and get along to Washington. Anyhow, I hope I've
convinced you so far that I've kept my promise."

"Yes, dear, you have, and splendidly! I've only one regret. If _he_ was
only here now, what a happy man he'd be! Still, I daresay he knows all
about it and is just as happy. In fact he must be. I feel certain he
must. The very soul of his intellect was in the dream of this ship, and
now that it's a reality he must be here still. Isn't it part of himself?
Isn't it his mind that's working in these wonderful engines of yours,
and isn't it his strength that lifts us up from the earth and takes us
down again just as you please to turn that wheel?"

"There's little doubt about that, Zaidie," said Redgrave quietly, but
earnestly. "You know we North-country folk all have our traditions and
our ghosts; and what more likely than that the spirit of a dead man or a
man gone to other worlds should watch over the realisation of his
greatest work on earth? Why shouldn't we believe that, we who are going
away from this world to other ones?"

"Why not?" interrupted Zaidie, "why, of course we will. And now suppose
we come down in more ways than one and go and give poor Mrs. Van Stuyler
something to eat and drink. The dear old girl must be frightened half
out of her wits by this time."

"Very well," replied Redgrave; "but we'll come down literally first, so
that we can get the propellers to work."

He turned the wheel back till the indicator pointed to five. The
cloud-sea came up with a rush. They passed through it, and stopped about
a thousand feet above the sea. Redgrave touched the first button twice,
and then the next one twice. The air began to hiss past the walls of the
conning-tower. The crest-crowned waves of the Atlantic seemed to sweep
in a hurrying torrent behind them, and then Redgrave, having made sure
that Murgatroyd was at the after-wheel, gave him the course for
Washington, and then went down to induct his bride-elect into the art
and mystery of cooking by electricity as it was done in the kitchen of
the _Astronef_.

CHAPTER V

As this narrative is the story of the personal adventures of Lord
Redgrave and his bride, and not an account of events at which all the
world has already wondered, there is no necessity to describe in any
detail the extraordinary sequence of circumstances which began when the
_Astronef_ dropped without warning from the clouds in front of the White
House at Washington, and his lordship,