and a reward of ten thousand
dollars, offered conjointly by the British and United States Governments
for the first authentic tidings of the _Astronef_, was won by a smart
young Californian, who was Assistant Astronomer at the Harvard
University Observatory at Arequipa.

One night when he was on duty watching a lunar occultation, he saw
something sweep across the disc of the full moon just as the captain and
officers of the _St. Louis_ had seen that same something sweep across
the disc of the rising sun. What else could it be if not the _Astronef_?
He rang for another assistant to go on with the occultation, and wired
down to the coast requesting the British Consul at Mollendo to look out
for an arrival from the skies.

Three hours later the gleam of an electric searchlight flickered down
over the huge black cone of the Misti, and by dawn the next morning one
of Her Majesty's cruisers--most appropriately named _Astraea_--attached
to the Pacific Squadron then _en route_ from Lima to Valparaiso, steamed
out westward from Mollendo and found the long, shining hull of the
_Astronef_ waiting quietly on the unrippled rollers of the Pacific, and
Lord and Lady Redgrave having breakfast in the deck-chamber.

Compliments and congratulations having been duly exchanged, she was
taken in tow by the cruiser, and so reached Valparaiso. Here she lay for
a few days while the wires of the world were being kept hot with
telegraphic accounts of her return to Earth, and while her Commander,
with the assistance of the officers of the National Laboratory, was
replenishing his stock of the R. Fluid from the chemicals which they had
placed at his disposal.

It would, of course, have been quite possible for him and Zaidie to have
taken steamer northward to Panama, crossed the Isthmus, and returned to
New York and Washington _via_ Jamaica. The British Admiral even offered
to place his fastest cruiser at their disposal for a run to San
Francisco, whence the Overland Limited would have landed them in New
York in four days and a half, but Zaidie vetoed this as quickly as she
had done the other proposition. If she had her way the _Astronef_ should
go back to Washington as she had left it, by means of her own motive
force, and so, of course, it came to pass.

Even Murgatroyd's grim and homely features seemed irradiated by a glow
of what he afterwards thought unholy pride when he once more stood by
his levers and heard the familiar signal coming fr