teenth of March! Not six weeks! I
guess we'll have to hurry up with those cannons. I'll send a cable to
Pittsburg to-morrow. Anyhow, I reckon the comet can wait for to-night."

While Mr Parmenter had been speaking two other men had come down the
ladder from the deck of the airship and he continued:

"Now, let me introduce you. This is my old friend and college chum,
Newson Hingeston, the man who invented the model we built this fleet on.
This is Mr Hiram Roker, chief engineer of the fleet and Lord High
Admiral of the air, when Mr Hingeston is not running his own ships."

Lennard shook hands with Mr Hingeston and Hiram, and was going to say
very complimentary things about the fleet which had literally dropped
from the clouds, when Mr Parmenter interrupted him again and said:

"You'll excuse me, Mr Lennard, but you'll be better able to talk about
these ships when you've had a trip in one of them. We've just crossed
the Atlantic in thirty hours, above the clouds, and to-morrow night or
morning, if it's cloudy when we've been through things generally, we're
going to London in the flagship here--I've called her the _Auriole_,
because she is the daisy of the whole fleet--biggest, fastest and
prettiest. You just wait till you see her in daylight. Now we'll go down
to the house and hear your news. We're thirty hours behind the times."

It need hardly be said that no one went to bed for the remainder of that
night at Whernside. In one sense it was as busy a time as had been since
the war began. The private telephone and telegraph wires between
Whernside House and Settle and the aerograph apparatus at the
observatory were working almost incessantly till dawn, sending and
receiving messages between this remote moorland district and London and
the seat of war, as well as Bolton and Pittsburg.

The minutes and the hours passed swiftly, as all Fate-laden time does
pass, and so the grey morning of a momentous day dawned over the western
Yorkshire moors. Just as they were beginning to think about breakfast
one of Lennard's assistants came down from the observatory with a copy
of an aerogram which read:

"Begins. PARMENTER, Whernside. Pleased to hear of your arrival.
Proposition laid before His Majesty in Council and accepted. Hope
to see you and your friends during the day.--CHAMBERLAIN. Ends."

"Well, I guess that's all right, gentlemen," said Mr Parmenter, as he
handed the aerogram across the big table litte