on't
despair now of two hundred miles an hour before very long. Come!"

The engineer and the enthusiast had now come to the fore again, and
the man and the lover had receded, put back, as it were, until the
time for love, or perchance for sorrow, had come.

He put his arm through Colston's, and led him up a hill-path and
through a little gorge which opened into a deep valley, completely
screened on all sides by heather-clad hills. Sprinkled about the
bottom of this valley were a few wooden dwelling-houses and
workshops, and in the centre was a huge shed, or rather an enclosure
now, for its roof had been taken off.

In this lay, like a ship in a graving-dock, a long, narrow,
grey-painted vessel almost exactly like a sea-going ship, save for
the fact that she had no funnel, and that her three masts, instead of
yards, each carried a horizontal fan-wheel, while from each of her
sides projected, level with the deck, a plane twice the width of the
deck and nearly as long as the vessel herself.

They entered the enclosure and walked round the hull. This was
seventy feet long and twelve wide amidships, and save for size it was
the exact counterpart of the model already described.

As soon as he had taken Colston round the hull, and roughly explained
its principal features, reserving more detailed description and the
inspection of the interior for the voyage, he gave the necessary
orders for preparing for a lengthy journey, and the two went on board
the _Lurline_ to dinner, which Colston had deferred in order to eat
it in Arnold's company.

After dinner they carefully discussed the situation in order that
every possible accident might be foreseen, argued the pros and cons
of the venture in all their bearings, and even went so far as to plan
the vengeance they would take should, by any chance, the rescue fail
or come too late.

The instructions, signed by Natas himself, were very precise on
certain essential points, and in their broad outlines, but, like all
wisely planned instructions to such men as these, they left ample
margin for individual initiative in case of emergency.

Some of the stores of the _Lurline_ had to be transferred to the
_Ariel_, and these were taken ashore after dinner, and at the same
time Colston made his first inspection of the interior of the
air-ship, under the guidance of her creator. What struck him most at
first sight was the apparent inadequacy of the machinery to the
attainment of the tr