e morning--our
morning, I mean--and you'll wake me in time to see the South Pole of
Saturn, won't you? You're not coming yet, I suppose?"

"Not just yet, dear. I want to see a bit more of this, and then I must
go through the engines and see that they're all right and ready for that
thousand million mile homeward voyage you're talking about. You can have
a good ten hours' sleep without missing much, I think, for there doesn't
seem to be anything more interesting than our own Arctic life down
there. So good-night, little woman, and don't have too many nightmares."

"Good-night!" she said; "if you hear me shout you'll know that you're to
come and protect me from monsters. Weren't those two-headed brutes just
too horrid for words? Good-night, dear!"

CHAPTER XIX

A little before six (Earth time) on the fourth morning after they had
cleared the confines of the Saturnian System, Redgrave went as usual
into the conning-tower to examine the instruments, and to see that
everything was in order. To his intense surprise he found, on looking at
the gravitational compass, which was to the _Astronef_ what the ordinary
compass is to a ship at sea, that the vessel was a long way out of her
course.

Such a thing had never yet occurred. Up to now the _Astronef_ had obeyed
the laws of gravitation and repulsion with absolute exactness. He made
another examination of the instruments; but no, all were in perfect
order.

"I wonder what the deuce is the matter," he said, after he had looked
for a few moments with frowning eyes at the multitude of orbs ahead. "By
Jove, we're swinging more. This is getting serious."

He went back to the compass. The long, slender needle was slowly
swinging farther and farther out of the middle line of the vessel.

"There can only be two explanations of that," he went on, thrusting his
hands deep into his trousers pockets; "either the engines are not
working properly, or some enormous and invisible body is pulling us
towards it out of our course. Let's have a look at the engines first."

When he reached the engine-room he said to Murgatroyd, who was indulging
in his usual pastime of cleaning and polishing his beloved charges:

"Have you noticed anything wrong during the last hour or so,
Murgatroyd?"

"No, my Lord; at least not so far as concerns the engines. They're all
right. Hark, now, they're not making more noise than a lady's sewing
machine," replied the old Yorkshireman, with a note of