"Don't you think it's about time we were beginning to think of
breakfast, dear--or do you think you can wait till we land?"

"Breakfast on the moon!" she exclaimed. "That would be just too lovely
for words--of course we'll wait!"

"Very well," he said; "you see that big black ring nearly below
us?--that, as I suppose you know, is the celebrated Mount Tycho. I'll
try and find a convenient spot on the top of the ring to drop on, and
then you will be able to survey the scenery from seventeen or eighteen
thousand feet above the plains."

About two hours later a slight, jarring tremor ran through the frame of
the vessel, and the first stage of the voyage was ended. After a passage
of less than twelve hours the _Astronef_ had crossed a gulf of nearly
two hundred and fifty thousand miles, and rested on the untrodden
surface of the lunar world.

CHAPTER VII

"Well, Madame, we've arrived. This is the moon and there is the earth.
To put it into plain figures, you are now two hundred and forty thousand
odd miles away from home. I think you said you would like breakfast on
the surface of the World that Has Been, and so, as it's about eleven
o'clock earth-time, we'll call it a _dejeuner_, and then we'll go and
see what this poor old skeleton of a world is like."

"Oh, then we shan't actually have breakfast on the moon?"

"My dear child, of course you will. Isn't the _Astronef_ resting
now--right now as they say in some parts of the States--on the top of
the crater wall of Tycho? Aren't we really and actually on the surface
of the moon? Just look at this frightful black and white, god-forsaken
landscape! Isn't it like everything that you've ever learnt about the
moon? Nothing but light and shade, black and white, peaks of mountains
blazing in sunlight, and valleys underneath them as black as the hinges
of----"

"Tophet," said Zaidie, interrupting him quickly. "Yes, I see what you
mean. So we'll have our _dejeuner_ here, breathing our own nice
atmosphere, and eating and drinking what was grown on the soil of dear
old Mother Earth. It's a wee bit paralysing to think of, isn't it, dear?
Two hundred and forty thousand miles across the gulf of Space--and we
sitting here at our breakfast table just as comfortable as though we
were in the Cecil in London, or the Waldorf-Astoria in New York!"

"There's nothing much in that, I mean as regards distance. You see,
before we've finished we shall probably, at least I hope we