ned its use; and then, last of all, came the hull of the
air-ship.

This was three feet long and six inches broad in its midships
diameter. It was made in two longitudinal sections of polished
aluminium, which shone like burnished silver. It would have been
cigar-shaped but for the fact that the forward end was drawn out into
a long sharp ram, the point of which was on a level with the floor of
the hull amidships as it lay upon the table. Two deep bilge-plates,
running nearly the whole length of the hull, kept it in an upright
position and prevented the blades of the propellers from touching the
table. For about half its whole length the upper part of the hull was
flattened and formed a deck from which rose three short strong masts,
each of which carried a wheel of thin metal whose spokes were six
inclined fans something like the blades of a screw.

A little lower than this deck there projected on each side a broad,
oblong, slightly curved sheet of metal, very thin, but strengthened
by means of wire braces, till it was as rigid as a plate of solid
steel, although it only weighed a few ounces. These air-planes worked
on an axis amidships, and could be inclined either way through an
angle of thirty degrees. At the pointed stern there revolved a
powerful four-bladed propeller, and from each quarter, inclined
slightly outwards from the middle line of the vessel, projected a
somewhat smaller screw working underneath the after end of the
air-planes.

The hull contained four small double-cylinder engines, one of which
actuated the stern-propeller, and the other three the fan-wheels and
side-propellers. There were, of course, no furnaces, boilers, or
condensers. Two slender pipes ran into each cylinder from suitably
placed gas reservoirs, or power-cylinders, as the engineer called
them, and that was all.

Arnold deftly and rapidly put the parts together, continuing his
running description as he did so, and in a few minutes the beautiful
miracle of ingenuity stood complete before the wondering eyes of the
Circle, and a murmur of admiration ran from lip to lip, bringing a
flush of pleasure to the cheek of its creator.

"There," said he, as he put the finishing touches to the apparatus,
"you see that she is a combination of two principles--those of the
Aeronef and the Aeroplane. The first reached its highest development
in Jules Verne's imaginary "Clipper of the Clouds," and the second in
Hiram Maxim's Aeroplane. Of course,