HE _ASTRONEF_

About eight o'clock on the morning of the 5th of November, 1900, those
of the passengers and crew of the American liner _St. Louis_ who
happened, whether from causes of duty or of their own pleasure, to be on
deck, had a very strange--in fact a quite unprecedented experience.

The big ship was ploughing her way through the long, smooth rollers at
her average twenty-one knots towards the rising sun, when the officer in
charge of the navigating bridge happened to turn his glasses straight
ahead. He took them down from his eyes, rubbed the two object-glasses
with the cuff of his coat, and looked again. The sun was shining through
a haze which so far dimmed the solar disc that it was possible to look
straight at it without inconvenience to the eyes.

The officer took another long squint, put his glasses down, rubbed his
eyes and took another, and murmured, "Well I'm damned!"

Just then the Fourth Officer came up on to the bridge to relieve his
senior while he went down for a cup of coffee and a biscuit. The Second
took him away to the other end of the bridge, out of hearing of the
helmsman and the quartermaster standing by, and said almost in a
whisper:

"Say, Norton, there's something ahead there that I can't make out. Just
as the sun got clear above the horizon I saw a black spot go straight
across it, right through the upper and lower limbs. I looked again, and
it was plumb in the middle of the disc. Look," he went on, speaking
louder in his growing excitement, "there it is again! I can see it
without the glasses now. See?"

The Fourth did not reply at once. He had the glasses close to his eyes,
and was moving them slowly about as though he were following some
shifting object in the sky. Then he handed them back, and said:

"If I didn't believe the thing was impossible I should say that's an
air-ship; but, for the present, I guess I'd rather wait till it gets a
bit nearer, if it's coming. Still, there _is_ something. Seems to be
getting bigger pretty fast, too. Perhaps it would be as well to notify
the old man. What do you think?"

"Guess we'd better," said the Second. "S'pose you go down. Don't say
anything except to him. We don't want any more excitement among the
people than we can help."

The Fourth nodded and went down the steps, and the Second began walking
up and down the bridge, every now and then taking another squint ahead.
Again and again the mysterious shape crossed the disc of the