Queen Margherita, of Italy; King
George and Queen Olga, of Greece; Abdul Hamid, of Turkey; Tsait'ien,
Emperor of China; Mutsuhito, the Japanese Mikado, with his beautiful
Princess Haruko; the President of France, the President of Switzerland,
the First Syndic of the little republic of Andorra, perched on the crest
of the Pyrenees, and the heads of all the Central and South American
republics, were coming to Washington to take part in the deliberations,
which, it was felt, were to settle the fate of earth and Mars.

One day, after this announcement had been received, and the additional
news had come that nearly all the visiting monarchs had set out,
attended by brilliant suites and convoyed by fleets of warships, for
their destination, some coming across the Atlantic to the port of New
York, others across the Pacific to San Francisco, Mr. Edison said to me:

"This will be a fine spectacle. Would you like to watch it?"

"Certainly," I replied.

The Ship of Space was immediately at our disposal. I think I have not
yet mentioned the fact that the inventor's control over the electrical
generator carried in the car was so perfect that by varying the
potential or changing the polarity he could cause it slowly or swiftly,
as might be desired, to approach or recede from any object. The only
practical difficulty was presented when the polarity of the electrical
charge upon an object in the neighborhood of the car was unknown to
those in the car, and happened to be opposite to that of the charge to
which the car, at that particular moment was bearing. In such a case, of
course, the car would fly toward the object, whatever it might be, like
a pithball or a feather, attracted to the knob of an electrical machine.
In this way, considerable danger was occasionally encountered, and a few
accidents could not be avoided. Fortunately, however, such cases were
rare. It was only now and then that, owing to some local cause,
electrical polarities unknown to or unexpected by the navigators,
endangered the safety of the car. As I shall have occasion to relate
however, in the course of the narrative, this danger became more acute
and assumed at times a most formidable phase, when we had ventured
outside the sphere of the earth and were moving through the unexplored
regions beyond.

On this occasion, having embarked, we rose rapidly to a height of some
thousands of feet and directed our course over the Atlantic. When
half-way to Ireland, w