have plenty of company!" cried the Midshipman. "I should
be delighted to go if he'd only take me."

"No doubt you would, Mr. Midshipman," said Brownson, "the wise men, you
know, are not all dead yet."

"Nor the fools either, Lieutenant," growled old Frisby, the fourth
officer, getting tired of the conversation.

"There is no question at all about it," observed another; "every time a
Projectile started, it would take off as many as it could carry."

"I wish it would only start often enough to improve the breed!" growled
old Frisby.

"I have no doubt whatever," added the Chief Engineer, "that the thing
would get so fashionable at last that half the inhabitants of the Earth
would take a trip to the Moon."

"I should limit that privilege strictly to some of our friends in
Washington," said old Frisby, whose temper had been soured probably by a
neglect to recognize his long services; "and most of them I should by
all means insist on sending to the Moon. Every month I would ram a whole
raft of them into the Columbiad, with a charge under them strong enough
to blow them all to the--But--Hey!--what in creation's that?"

[Illustration: FOR A SECOND ONLY DID THEY CATCH ITS FLASH.]

Whilst the officer was speaking, his companions had suddenly caught a
sound in the air which reminded them immediately of the whistling scream
of a Lancaster shell. At first they thought the steam was escaping
somewhere, but, looking upwards, they saw that the strange noise
proceeded from a ball of dazzling brightness, directly over their heads,
and evidently falling towards them with tremendous velocity. Too
frightened to say a word, they could only see that in its light the
whole ship blazed like fireworks, and the whole sea glittered like a
silver lake. Quicker than tongue can utter, or mind can conceive, it
flashed before their eyes for a second, an enormous bolide set on fire
by friction with the atmosphere, and gleaming in its white heat like a
stream of molten iron gushing straight from the furnace. For a second
only did they catch its flash before their eyes; then striking the
bowsprit of the vessel, which it shivered into a thousand pieces, it
vanished in the sea in an instant with a hiss, a scream, and a roar, all
equally indescribable. For some time the utmost confusion reigned on
deck. With eyes too dazzled to see, ears still ringing with the
frightful combination of unearthly sounds, faces splashed with floods of
sea water, and n