that is to say the side turned towards the planet.

Mars now appeared as a gigantic rosy moon filling the whole vault of the
heavens above them. Their telescopes brought the three thousand seven
hundred and fifty miles down to about ten. The rapid motion of the tiny
satellite afforded them a spectacle which might be compared to the
rising of a moon glowing with rosy light and hundreds of times larger
than the earth. The speed of the vehicle of which they had taken
possession, something like four thousand two hundred miles an hour,
caused the surface of the planet to apparently sweep away from below
them, just as the earth seems to glide from under the car of a balloon.

Neither of them left the telescopes for more than a few minutes during
this aerial circumnavigation. Murgatroyd, outwardly impassive, but
inwardly filled with solemn fears for the fate of this impiously daring
voyage, brought them wine and sandwiches, and later on tea and toast and
more sandwiches; but they took no moment's heed of these, so absorbed
were they in the wonderful spectacle which was swiftly passing under
their eyes.

The main armament of the _Astronef_ consisted of four pneumatic guns,
which could be mounted on swivels, two ahead and two astern, which
carried a shell containing either one of two kinds of explosives
invented by her creator.

One of these was a solid, and burst on impact with an explosive force
equal to about twenty pounds of lyddite. The other consisted of two
liquids separated by a partition in the shell, and these, when mixed by
the breaking of the partition, burst into a volume of flame which could
not be extinguished by any known human means. It would burn even in a
vacuum, since it supplied its own elements of combustion. The guns would
throw these shells to a distance of about seven terrestrial miles. On
the upper deck there were also stands for a couple of light machine guns
capable of discharging seven hundred explosive bullets a minute.

Professor Rennick, although a man of peace, had little sympathy with the
laws of "civilised" warfare which permit men to be blown into rags of
flesh and splinters of bone by explosive shells of a pound weight and
upward, and only allow projectiles of less weight to be used against
"savages." There was no humbug about him. He believed that when war
_was_ necessary it had to _be_ war--and the sooner it was over the
better for everybody concerned.

The small arms consisted of a