couple of heavy ten-bore elephant guns
carrying three-ounce melinite shells; a dozen rifles and fowling-pieces
of different makes of which three, a single and a double-barrelled rifle
and a double-barrelled shot-gun, belonged to her Ladyship, as well as a
dainty brace of revolvers, one of half a dozen braces of various
calibres which completed the minor armament of the _Astronef_.

The guns were got up and mounted while the attraction of the planet was
comparatively feeble, and the weapons themselves therefore of very
little weight. On the surface of the earth a score of men could not have
done the work, but on board the _Astronef_, suspended in Space, her crew
of three found the work easy. Zaidie herself picked up a Maxim and
carried it about as though it were a toy sewing-machine.

"Now I think we can go down," said Redgrave, when everything had been
put in position as far as possible. "I wonder whether we shall find the
atmosphere of Mars suitable for terrestrial lungs. It will be rather
awkward if it isn't."

A very slight exertion of repulsive force was sufficient to detach the
_Astronef_ from the body of Phobos. She dropped rapidly towards the
surface of the planet, and within three hours they saw the sunlight, for
the first time since they had left the earth, shining through an
unmistakable atmosphere, an atmosphere of a pale, rosy hue, instead of
the azure of the earthly skies. An angular observation showed that they
were within fifty miles of the surface of the undiscovered world.

"Well, we shall find air here of some sort, there's no doubt. We'll drop
a bit further and then Andrew shall start the propellers. They'll very
soon give us an idea of the density. Do you notice the change in the
temperature? That's the diffused rays instead of the direct ones. Twenty
miles! I think that will do. I'll stop her now and we'll prospect for a
landing place."

He went down to apply the repulsive force directly to the surface of
Mars, so as to check the descent, and then he put on his
breathing-dress, went into the exit-chamber, closed one door behind him,
opened the other and allowed it to fill with Martian air; then he shut
it again, opened his visor and took a cautious breath.

It may, perhaps, have been the idea that he, the first of all the sons
of Earth, was breathing the air of another world, or it might have been
some property peculiar to the Martian atmosphere, but he immediately
experienced a sensation such