayed into the slightest exhibition of astonishment at finding himself in any extraordinary situation which he might happen to be sharing with his somewhat eccentric master, duly aroused the four sleepers, and when they were ready, laid luncheon before them with the same indomitable sangfroid which he would have exhibited had the transaction been conducted on terra firma.

The meal over, the professor led the way below to the diving chamber, where the adventurous four carefully donned their diving dresses, inclusive of the armour which Sir Reginald felt so strongly disposed to ridicule. As this was the first occasion of inducting themselves into their novel costume, they were rather a long time about it; but when once they were fairly encased, they were fain to admit that, strange as might be their appearance, they felt exceedingly comfortable. The professor was the last to assume the dress, having busied himself in the first instance in assisting the others; but at length all was ready, and they filed into the exit chamber, carefully closing the door behind them. This chamber was illuminated by an electric lamp, the light of which clearly revealed the whereabouts of the sea-cock, and of the fastenings to the trap-door, all of which the professor pointed out to his companions, at the same time explaining the method of working them. The sea-cock was then opened, and the chamber began to slowly fill with water.

“Now,” explained the professor, “please listen to me. If now, or at any future time, either of you should experience the slightest sensation of discomfort as the water rises round you, all you have to do is simply to open this air-cock, which communicates with the air-chambers, and the condensed air will at once rush in and expel the water again; then close the sea and air cocks; open this relief valve, which will allow the condensed air to disperse itself in the habitable portions of the hull, and you can at once open the door of communication to the diving chamber, and disencumber yourself of your dress, remembering always to close the door behind you. Now, do either of you feel at all uncomfortable?”

The exit chamber was by this time full of water, and its occupants were, therefore, completely submerged, and subject to the same pressure of water as they would be outside, but the armour proved fully equal to its work in every respect, and its wearers were able to move with just as much freedom and ease as if they had been on dry land. They accordingly replied to the professor’s inquiry with a brisk negative.

“And can you hear distinctly what I say?” continued the professor.

They replied that they could hear every word perfectly, only realising when the question was asked that they were completely sheathed in metal from head to foot, and that, consequently, the fact of their being able to hear at all was somewhat singular.

“That is all right,” exclaimed the professor. “I thought it would be convenient if we could communicate freely with each other under water, so I introduced a couple of small microphones into each helmet, hoping they would answer the purpose. Mine are simply perfect, but I was anxious to know if yours were also. Now, if you are quite ready I will open the door.”

The next moment the trap-door fell open, and a great black aperture yawned before them.

“Light both your lamps,” exclaimed the professor, “and pick your footsteps. Remember, you are about to tread on strange ground.”

The professor led the way, his armour-clad figure looming up black and gigantic against the two overlapping discs of illuminated water before him, and the other three followed closely in his footsteps. On emerging from the trap-door they turned sharp to the left, and made their way toward the bow along the tunnel-like passage between the ship’s bottom and the starboard bilge keel. This was soon traversed, and they then found themselves on a tolerably firm, level, gravelly bottom. Emerging from underneath the ship’s bottom, they now extinguished their lamps for a moment by way of experiment, and found that so clear was the water that even at the great depth of ninety fathoms it was not absolutely dark, a sombre greenish blue twilight prevailing in which the hull of the ship towered above them vast and shadowy, yet with tolerable distinctness. This twilight, however, was strongly illuminated at both ends of the ship by the powerful electric lamps at the bow and stern, all of which the professor had taken the precaution to light before descending to the diving chamber.

“Those are our beacons,” said the professor, pointing to these lamps, “and we must be exceedingly careful not to stray beyond the reach of their rays, otherwise we might experience great difficulty in finding our way back to the ship. Are you all pretty comfortable in this great depth of water? We are now five hundred and forty feet beneath the surface of the sea, or three hundred and thirty-six feet deeper than man has ever reached before. Why, if we were to accomplish nothing more than this, we have already achieved a great triumph! Now, let us make our way toward the deepest spot in this submarine valley; I have an idea that we shall see something curious when we reach it. This way, gentlemen; our course is about due west, and we cannot well lose our way if we descend the slope which seems to commence yonder.”

The little party pressed forward, experiencing no inconvenience or difficulty whatever, save that of making their way through water of such a density as that which enveloped them, and soon reached the edge of a rather steep declivity, evidently leading down to the lowest part of the depression. Before venturing down this declivity they paused to glance backward, and saw that, though the ship herself had become invisible in the sombre twilight, all the electric lights were distinctly visible, the very powerful one on the top of the pilot-house especially gleaming like the illuminated lantern of a lighthouse. So far, therefore, all was well; they were still within range of the lights, and they at once turned and plunged fearlessly into the depression. They had not far to go, the sides of the depression being steep, and in about two minutes they found themselves at the bottom, and standing before an immense confused heap of wreckage of almost every imaginable description. Shattered stumps of spars, waterlogged and weighed down with a thick incrustation of barnacles, the accumulated growth of years of immersion; part of the hull of a ship, so overgrown with “sea grass” as to be distinguishable as such only from the fact that the channels and channel irons with their dead-eyes, and even the frayed ends of the shroud lanyards still remained attached; a twisted and tangled-up mass of iron rods which looked as though it might at some distant period have been the paddle-wheel of a steamer, and near it the evident remains of a boiler and some machinery; the beam of a trawl-net, and bales, boxes, packing-cases, barrels, and, in short, every conceivable description of covering in which ships’ cargoes are usually stowed were mixed up in inextricable confusion with heaps of coal, large stones, and other anomalous substances.

“Just as I anticipated,” exclaimed the professor, pointing to the heap and addressing his companions. “And this, I expect, is the sort of thing which we shall see in every depression of the ocean’s bed which we may visit. All these matters have been swept hither and thither over the ground by the action of the tidal and other currents, until they have happened to drift over this spot, and here they have finally settled owing to the inability of the currents to move them up the steep sides of the depression. Let us walk round the heap; we may see something of interest before we have completed the circuit.”

And so they did, though the interest was hardly the kind of which the professor had been thinking when he spoke. For, whilst standing on the opposite side of the heap, contemplating the remains of an ancient and grass-grown wreck, they were startled by the appearance of a sharp snake-like head with a pair of fierce gleaming eyes which was suddenly protruded from a gap in the ship’s side, and in another moment the creature—a conger-eel of truly gigantic proportions—emerged from its hiding-place, and, possibly attracted by the brilliancy of the electric lights which the party carried, swam boldly toward them.

“What a horrible monster!” ejaculated the colonel, at the same moment that Lieutenant Mildmay, struck with the savage look of the creature, exclaimed:

“Why, I believe the brute means to attack us!”

“And, by Jove, here come some more of them!” exclaimed the baronet, pointing to the hole from which the creature had emerged.

“Draw your daggers, gentlemen!” shouted the professor. “And be not dismayed; they and our armour are quite sufficient for our protection.”

It was perhaps just as well that the professor had sufficient presence of mind at that moment to say what he did; for his companions, though their courage had been proved a thousand times before, were now in a new and strange element to which they had scarcely had time to accustom themselves; and, moreover, the aspect of the fierce fish as they rushed forward with open jaws, disclosing their formidable teeth, was sufficiently weird and uncanny to at least momentarily dismay the stoutest heart.

Lieutenant Mildmay’s anticipation as to the intentions of the fish proved quite correct. On they came, some thirty or forty in number; and before the attacked could quite recover from their confusion they found themselves fairly in the clutches of the snake-like creatures. The attack was made with the utmost determination and ferocity, the eels twining themselves so powerfully about the bodies of their foes that it was almost impossible for the latter to move hand or foot; whilst the sharp teeth rasped strongly but ineffectually against the scales of the aethereum armour. The fight, however, though fiercely waged on the part of the assailants, was soon over, a single stroke of the keen double-edged dagger—as soon as the assailed could get their hands free—proving sufficient to instantly destroy the individual fish upon which it happened to fall. But so fierce were the eels that the conflict ended only with the slaughter of the last of them. The fish were of truly enormous size, two or three specimens measuring, as nearly as could be estimated, fully eighteen feet in length, whilst none were less than ten feet long. The tour of exploration was then completed without further adventure; the powerful electric lights of the ship enabled them to find her without difficulty the moment that they climbed up out of the depression; and they made good their return with no worse result than that of excessive fatigue due to their unwonted efforts in forcing their way through so dense a medium as water of ninety fathoms depth.

So novel an experience as theirs had that day been naturally furnished the chief topic of conversation at the dinner-table; the professor especially entertaining his companions with many interesting anecdotes of strange adventures which had happened to, and curious sights witnessed by divers at various times and places. At length, during a lull in the conversation, he said:

“There still remain two trials to which the Flying Fish must be subjected before we can say that we are fully acquainted with her powers, namely, a trial of her speed through the water when fully submerged; and a trial of her behaviour as an ordinary ocean-going ship. And these trials, I think, should—if you approve, Sir Reginald—be carried out before we do anything else.”

The baronet gave his willing assent to the professor’s proposal; and it was finally arranged that the trials, or, at all events, one of them, should take place on the morrow.

It having been arranged that early rising should be the order of the day throughout the voyage, they were aroused at seven o’clock on the following morning, and sat down to breakfast at eight prompt. By nine o’clock the meal was over, and the party, pipe or cigar in mouth, mustered in the pilot-house. Here the first thing the professor did was to produce a chart, to which, on spreading it open on the table, he called Lieutenant Mildmay’s attention, saying:

“Being a seaman by profession, you are undoubtedly the most skilful navigator of the party; and I therefore propose—with Sir Reginald’s full approval, which I have already obtained—to confide the navigation of the Flying Fish to you. Now this,”—making a pencil mark on the chart—“is our present position; and this,”—pointing to another pencil mark off Cape Finisterre, which presented the appearance of having been very carefully laid down—“is the point to which I wish you to navigate us in the first instance.”

“Very good,” said Mildmay. “I undertake the charge with pleasure. Only I must stipulate, that when making long passages you will rise to the surface occasionally, in order that I may be enabled to take the observations necessary to verify our position.”

“Of course, of course,” answered the professor. “Now, are we all ready to start?”

An answer in the affirmative was given; and von Schalckenberg thereupon moved the lever which actuated the simple machinery controlling the four anchors in the bilge keels. The ship being thus released from the ground, he next opened the cocks connecting the air and water chambers; a stream of compressed air at once rushed into the latter, forcing out a certain quantity of water, and the ship began to rise.

“We will so adjust our position that the top of the lantern surmounting the pilot-house shall be submerged to a depth of six fathoms; at which depth we shall not only be enabled to pass clear of all ships, but shall also, if the water be clear, be enabled to see pretty well what is before and above us,” said the professor, fixing his eyes upon a gauge before him. “There,” he continued, closing the air-cocks as the index pointed to six fathoms, “now we shall do very well. Are you ready to set the course, Mildmay?”

“A run of six hundred and fifty miles, upon a west-south-west course, will take us to about the spot you have indicated,” answered Mildmay.

“Which is a trifle less than five and a half hours’ run, if our speed under water is equal to what it was through the air. But I anticipate that we shall do better than that; the resistance of water is considerably greater than that of air to the vessel’s passage through it, I admit; but I anticipate that this will be more than counterbalanced by the greater power of the propeller in the denser fluid. We shall soon see.”

So saying, the professor set the engines in motion, and the Flying Fish began to glide smoothly yet soon with marvellous rapidity through the water.

“My surmise was correct, you see,” said the professor some ten minutes afterwards, as he pointed to another gauge on the wall of the pilot-house. “We are now running steadily at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles per hour; and we have already travelled twelve miles from our starting-point. The gauge is, as you see, self-registering, and shows on that piece of paper the exact distance run through or along the surface of the water (but not through the air) between any two given points. When the ship’s course is altered, or you desire for any other reason to commence the register afresh, all you have to do is, press that ivory knob, and the instrument will draw a line across the paper and, at the same moment, spring back to zero.”

The water, at the depth at which they were travelling, proved to be almost as transparent as crystal, of a dark olive-green tint beneath them, merging by imperceptible gradations to a faint greenish-blue above; the surface being discernible by the shifting lace work of gold incessantly playing over it where the sun’s beams caught the ridges of the faint rippling wavelets raised by the languid summer breeze. Even small objects, such as medusae, and fragments of weed floating in mid-sea, were distinguishable at a considerable distance; and fishing-boats could be clearly made out at the distance of a mile. A very novel and curious effect was witnessed when objects floating on the surface (such as ships, fishing-boats, or aquatic birds) came into view, the submerged portions of them being as clearly defined as though they were floating in air, whilst the parts above the surface were wavering and indistinct. A flock of diving gulls, for instance, which they passed at no great distance, presented the curious spectacle of little more than dark dots furnished with pairs of quickly-moving webbed feet whilst they floated on the placid surface; but directly a bird dived its whole body became distinctly visible, with a long stream of air-bubbles trailing behind it.

At length it became apparent that they were approaching a large fleet of ships making their way up channel.

A smile passed over the professor’s features as he gazed out at them, and turning to his companions he remarked:

“I feel mischievously inclined this morning. I think we will give the crews of those ships a little surprise, and furnish them with a new topic for conversation.”

“Ah, indeed!” said the baronet. “How do you propose to do it?”

“By rising to the surface in the midst of the fleet. Our engine power is quite sufficient, I believe, to send us to the surface or to plunge us several fathoms deeper than we now are without our interfering with the water chambers or altering in any way the weight of the ship. There is a nice clear space just ahead, with ample room in which to show ourselves and to make a downward plunge again beneath that large ship, the barnacle-covered bottom of which seems to tell of a long voyage through tropic seas. Now take up your stations of observation, gentlemen, and note the consternation which our unexpected appearance will produce.”

The professor’s companions placed themselves at the windows of the pilot-house, and Herr von Schalckenberg at the same moment suddenly pressed the end of the tiller vertically downward. Obedient to the helm, the Flying Fish’s sharp snout immediately swerved upward, and with a tremendous swirl and commotion of the water the great ship rushed to the surface, throwing half her length out of the sea, only to disappear again the next moment with a graceful plunging motion and a still greater disturbance of the water by her immense rapidly revolving propeller.

A single swift glance around them was all that the travellers were able to obtain of the state of affairs above water; but that sufficed to show them that their appearance, sudden though it was, had attracted a considerable amount of notice. They saw that the Flying Fish had broken water in the very centre of a large fleet of ships, most of which were making their way up channel under every stitch of canvas they could spread before a very light westerly air. Many of these ships were evidently, from their weather-beaten appearance, traders from far-distant foreign ports; and their crews, taking advantage of the beautifully fine weather and smooth water, were either occupied on stages slung over the sides in giving the hulls a touch of fresh paint to brighten up their appearance previous to going into port, or aloft, scraping, painting, and varnishing the spars, or tarring down the rigging, with a similar object. All eyes seemed to be directed toward the apparition which had made its sudden appearance in their midst; and the shouts of astonishment and dismay evoked by that sudden appearance were distinctly audible to the occupants of the Flying Fish’s pilot-house. The hurried way in which the crew of the large ship immediately ahead of them sprang to their feet and scrambled in over the bulwarks from the stages on which they were working, or slid down the freshly-tarred backstays to the deck as they saw the immense object rushing directly toward them, was particularly amusing, and drew a hearty laugh from the beholders on board the Flying Fish. Another moment, and the cause of all this commotion was plunging fathoms deep beneath the keel of the last-mentioned ship, to reappear on the surface a minute later, beyond the farthest outskirts of the fleet. A judicious manipulation of the helm kept the Flying Fish this time on the surface for perhaps a quarter of a minute, just long enough, in fact, to satisfy the wondering beholders that their eyes had not deceived them, when she once more disappeared, this time finally, from the view of the fleet.

“That escapade of ours will produce a tremendously sensational paragraph for the newspapers, and we must keep a look-out for it,” said the colonel. “I wonder what they will make of it!”

Sure enough, the paragraph appeared in due course, to the following effect, as copied from a cutting which is still preserved in the professor’s scrap-book:—

Appearance Of A Gigantic Sea Monster In The English Channel.

Extraordinary Story.

“On Wednesday morning last, the 27th instant, a fleet of some hundred and fifty sail of vessels was off the Start and about in mid-channel, making its way to the eastward before a light westerly air, the weather at the time being fine, the water smooth, and the atmosphere perfectly clear. A portion of the crews belonging to several of the craft in question were at work in the rigging when their attention was attracted by a curious commotion which suddenly appeared on the surface of the water at a considerable distance to the eastward. The disturbance was in the form of a long wedge-like ripple, the appearance being very pronounced and distinct at its forward or pointed extremity, but less so at its rear end, where it spread widely out and became gradually merged and lost in the gentle ripple caused by the wind. It was travelling directly towards the fleet at a speed far exceeding that of the fastest express train, and it bore all the appearance of being the ‘wake’ of some enormous body moving at no great distance beneath the surface. While the seamen were still watching it in wonder and perplexity, mingled with no little alarm, it had reached the fleet, the rippling swell spreading out on each side and curling over into a breaker which dashed against the sides of the several vessels, causing the smaller craft to rock and toss perceptibly. It clove its irresistible way to the very centre of the fleet, where there happened to be a large open space of water, and here there suddenly shot into view above the surface a gigantic fish, the length of which is variously estimated by those who saw it as from four hundred to eight hundred feet, with a girth of between one and two hundred feet. The creature, apparently startled at finding itself in the midst of so many vessels, immediately dived below the surface again, passing directly beneath the keel of the barque Olivia, of London, from Bangkok, William Rogers master. The crew of this ship had a most distinct view of the monster, as it broke water at not more than half a cable’s length (or some three hundred feet) from them, and immediately afterwards shaved the keel of the ship so closely as almost to touch it. Captain Rogers, who was on deck at the time, describes the creature, and his description tallies perfectly with that of the other witnesses, as being somewhat like a saw-fish, without the saw, in general shape, but with a proportionately longer and more sharply pointed head, in which four eyes, two in the upper and two in the lower part of the head, were distinctly seen. The body was a beautiful silvery white, glistening in the sun like polished metal. On the back of the immense fish was a curious flat protuberance, above which rose another in the form of a dome-shaped hump, with, if we may venture to repeat so incredible a story, eyes all round it, and surmounted by an object having a very marked resemblance to a silver crown. This extraordinary creature had no fins so far as could be seen, but propelled itself solely by its tail, which it moved with such wonderful rapidity as rendered it utterly impossible to detect the shape of it. The creature was evidently an air-breather, for it had no sooner completely cleared the fleet, which it did in about one minute, the distance travelled in that time being fully three miles, than it rose once more to the surface, remaining there for perhaps half a minute, evidently for the purpose of getting a fresh supply of air, when it again dived and was seen no more.”

Chapter Six.

In Search of a Submerged Wreck.

To return to the Flying Fish. It was exactly two o’clock p.m. when Lieutenant Mildmay announced that, according to his “dead reckoning,” they were now on or very near the spot indicated on the chart by the professor, and that, if there was no objection, he should like to rise to the surface in order to obtain the astronomical observations necessary to verify the ship’s position. The engines were accordingly stopped, and the water being ejected from the water chambers, the travellers once more found themselves above water, advantage being taken of the opportunity to throw open the door of the pilot-house and step out on deck.

The first discovery made by them was that a moderate breeze was blowing from the westward, with a corresponding amount of sea and a very long heavy swell, which, however, to their great gratification, affected the Flying Fish only to a very trifling extent. When end-on to the sea she pitched a little, it is true, but when broadside-on she simply rose and fell with the run of the sea, being as completely free from rolling motion as though she had still been on the stocks.

Their next discovery was that a large steamer was in sight, some seven miles distant; and, whilst they stood watching the way in which the craft plunged along over the heavy swell, pitching “bows under” occasionally, she suddenly altered her course and steered direct toward them, her crew having apparently only that moment sighted the Flying Fish, and being evidently in great perplexity as to what she could possibly be.

“Be as quick as you can with your observations, Mildmay, and let us get under water again,” said the baronet. “We shall perhaps be expected to explain who and what we are if that steamer gets within hail of us, and I am not particularly anxious to do that.”

The sights were taken, and, whilst the steamer was yet some five miles distant, the Flying Fish quietly sank once more beneath the waves; doubtless to the intense astonishment of those who were making such haste to get alongside her.

Rapidly, yet steadily, and with a perfectly level deck, the craft sank lower and lower, the light diminishing momentarily, until it at length vanished altogether, and the darkness became so intense that it was impossible for the occupants of the pilot-house to discern each other; whilst the silence which prevailed around them was first oppressive and then awe-inspiring in its intensity.

Suddenly a light shuffling sound arose within the pilot-house, and in another moment the inky depths through which they were descending became brilliantly illuminated with a clear white penetrating light, in which every detail of the ship’s hull fore and aft stood out distinctly visible, whilst here and there, above, below, and on either side of them, a momentary gleam revealed the presence of some startled and hastily retreating denizen of the deep. The professor had lighted up the electric lanterns, the especial purpose of which was to illuminate the sea around the ship, leaving the interior of the pilot-house still in darkness, in order that its occupants might enjoy, to the fullest extent, the novelty of the scene thus suddenly revealed to them, and also that, on reaching the bottom, they might the better be able to distinguish external objects.

Lower and lower sank the Flying Fish, and at length, after what seemed to the travellers an almost interminable descent, she reached the bottom.

“Now, gentlemen,” exclaimed the professor, with some slight evidences of excitement in the tones of his voice, “look around you, and see if you can discover anything unusual in our neighbourhood.”

The persons addressed did as they were requested, the professor himself also peering eagerly out of each of the pilot-house windows in turn, but without result; the electric lamps, though they brilliantly illuminated the scene on all sides for fully fifty yards, and rendered objects distinguishable for at least three times that distance, revealed nothing but a plain completely covered with rocks and boulders, some of which were of enormous size, and all thickly overgrown with sea-weed.

“What is it you expected to find down here, professor?” asked the colonel, when it had become perfectly evident that nothing but rocks lay within their range of vision.

“The hull of a ship,” answered the professor. “She foundered on or near the spot indicated by me, and cannot be far off; unless, indeed, we are out in our reckoning. Have you worked out your calculations, Mildmay?”

“Not yet,” answered the lieutenant, “but I soon will do so if you will oblige us with a little light inside here.”

“Ah, true! I had forgotten,” murmured the professor apologetically, and he lighted the lamp which hung suspended above the table in the pilot-house.

The lieutenant sat down and rapidly worked out his observations, with the resulting discovery that they were exactly two miles north-east of the spot they were seeking, having doubtless been swept that much out of their proper position by the tide. The Flying Fish was accordingly raised some fifty feet from the bottom, her engines were once more set in motion, slowly this time, however, and the ship’s head laid in the proper direction, the occupants of the pilot-house stationing themselves at the windows and peering out eagerly ahead on the look-out for the object of their search.

The engines being set to work dead slow and stopped at intervals when the speed became too high, the speed of the Flying Fish was kept down to about twelve knots per hour, at which rate she would occupy ten minutes in traversing the required distance. She had been under weigh exactly nine minutes when Mildmay exclaimed:

“Sail ho! That is to say, there is a large object of some kind dead ahead. Port hard, professor, or we shall be into it.”

The professor, who was not absolutely ignorant of nautical phraseology, promptly ported his helm and at the same moment stopped the engines, by which manoeuvre the Flying Fish glided close past the object so slowly that it was easily distinguishable as a huge pinnacle of rock.

They were now on the exact spot indicated by the professor on the chart, but nothing in the slightest degree resembling the hull of a ship was in sight. Rocks in the form of pinnacles, huge fantastic boulders, and boldly-jutting reefs appeared all round, as far as the powerful lamps of the ship could project their rays, but no ship was to be seen. They rose some fifty feet higher, in order to see over the more lofty rocks, some of which intercepted their view, but with no more successful result.

“There is no ship here, professor,” at last remarked the baronet, after all hands had carefully inspected the whole of the ground within their ken. “Are you quite sure of the accuracy of your information?”

“My information has reference only to an approximate position; the ship is hereabout—within a few miles of this spot—and I considered that our best chance of discovering her lay in coming here first, and, if necessary, prosecuting our search with this position as a starting-point.”

“Very good. Then, as the object of our quest is manifestly not here, I propose that we proceed with our search at once.”

By way of reply the professor put the helm hard over, and once more set the engines slowly in motion, thus causing the ship to travel in a circle about the spot; all hands going, as before, to the windows of the pilot-house on the look-out.

The circle described by the Flying Fish was a very small one—not more than two hundred feet in diameter—and the inmates of the pilot-house were therefore able to carefully examine every inch of ground within its circumference. One complete circuit having been accomplished without result, the helm was very slightly altered, and the ship then went on in a continually widening spiral which must necessarily at length take her to the object of her search, if indeed it actually existed.

That it did so was ultimately demonstrated, the professor himself being the first to make its discovery.

The wreck, when first sighted, was distant about one hundred yards on their starboard hand, and only just within range of the circle of electric light. The ship’s head was at once turned in that direction, the engines being at the same time stopped, to permit of a very gradual approach.

All eyes were of course intently fixed upon the strange object; and they had neared it to within about one hundred feet, when Lieutenant Mildmay exclaimed in a low, awe-struck voice:

“Just as I suspected! It is the Daedalus!”

“Yes,” replied the professor very quietly; “it is that most unfortunate ship. And now, gentlemen, with your permission I will anchor the Flying Fish, and pay a visit—unaccompanied—to the wreck.”

It was evident, from the extreme gravity of the professor’s demeanour, that his proposed visit was prompted by some other motive than that of mere idle curiosity; his companions therefore simply bowed in token of acquiescence, and permitted von Schalckenberg to follow undisturbed the bent of his own inclinations.

The Flying Fish, meanwhile, had been caused to descend to the bottom, to which she was at once secured by her four grip-anchors; immediately after which the professor, with a somewhat hurried and incoherent apology, left his companions and descended to the diving-room.

Left to themselves, the trio occupying the pilot-house had ample leisure to note the position and surroundings of the ill-fated steamer.

She had settled down upon a flat ledge of level rock, and rested, keel downwards, in a perfectly upright position, having apparently recovered herself whilst settling down. She was greatly damaged, both in hull and rigging; the spar-deck and forecastle being swept away, and her main deck blown up in midships, very possibly through the explosion of her boilers. Her bowsprit and mizzen-mast were gone, as was also her fore topmast; and the mainmast, with topmast and all attached, was leaning aft, and so far over the side that the observers would not have been surprised to see it fall at any moment. Loose ropes were trailing in all directions; and the tattered remains of sails still hung from some of the yards and stays, swaying occasionally in a slow, weird, ghostly manner, with the mysterious intermittent under-currents of the sea.

The trio were still discussing the particulars of the sad disaster, which, on a stormy September night, had resulted in the drowning of nearly five hundred people, and the plunging of the ship herself to the depths wherein they had so strangely found her, when the figure of the professor, clad in his suit of diving armour and dwindled in apparent dimensions by his great distance below them, was seen to emerge from the black shadow of the Flying Fish’s hull and make his way slowly and laboriously over the rocky bottom toward the wreck. A couple of minutes sufficed him to perform the short journey; and; scrambling up the side by the aid of some of the dangling gear, he entered the poop cabin and disappeared.

The party in the pilot-house finished their chat; and then sauntered down into the music saloon, of which they had seen nothing since the night of their departure from London—actually only two nights before, but they had since then been so satiated with novel sights and experiences that it really seemed as though at least a month had elapsed since they last passed the threshold. Here they beguiled the time so effectually with music, vocal and instrumental, that it was not until George appeared announcing dinner that it occurred to either of them that the professor had been out of the ship nearly three hours.

“Where can the man be? Surely some accident must have befallen him!” exclaimed the baronet, starting up in alarm.

“Not necessarily,” replied the colonel. “The professor is pretty well able to take care of himself. It is much more probable that he has discovered some object of exceptional interest on board the wreck, or has fallen into a scientific reverie as to the actual cause of the disaster—the cause, I mean, from a scientist’s point of view. Sound the gong, George; water is a good conductor, and he may possibly hear it and be awakened to a consciousness that time flies.”

The gong was accordingly struck, and the three companions hastened to the pilot-house to watch for results. The call proved effectual, for in less than five minutes afterwards the professor made his appearance on the deck of the wreck, soon afterwards rejoining his friends on board the Flying Fish in the vestibule outside the saloons. He carried in his hand a small compact package, which he deposited carefully on the sideboard, and then, with a much more cheerful mien than he had worn when setting out upon his solitary journey, took his accustomed place at the table, apparently quite prepared to do full justice to the meal which was about to be served.

The soup and fish were discussed in silence; a glass of wine was then imbibed with much apparent enjoyment, and this unlocked the professor’s lips.

“I feel it to be due to you, gentlemen—and more especially to you, Sir Reginald—to offer some explanation of the motive which influenced me in my proposal that we should come hither,” he remarked, setting his wine-glass down on the table. “I had a threefold object in view. In the first place, I felt curious to know whether it would be possible to find, at the bottom of the sea, an object the position of which is only approximately known. In the second place, I was anxious to secure a relic. And in the third place, I was almost equally anxious to recover a most valuable document which I was convinced had gone down in the unfortunate Daedalus. With regard to the first-named object, you have already witnessed our complete success. I have also been successful in the remaining two.”

The speaker paused here; but it was so evident from his manner that he had not yet said all he had to say upon the subject that his companions contented themselves with mere simple monosyllabic murmurs of polite congratulation, and then awaited in silence a further communication.

The professor continued silent and evidently plunged deep in a somewhat sombre reverie for several minutes; then he lifted his head and said somewhat hesitatingly:

“You will perhaps be surprised to learn that my life has not been left wholly ungilded by the halo of romance. Five-and-twenty years ago, when Science had perhaps not obtained so tight a grip upon me as she now has, it was my fate to meet the loveliest woman I have ever beheld. She was an only daughter, of English parentage; and chance threw us somewhat more intimately together than is usual with people who become acquainted casually and informally. I fell blindly, madly in love with this peerless creature; and, gentlemen, I have since—and alas, too late!—had reason to believe that, strange as such a circumstance may appear to you, she did not altogether escape a reciprocal passion. But my studious habits had brought with them one serious disadvantage—I was indescribably diffident and shy; so much so that when the time arrived that I must either unbosom myself or let her pass away out of my life, perhaps for ever, I found myself without the courage to make the necessary declaration. We parted without a word of love having passed between us. She remained single for five years—to give me an opportunity of declaring myself, as I now know—and then married a man far more worthy of her than I could ever have proved. Gentlemen, her only child, a lad of fifteen, went down with the ill-fated Daedalus; and the mother is to-day breaking her heart because, by some perverse chance, she does not possess a single memento of her lost boy. My visit to the wreck, however, will remove that source of grief; for I shall have the melancholy satisfaction of transmitting to the dear lady, by the first safe conveyance which offers itself, the watch and chain and the signet-ring which he wore when he bade her a final farewell. In the moment that I conquered the last difficulty connected with the construction of this ship, and felt assured that she would prove a success, I vowed to myself that, by the courtesy of our amiable host, I would avail myself of the means she would offer for securing some memento of that poor lad; and I have to-day at once performed my vow and passed through scenes of such surpassing horror as probably no mortal has ever witnessed before, and which language has no words to describe.

“The third object of my visit to the wreck is before you in the shape of yonder package. It is a manuscript book filled with jottings and memoranda, the result of some thirty years of profound research in the many bypaths of science. It was the property of an officer of the ship with whom I had corresponded for many years; and, knowing how greatly I coveted the book, he left it me in his will, probably little thinking, poor fellow! that it was fated to go with him to the bottom of the sea. On being made acquainted with the circumstances of his death, and also with his bequest, I surmised at once that the precious volume must have been in his immediate possession when the ship foundered. And having visited him on board, as well as had occasion to notice the place in which the book was ordinarily kept, I had very little difficulty in placing my hand upon it.”

“I suppose matters are in a very terrible state on board the wreck?” asked the baronet.

“So bad,” was the reply, “that, knowing what I now know, I cannot think of any motive powerful enough to induce me to repeat my visit. I had two very strong motives for going on board the ship; and, as each successive horror presented itself, I thought, surely there can be nothing worse than this; and I pressed onward, only to encounter greater and still greater horrors at every step. But I would not go there again even to achieve what I have achieved to-day.”

“Ah!” said the baronet, “I have a great curiosity to see what the ship herself looks like after such a tremendous catastrophe; but, if the sights to be witnessed on board her be one-tenth part so bad as your words would lead one to suppose, I would not go near her for the world.”

“Nor I,” said the colonel.

“Nor I,” added Mildmay.

“You are wise, gentlemen,” remarked the professor. “I can quite understand your curiosity; but, were you to gratify it, your pleasure would be effectually destroyed for the remainder of the voyage.”

“That reminds me to ask the question, Where are we going next?” said Sir Reginald.

The professor shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands, palms upwards.

“The world is all before you where to choose,” he replied. “You have only to name a place, and it will be strange indeed if we cannot get there.”

“Well, for my own part, I am of opinion that it will be wise for us to devote this trip as far as possible to the visiting of such spots as it is difficult or impossible to reach by any other means. What say you, gentlemen?”

This from the baronet.

The others expressed their full coincidence in this opinion.

“Very well, then,” continued Sir Reginald; “my proposal is that, as the days are now at their longest, and this is therefore the most favourable time for such an expedition—and as, moreover, the Flying Fish’s stores have as yet been barely broached—we make the best of our way forthwith to the North Pole, there to enjoy a little of the choice sport which we may reasonably hope to find among animals that have never yet seen the face of man.”

“A most admirable proposal, and one which we are especially well adapted to successfully carry out,” exclaimed the professor enthusiastically. The colonel and Mildmay also gave their cordial assent to the plan.

“Very well, then; that is settled,” remarked von Schalckenberg. “Now, to revert for a moment to the subject of the wreck. You have not been on board her, as I have; but, even with the comparatively distant view you have had of her, I think you must have seen that she is injured beyond all possibility of repair; to say nothing of the fact that she is lying in a spot from which it would be difficult—quite impossible, indeed, without our assistance—to recover her. Now, it has occurred to me that, all things taken into consideration, it would be a good deed to destroy her. What say you, gentlemen? It would afford us an excellent opportunity for making trial of one of our shells.”

“Destroy her, by all means,” said the baronet.

“I can see no possible objection,” observed the colonel.

“Nor I,” remarked Mildmay. “As to assisting in her recovery, I would not stir so much as my little finger to do it; she has already drowned some five hundred human beings, which is quite enough mischief for one ship.”

“Quite so,” coincided the professor. “Then we will do the deed after dinner.”

Accordingly, half an hour later, the party rose from the table and made their way to the pilot-house, where the professor delivered a little lecture on the mode of firing the shells. Then, accompanied by the colonel, who had proffered his assistance, von Schalckenberg proceeded to the fore end of the ship to make the requisite arrangements. It being a first experiment, the preparation occupied fully ten minutes—or ten times as long as he should allow himself in future, the professor remarked. Then, all being ready, a return was made to the pilothouse; the anchors were withdrawn from the ground, and the Flying Fish was got under weigh. The monster circled once or twice round the doomed wreck, seeking the most suitable point of attack, which having been decided upon, the sharp nose of the submarine ship was pointed straight at the Daedalus, and the professor touched a knob. At the same instant—so it appeared, so rapid was the discharge—there was a blinding flash of light on board the wreck, a terrific concussion, but no sound, and the wreck vanished; that is the only word which adequately describes the suddenness and completeness of her destruction. The concussion was so violent that it jarred the Flying Fish throughout the whole of her vast frame; indeed, but for her tremendous strength she would in all probability have herself been destroyed. As it was, no damage or harm whatever was done on board beyond throwing the four occupants of the pilothouse somewhat violently to the floor, and terrifying the cook and the hitherto sedate George almost out of their senses.

But perhaps even they were less frightened than were the captain and crew of a small Levant trader which happened at the moment to be almost directly above the scene of the explosion. All hands felt the jar; the watch below frantically sprang on deck under the impression that they had collided with another vessel; and the skipper, who happened to be standing near the taffrail, was horrified beyond expression to see an immense cone of water some thirty feet high rise out of the sea just astern of his vessel, to fall next moment with a deafening splash and an accompanying surge which tossed the little vessel as helplessly about for a moment or two as though she had been the merest cockle-shell. It took that skipper nearly half an hour to fully recover his faculties; and when he did so, his first act was to go below and solemnly make an entry in his official log to the effect that, on such and such a date at such an hour, in latitude and longitude so and so, the weather at the time being fine, with a moderate breeze from S.W., the schooner Pomona had experienced a terrific shock of earthquake with an accompanying disturbance of water which nearly swamped the ship. This entry he signed in the presence of the mate, secured that officer’s signature to it also, and then, reviving his courage with a glass of grog stiff enough to float a marlinespike, he retired to his bunk.

Chapter Seven.

En Route for the North Pole.

The destruction of the wreck having been effected, the Flying Fish moved a few miles northward until she reached a small level sandy patch affording a good berth for the night, and there she was once more placed upon the ground and anchored.

Nothing whatever occurred to disturb the repose of the travellers; and, after passing a tranquil night, they assembled at the breakfast table punctually at eight o’clock on the following morning. An hour later, having finished their meal, the quartette rose, and made their way to the pilot-house, where preparations were at once commenced for an ascent to the surface. On this occasion the professor being anxious that the other members of the party should become conversant with the method of handling the ship, the baronet placed himself at the tiller—from which post the entire apparatus controlling the movements of the vessel could be reached—and, with von Schalckenberg at his elbow to correct him in the event of a possible mistake, the ascent was begun. This, from prudential motives, was slowly accomplished, and at a distance of five fathoms from the surface a pause was made for the purpose of taking a good look round and thus avoiding all possibility of inflicting damage on passing ships in the act of breaking water. It was well that this precaution was observed; for their first glance revealed to them the bottom of a large steamer close at hand and coming rapidly straight toward them; and had the Flying Fish continued to rise she would have broken water directly under the stranger’s bows. As it was, by backing astern a few yards they gave the steamer good room to pass; and it was both interesting and novel to see the great mass go plunging heavily past with the long sea-grass waving and trailing from her bottom, and the great propeller spinning rapidly round, now completely immersed, and anon lifted almost entirely out of the water. Once clear of her, the Flying Fish sank to a depth of ten fathoms, and after a ten-mile run at full speed, once more paused to reconnoitre. This time the sea was clear for at least a mile in every direction—which was as far as they could see in the then condition of the water—and they at once rose to the surface.

The horizon proved to be clear in every direction save to the southward, in which quarter the upper spars of the steamer they had so lately encountered were still visible. The wind was blowing a moderate breeze from S.S.E.—almost a dead fair wind for the Flying Fish—the weather also was delightfully fine and clear; it was therefore promptly resolved to take to the air once more and thus wing their way northward.

The valves of the air-chambers were accordingly thrown open to their full extent, when, with a screaming roar, the highly compressed air at once rushed forth, and in less than half a minute the huge bulk of the ship was lying poised as lightly as an air-bubble on the surface of the heaving water. The main vapour-valve was then cautiously opened, and a partial vacuum produced, when, as easily as a sea-bird, the Flying Fish rose at once into the air. The engines were next turned ahead, the helm adjusted, and the northward journey was fairly begun.

The wind was blowing at the rate of about fifteen miles an hour, and nearly dead fair; the engines were therefore set so as just to turn round and no more; this gave the ship a speed of about twelve knots through the air, which, added to the rate of the wind, gave a total speed of twenty-seven knots over the ground—or rather over, the water—and at this pace they calculated that, after making the necessary allowance in their course for the set of the wind, they would reach the Irish coast, in the vicinity of Cape Clear, at about five o’clock the next morning. Their reason for not travelling faster was that, as the baronet said, they were on a pleasure cruise, and having been pent up inside the hull for fully thirty-six hours, they felt that a few hours in the open air would be an acceptable change.

They pursued their flight throughout the day at an altitude of only a thousand feet above the sea, except when they encountered a ship—which happened only once during the hours of daylight—and when this occurred they rose, on the instant of sighting her, to the highest attainable distance, in pursuance of their resolve to attract as little attention as possible, descending again to their former level as soon as they had passed beyond her range of vision. At this latter elevation they were able to enjoy to the full the health-giving properties of the pure sea-breeze, and to revel in a prospect—though it was only that of the restless sea—of nearly forty nautical miles on every side; the horizon, that is to say, forming a circle of little less than eighty miles diameter round about them. And though it may be hastily thought that, with a sea bare of craft there was little or nothing to interest the travellers, this was by no means the case; for at their height the water was clear and transparent for a long distance below the surface, and the gambols of the fish, of which there were great numbers visible, including several schools of porpoises and a solitary whale, could be seen distinctly, affording a most interesting sight; and when they grew tired of this they promenaded the spacious deck, or lounged about in chairs, smoking their cigars or pipes, and discussing with much animation their future prospects. And now, for the first time, a fact in connection with the automatic balancing apparatus brought itself under their notice. It was this. They found that, let them walk about the ship where and as much as they chose, the balance of the ship always remained perfect; but the little jets of air which, at their every movement, were admitted into the hull to maintain its equilibrium, soon had a perceptible influence on the vessel’s buoyancy, causing her to slowly but steadily descend toward the surface of the sea, thus necessitating periodic visits to the pilot-house to renew the vacuum. This set the professor’s brain to work, and by nightfall he succeeded—with the aid of a second barometer having a small piece of highly magnetised steel floating on the top of the mercurial column, and a couple of magnetised steel bars—in constructing a somewhat rude but thoroughly efficient apparatus for automatically maintaining the ship at any desired height, unaffected by the movements, be they few or many, of those on board.

By the time that this apparatus had been fixed, and subjected to the test of an hour’s conscientious walking fore and aft the deck by the entire party, the dinner-hour had arrived, and they retired below with such appetites as only a day’s exposure to the tonic effects of a sea-breeze—minus all uncomfortable motion—could produce. The fullest justice was consequently done to the meal, after which they made their way once more to the deck, and there, under a brilliant star-lit sky, gave themselves up to the soothing influence of the weed and the renewed enjoyment of their novel position. Midnight found them quite ready for their state-rooms, and at that hour they accordingly retired; the professor first of all, as a matter of precaution, increasing the ship’s altitude to four thousand feet above the sea-level, and then paying a visit of inspection to the engine-room. Matters were found to be all right there; the engines were working smoothly and noiselessly, the bearings were quite cool, and the automatic feed was doing its work to perfection. The ship, then, being at such a height as to be clear of all danger, and steering herself in the required direction, with all the machinery in perfect working order, the weather also being fine and wearing a settled aspect, von Schalckenberg told himself that there was not the slightest necessity for the maintenance of a look-out, and he therefore also retired. A quarter of an hour later the whole of the crew were sunk in profound repose, and the Flying Fish, left to herself, was leisurely wending her way northward at a height of nearly a mile above the earth’s surface.

The first of the quartette to put in an appearance on deck next morning was the professor, who was awakened just as day was breaking by the faint sound of a steam whistle. Springing hastily from his very comfortable couch, he rushed up the companion way and into the open air, without even pausing to don his nether garments. Springing to the guard rail he looked around and below him, and the half-formed fear that something had gone amiss, and that the ship was in danger, was at once dissipated. He saw that the Flying Fish was moving rapidly along with the land beneath her, the breeze having freshened during the night, whilst still blowing from the same quarter, causing them to reach the Irish coast sooner than had been anticipated. The mercury stood at the same height in the tube as it had done when they retired to rest on the preceding night; the ship had consequently maintained her approximate height above the sea-level, the only variation being that due to the greater or lesser density of the atmosphere; which was eminently satisfactory, as it showed that the professor’s hastily constructed apparatus for maintaining an uniform level had been faithfully performing its duty.

These facts ascertained, von Schalckenberg cast his glance over the scene spread out beneath him, in order to ascertain, if possible, his position. The morning was beautifully clear, the atmosphere being entirely destitute of clouds, and the only obstacle to uninterrupted vision was a thick mist which overspread the earth outstretched below him like an immense map. This, to a certain extent, rendered prompt identification of the locality difficult; but a lake of very irregular triangular shape was immediately underneath the ship, and from S. round to about W.S.W., at a distance of about eight miles, extended a range of hills which, from their height, the professor easily identified as Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, the lake below being Killarney. Other hills towered up out of the mist all round the ship, and, at a distance of some twenty miles straight ahead, appeared the Stack Mountains. Towns, villages, farm buildings, and solitary cabins were dotted about all over the country, and beyond all, from S.S.E. round by S. and W. to N., could be seen the blue sea, dotted here and there with the brown sails of the fishing craft or the scarcely whiter canvas of the coasters.

Satisfied that all was right, the professor returned to the pilot-house, and, closing the doors to exclude the intense cold of the higher atmospheric region, perfected the vacuum in the air chambers, causing the ship to immediately soar aloft to the enormous height of thirty-five thousand feet; having done which he made his way below again and plunged into his bath.

On meeting his companions at the breakfast-table, von Schalckenberg informed them of the position and elevation of the ship, and they at once expressed an ardent desire to go out on deck immediately after breakfast to view the magnificent prospect spread out around and beneath them.

“You will have to put on your diving suits then, gentlemen,” remarked the scientist, “for you would find it quite impossible to breathe in the extremely rarefied atmosphere which now supports us; moreover, it is so intensely cold that, unless exceedingly well protected, you would soon freeze to death. But I quite agree with you that the prospect, embracing as it does a circle of—let me see,” and he made a hasty calculation on the back of an envelope—“yes, a circle of very nearly four hundred and sixty miles in diameter, must be well worth looking at.”

Accordingly, on the completion of the meal, the quartette descended to the diving-room, and there donned their armour, taking the additional precaution of adding a flannel overall to their ordinary inner diving dress. Thus equipped, they made their way to the pilot-house, carefully closing all doors behind them on the way, and sallied out on deck.

The spectacle which then met their gaze was novel beyond all power of description, and can only be feebly suggested. The sky overhead was of an intense ultramarine hue, approaching in depth to indigo, gradually changing, as the eye travelled downward from the zenith toward the horizon, to a pallid colourless hue. The stars—excepting those near the horizon—were almost as distinctly visible as at midnight; whilst the sun, shorn of his rays, hung in the sky like a great ball of molten copper; the moon also, reduced to a thin silver thread-like crescent, had followed the sun into the sky, and hung a few degrees only above the eastern horizon.

So lost in wonder were the travellers at this most extraordinary sight that it was several minutes before they could withdraw their gaze from the heavens and allow it to travel earthward. When at length they did so a scarcely less enchanting spectacle greeted them. They were hovering just over the inner extremity of an arm of the sea, which the colonel—who was well acquainted with the south-west of Ireland—at once identified as Dingle Bay. Westward of them stretched the broad Atlantic, its foam-flecked waters tinted a lovely sea-green immediately below them, which gradually changed to a delicate sapphire blue as it stretched away toward the invisible horizon (the atmosphere not proving sufficiently clear to allow of their seeing to the utmost possible limits of distance), the colour growing gradually fainter and more faint until it became lost in a soft silvery grey mist. Northward lay the Dingle peninsula, and beyond it again could be seen Tralee Bay, the mouth of the Shannon, and Loop Head; then Galway Bay and the Isles of Arran, and, further on, just discernible in the misty distance, the indented shore and hills of Connemara. From thence, all round to the eastern point of the compass, could be seen, with more or less distinctness, the whole of county Clare, with part of county Galway, the Doon Mountains, and a considerable portion of Tipperary; the Galtee and Knockmeledown Mountains, and, in the extreme distance, a faint misty blue, which the colonel declared was the sea just about Dungarvan harbour. And from thence, round to the southward, the sea and the southern coast-line became more and more distinctly visible as the eye travelled round the compass, Cork Harbour being just discernible, whilst Cape Clear Island, Bantry Bay, and the Kenmare river seemed little more than a stone’s-throw distant. Altogether it was perhaps the most magnificent prospect upon which the human eye had ever rested; it certainly exceeded anything which the travellers had ever witnessed before, and their expressions of admiration and delight were unbounded.

When at last they had become somewhat accustomed to even this unique experience, and had found leisure to take note of themselves, as it were, the baronet remarked to the professor:

“But how is this, professor? The engines are working, yet we do not appear to be making any headway. So far as I can judge we seem to be simply drifting bodily to the westward and more toward the open sea.”

“It is so,” answered the professor. “We have risen above the range of the variable winds, and are now feeling the influence of an adverse air current, which, in this latitude, invariably blows from the northward; and if we were to maintain our present altitude, for which, however, there is not the slightest necessity, we should have to struggle against it for the next eight or nine hundred miles, in fact until we reach the neighbourhood of the Arctic circle. There, or thereabout, we should again have a fair wind, of which we may possibly yet be glad to avail ourselves. In the meantime, however, we will increase our speed, if you please—at all events, until we are clear of the land, when we can once more descend into a favourable current. And as, until then, our rate of travelling will be such as to make it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain our footing on the deck, I would suggest the advisability of a retreat to the pilot-house.”

This suggestion having been promptly carried out, the speed of the ship was increased to its utmost limit, whereby the rate of progression over the ground was raised from nothing to about one hundred and eight miles per hour. This rate of travelling—the adverse wind fortunately remaining moderate—enabled them to reach Erris Head, the north-western corner of county Mayo, in an hour and a half, or about eleven o’clock A.M., at which hour they found themselves just running clear of the land, with the bay and county of Donegal on their right hand, and the broad expanse of the North Atlantic ahead.

At this point the professor turned to his companions and said:

“It now becomes necessary that we should come to a definite decision as to the course to be steered. All routes are of course equally open to us; but there are two which especially commend themselves to our preference. One is the direct northerly route to the Pole, which will take us to the eastward of Iceland, straight to the island of Jan Mayen, and thence, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, into an icy sea which has been but little explored. And the other is the usual route taken by nearly all the great Arctic explorers, namely, up Davis Strait, through Baffin’s Bay, and thence, by way of Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel, into the open Polar Sea, if such should actually exist. By the one route we shall have an opportunity of surveying the eastern coast of Greenland, and thus accurately determining much that is at present mere matter of conjecture; and by the other we shall have an opportunity of beholding with our own eyes many spots of interest associated with the researches of former explorers. Now, which is it to be?”

The colonel and Mildmay naturally glanced at Sir Reginald, as an intimation that he, in his character of founder of the expedition, was entitled to the first expression of opinion; and, thus appealed to, the baronet, after a short pause for reflection, replied:

“Well, so far as I am concerned, if I have a preference at all, I think I am inclined to favour the Baffin’s Bay route. I confess I should like to go over the ground traversed so painfully by former explorers, and see for myself the nature of the obstacles with which they have had to grapple. And I should also like to look with my bodily eyes upon the spots where they sought refuge during the rigours of the Arctic winter, and those other spots where, the forces of nature finally proving too great for them, they were reluctantly compelled to abandon further effort, and, confessing themselves beaten, turn their faces once more southward. But if either of you happens to have a preference for another route, I beg that you will say so, uninfluenced by my remarks.”

The colonel and Mildmay now looked at each other interrogatively; and at length the latter said:

“My predilections are naturally in favour of the route proposed by Sir Reginald, that being the one followed by so many of my distinguished predecessors in the service. But what says the professor? Which route does he, as a scientist, think would be the most interesting?”

“Exactly; that, it seems to me, is the point of view from which we ought to regard the question,” exclaimed the baronet and the colonel in a breath.

“From a purely scientific point of view they would probably prove equally interesting,” answered the professor. “But, taking the other circumstances into consideration, I am inclined to record my vote in favour of Sir Reginalds suggestion.”

“Then let that decide it,” remarked the colonel; “I am sure we shall have no cause to regret the choice.”

The Baffin’s Bay route was accordingly agreed upon; and the ship’s head was forthwith laid in a west-north-westerly direction for Cape Farewell.

For the next hour the ship’s altitude above the sea-level was maintained unaltered; but at noon, the ocean proving clear of ships as far as the eye could reach, a descent was made to within one thousand feet of the sea, at which height a favourable breeze and a clear atmosphere was again met with. On returning to the pilothouse after luncheon, or about half-past three o’clock in the afternoon, three icebergs were discovered, two ahead and one astern; but they were very small, and it was therefore deemed hardly worth while to pause and examine them. At the same time a large steamer was observed, steering east, on the extreme verge of the southern horizon; and by the aid of their very powerful telescopes the travellers were able to identify her as one of the Atlantic liners. Half an hour later a sail was discovered on the starboard bow; and, from the fact that she was heading to the northward under easy canvas, they rightly concluded that she was a whaler. They passed this vessel within a distance of a dozen miles, and at this point were able to so minutely examine her with their telescopes that they could distinctly make out the figure of a man perched aloft in the “crow’s nest” on the look-out, as well as the figures of her crew moving about the deck; but, although within such comparatively close proximity to her, they were quite unable to detect any sign of their being observed, which the professor attributed to the almost total absence of colour about the hull; indeed, he gave it as his opinion that, unless the rays of the sun happened to be reflected from the polished surface of the aethereum directly toward an observer, the Flying Fish might easily pass within half a dozen miles unnoticed.

Before this whaler had been left out of sight astern other icebergs had risen into view above the western horizon, and within half an hour they found themselves flying above a sea thickly dotted with ice in every direction, showing that they were rapidly nearing the entrance to Davis Straits. At six o’clock the sound of the gong summoned them below to dinner; and just as they were on the point of leaving the pilot-house, Mildmay, who, with the instinct of the seaman, had paused to take a last look round, sighted a faint blue cloud-like appearance on the horizon, about a point on the starboard bow, and raised a joyful shout of:

“Land, ho!”

The professor glanced at the clock, and, muttering to himself, “Yes, it is about the right time,” took his telescope and carefully examined the distant cloud-like appearance.

“You are right, Mildmay,” he exclaimed, as he closed the instrument, “that is the land; it is Cape Farewell, the most southerly point of that great terra incognita, Greenland. With your permission, Sir Reginald, I will reduce the speed of the ship to about twenty miles per hour, and slightly alter her course; and, from the look of the weather, I think I may promise that, when we go on deck to smoke our cigars after dinner, you will see a sight well worth looking at.”

Chapter Eight.

A Superb Spectacle.

Upon one pretext or another the professor purposely delayed the rising of the party from the table until nine o’clock; and when they at length reached the deck they found the somewhat rash promise made by von Schalckenberg abundantly fulfilled. A scene of surpassing loveliness met their delighted gaze, and, to enjoy it more fully and completely, it was promptly decided to descend to the ocean’s surface. The sea on all sides was thickly covered with detached masses of floating ice, from the diminutive fragment of drift-ice, measuring not more than two or three square yards in area, to gigantic bergs, measuring, in one or two instances, from a half to three quarters of a mile long, and towering from two to three hundred feet above the surface of the water. The sun was nearing the horizon, and, with his golden beams falling full upon them, these huge masses of ice glittered against the rosy grey of the horizon like burnished metal or solid flame. Two of these bergs in particular were the objects of the travellers’ especial wonder and admiration. One, at a distance of some six miles to the eastward, resembled an island of crystal capped with an assemblage of marble ruins. Its perpendicular sides were rent here and there with deep fissures, and in the centre there yawned an immense cavern, the interior of which displayed every conceivable shade of the most lovely green, from the transparent tint of the emerald to the opaque colour of the malachite, a projecting bluff near at hand casting a strangely-contrasting shadow of the deepest, purest ultramarine. The ruined pinnacles on the summit of the berg gleamed with every tint of the rainbow, from palest yellow, through orange and crimson, to a blue varying from the most delicate cobalt to a deep violet, almost undistinguishable from black. And, to complete the fairy-like beauty of the picture, the body of the berg, a pure marble-like white in the centre, gradually assumed a translucent appearance toward the edges, in which the rays of the sun gleamed and sparkled so brilliantly that the mass resembled nothing so much as a gigantic opal.

The other large berg, which in the first instance was only remarkable for its enormous size, lay on the western horizon at a distance of some eleven miles, and, when the travellers first directed their gaze upon it, presented the appearance of a vast mass of a uniform very pale tint of opaque blue rising above the rosy waters. But as they looked upon it the setting sun drew round toward its rear, and then the pale blue opaque tint gradually quickened into translucency and quivered here and there with sudden golden and roseate gleams of indescribable beauty. As the sun neared the berg these gleams and flashes deepened in tint and became mingled in the most bewildering and delightful manner with rays of rich sea-green, warm violet, and delicate purple. Finally the sun, just skimming the edge of the horizon, passed behind the berg, when it at once flamed out into a dazzling blinding blaze, as though the berg had taken fire. For a space of perhaps half a minute this dazzling spectacle continued with scarcely diminished brilliancy; then the blaze deepened from gold to crimson, momentarily subsiding in intensity and increasing in depth of colour until it stood out against the horizon an immense mass of blood-red hue. The red deepened into purple, the purple into violet, and at last, probably when the sun had entirely sunk beneath the horizon, the violet faded gradually to a pale cold lifeless grey.

“Superb!”

“Magnificent!”

“Delightful!”

“Beautiful as a dream!”

Such were the exclamations which burst from the lips of the travellers as they turned away with a sigh at the transitory nature of the beauties they had just been witnessing, when lo! the scene to the eastward had donned new glories. The sun had vanished below the horizon, and the lower portions of the bergs were therefore in cold blue shadow; but as the glance travelled upwards the blue became merged by imperceptible degrees into a delicate amethystine tint, which, growing gradually warmer and more ruddy, passed by a thousand gradations through the richest rose and orange tints to the purest golden-yellow, out of which the projecting points and pinnacles of ice flashed and sparkled like living flame. This fairy-like spectacle lasted for a short time only, however; the golden flashes vanished one by one; the yellow became orange, the orange deepened into crimson, and the crimson in its turn slowly merged into a cold cobalt blue as the light died out of the western sky; and finally the stars came out one by one until the entire firmament was thickly studded with them. It was “nightfall on the sea.”

Enthralled by the surpassing witchery of the scene, some time elapsed before either of the travellers cared to break the silence. At length, however, the baronet turned to the professor and said:

“I owe you a debt of never-dying gratitude, professor, for having been the means of introducing me to a scene of such indescribable beauty as that which we have just witnessed; I have looked upon many a fair scene during the course of my wanderings, but never upon anything to equal this. We must have been exceptionally fortunate to-night, have we not? for surely the Polar world can have no spectacle more enchanting than the one which we have just witnessed?”

“We have been fortunate; there is no doubt about that,” was the reply. “But you have not yet seen the midnight sun nor the aurora borealis, both of which sights far exceed in beauty what we have looked upon to-night. But it grows chilly and an insidious fog is gathering round us; we must take measures for passing the night in safety, for, were we by chance to be caught between two icebergs of even ordinary size, not even the enormous strength of the Flying Fish would save her from destruction.”

“And what do you propose to do, then, professor, in order to ensure our safety?”

“There are two courses open to us. One is to sink to the bottom of the sea, which is here deep enough to secure us from all danger of being struck by floating bergs. And the other is to ascend into the calm belt, where the night can be passed in a state of absolute safety.”

“Very well, then; let us ascend into the ‘calm belt,’ by all means,” said the baronet. “And, by the way, I should feel extremely obliged if you would kindly explain to us what the ‘calm belt’ is; I for one never heard of it before.”

“I will do so with pleasure,” replied the professor. “You must know, then, in the first place, that there are certain atmospheric currents as regular and precise in their action as those of the ocean, both being created by the same cause—namely, the tendency of a warm fluid to rise and of a colder one to flow into the vacated space. Thus the air on the equator, being heated by the vertical rays of the sun, rises, creating a partial vacuum which the cold air from the poles rushes equator-ward to fill, the warm air moving toward the poles to restore the balance. Thus at a few degrees north of the equator the upper stratum of air will always be found to be travelling northward. And it continues so to do until it reaches the vicinity of the thirtieth parallel of latitude, when, having lost most of its heat by constant exposure to open space, it becomes cold enough to descend, taking the place of the polar current, which meanwhile has been warmed by passing over the temperate zone. The equatorial current, though it has descended to the surface of the earth, still makes its gradual way northward, as well as local circumstances will permit, in order to replace the southward-flying polar current; and by the time that it reaches the Arctic circle, it has again, by contact with the earth, become the warmer of the two currents, when it once more rises into the upper regions of the atmosphere, to descend no more until it reaches the vicinity of the pole, when it sinks, and at the same time turns southward as the polar current. And the same thing happens in the southern hemisphere. Thus in each hemisphere we have two great atmospheric currents—one flowing from the pole to the equator, and the other flowing from the equator to the pole. The lower current, or that which sweeps along the surface of the earth, meets with so many disturbing local influences that it is frequently deflected greatly from its proper course, sometimes so much so that its course becomes completely reversed for a time; but in the upper regions of the atmosphere these disturbing influences are very little if at all felt. Now, if I have succeeded in making this plain to you, you will readily understand that where the top of the lower current and the bottom of the upper current touch each other there will be so much friction that a neutral or ‘calm belt’ will occur in which the air will be motionless. And it is in this calm belt—which occurs between the altitudes of three thousand and twelve thousand feet above the earth’s surface—that I propose we should take refuge to-night.”

The professor’s small audience duly expressed their thanks for the extremely interesting lecture to which they had just been treated, and then the party retreated to the pilot-house; the door was closed to exclude the cold air of the upper regions which they were about to visit; and an ascent was made to an altitude of eight thousand feet, where the night was passed in an atmosphere so completely motionless that, on their descent next morning, Lieutenant Mildmay’s observations showed them to be in the exact spot which they had occupied on the previous evening.

It was decided over the breakfast-table that morning, that the journey northward should be prosecuted, as far as possible, upon the surface of the sea; and the Flying Fish was accordingly put in motion on the required course immediately upon her descent. Their rate of progress was particularly slow, not exceeding, on the average, a speed of six miles per hour, as drift ice was remarkably abundant, mostly in small detached blocks, though they occasionally encountered a floe of several acres in extent; and, far away to the northward, quite a large assemblage of bergs were seen. This slow rate of progress would have been wearisome to a veteran Arctic navigator in possession of such means for the accomplishment of a quick passage as those enjoyed by the inmates of the Flying Fish’s pilot-house; but to them everything was novel and interesting, and, almost before they knew it, they found themselves in the immediate vicinity of the bergs. These varied greatly in size, some of them being no larger than a dwelling-house of moderate dimensions, whilst others fully equalled, if, indeed, they did not exceed, the proportions of the monsters seen on the previous evening. They were grouped so closely together that a passage between them seemed to be not wholly unattended with danger; and the party were in the act of discussing the question which channel it would be most prudent to take, their eyes being meanwhile fixed on the huge towering cliffs of ice before them, when a gigantic overhanging mass was seen to detach itself from its parent berg and plunge, a distance of some two hundred and fifty feet, with a terrific splash into the water and disappear. The deep thunderous roar of its plunge smote the ears of the watchers next moment, and they looked on with breathless interest to see what would follow. The mass, from its enormous size, would weigh, they considered, fully five thousand tons; and they were not surprised to see that the loss of so much weight had seriously disturbed the balance of the berg, which at once began to rock ponderously to and fro, creating a terrific commotion in the water when conjoined with that caused by the plunge into the sea and the reappearance a second or two later of the detached mass. The sea was seen to heap itself up in a long well-defined ridge, similar—though, of course, on a tremendously magnified scale—to that caused by the plunge of a stone into the water. This ridge spread out in a circular form all round the spot where the mass had fallen, and at once began to travel outward in the form of an immense breaker some six or seven feet in height. Onward it rolled, its smooth glassy front capped with a foaming crest presenting a singular and somewhat alarming spectacle. The fears of the beholders, however, if they had any, were groundless, for, though the threatening wave swept forward with a velocity of some twelve knots per hour, it swept harmlessly enough over and along the cylindrical sides of the Flying Fish, hissing and roaring most ominously, but failing to throw so much as a single drop of spray on her deck. This wave was quickly followed by several others, each of which, however, was less formidable than the preceding one. Meanwhile, the drama, it appeared, had only begun. The oscillation of the parent berg, though it was probably quite unaffected by the portion of the circular wave which dashed furiously against its sides, became momentarily more and more violent, accompanied by a rapidly increasing agitation of the sea in its neighbourhood, an agitation so great that the surface of the ocean soon assumed the appearance of a boiling cauldron, the foaming surges leaping wildly hither and thither with a continuous roar like that of the surf beating on a rocky shore, and soon assuming such dimensions that they even broke over the deck of the Flying Fish, and dashed themselves into a cloud of spray against the strong walls of the pilot-house. Other fragments now began to detach themselves with dull hea