a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet in
length. It Was hung in a peculiar manner in order to minimise the
complex vibration that even a moderate wind produced, and for the same
reason the little seats within the car--each passenger remained seated
during the voyage--were slung with great freedom of movement. The
starting of the mechanism was only possible from a gigantic car on
the rail of a specially constructed stage. Graham had seen these vast
stages, the flying stages, from the crow's nest very well. Six huge
blank areas they were, with a giant "carrier" stage on each.

The choice of descent was equally circumscribed, an accurately plane
surface being needed for safe grounding. Apart from the destruction that
would have been caused by the descent of this great expanse of sail and
metal, and the impossibility of its rising again, the concussion of an
irregular surface, a tree-set hillside, for instance, or an embankment,
would be sufficient to pierce or damage the framework, to smash the ribs
of the body, and perhaps kill those aboard.

At first Graham felt disappointed with these cumbersome contrivances,
but he speedily grasped the fact that smaller machines would have been
unremunerative, for the simple reason that their carrying power would be
disproportionately diminished with diminished size. Moreover, the huge
size of these things enabled them--and it was a consideration of primary
importance--to traverse the air at enormous speeds, and so run no risks
of unanticipated weather. The briefest journey performed, that from
London to Paris, took about three-quarters of an hour, but the velocity
attained was not high; the leap to New York occupied about two hours,
and by timing oneself carefully at the intermediate stations it was
possible in quiet weather to go around the world in a day.

The little aeropiles (as for no particular reason they were
distinctively called) were of an altogether different type. Several of
these were going to and fro in the air. They were designed to carry only
one or two persons, and their manufacture and maintenance was so costly
as to render them the monopoly of the richer sort of people. Their
sails, which were brilliantly coloured, consisted only of two pairs of
lateral air floats in the same plane, and of a screw behind. Their
small size rendered a descent in any open space neither difficult nor
disagreeable, and it was possible to attach pneumatic wheels or even the
ordinary mot