d, having left the vicinity of Chicago at nine o'clock
on the evening of June 11th, took bearings here, showing that they
passed over the North Pole soon after midnight. Then they took up
their course to the planet Mars.

"(Signed) HERMANN ANDERWELT.
ISIDOR WERNER."

This was duly enclosed in the biscuit tin, which I bent and crimped a
little around the top so that the cover would stay on tightly. Then I
learned how such things were conveyed outside the projectile. A
cylindrical, hollow plunger fitting tightly into the rear wall was
pulled as far into the projectile as it would come. A closely fitting
lid on the top of the cylinder was lifted, and the tin deposited within.
The lid was then fitted down again, and the plunger was pushed out and
turned over until the weight of the lid caused it to fall open and the
contents to drop out. The tin sailed down, struck a tall crag, bounded
off, and fell upon a comparatively level plateau. The cylinder was then
turned farther over, causing the lid to close, and the plunger was
pulled in again. I remember how crisply cold was that one cubic foot of
air that came back with the cylinder. My teeth had been chattering ever
since I wakened, and I had been too excited to put on a heavier coat.

"What is the thermometer?" asked the doctor. It was a Fahrenheit
instrument we were carrying.

"Thirty-eight degrees below zero, and still falling!" I told him.

"Then we must be off at once, and at a good speed, to warm up. Now say a
long good-bye to Earth, for it may be nothing more than a pale star to
us hereafter."

The doctor steered to westward as he rose steadily to a height of about
ten miles. Then he fell with a long slant to the south-west. He was
working back into the darkness of night again. We had lost the sun long
before we started to rise again.

"We are now well above the Pacific Ocean, about fifteen hundred miles
north-west of San Francisco," said the doctor, consulting his large
globe.

"It seems to me you cross continents with remarkable ease and swiftness.
From Chicago to San Francisco alone is almost three thousand miles," I
ventured.

"But we have been gone four hours, and if we had simply stood still
above the Earth for four hours it would have travelled under us about
four thousand miles, so that San Francisco would already have passed the
place where we st