with an upward glance into the
starlit ocean of Space which lay above and around them. "Goodbye to the
world itself! Well, say it, Lenox, and let us go; I want to see what the
others are like."

"Very well then; goodbye it is," he said, beginning to jerk the switch
backwards and forwards with irregular motions, sending short flashes and
longer beams down towards the earth.

The Empire City read the farewell message.

"Thank God for the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey the
joint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of the
planets when we find them. _Au revoir!_"

The message was answered by the blaze of the concentrated searchlights
from land and sea all directed on the _Astronef_. For a moment her
shining shape glittered like a speck of diamond in the midst of the
luminous haze far up in the sky, and then it vanished for many an
anxious day from mortal sight.

A few moments later Zaidie pointed over the stern and said:

"Look, there's the moon! Just fancy--our first stopping place! Well, it
doesn't look so very far off at present."

Redgrave turned and saw the pale yellow crescent of the new moon
swimming high above the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

"It almost looks as if we could steer straight to it right over the
water--only, of course, it wouldn't wait there for us," she went on.

"Oh, it'll be there when we want it, never fear," he laughed, "and,
after all, it's only a mere matter of about two hundred and forty
thousand miles away, and what's that in a trip that will cover hundreds
of millions? It will just be a sort of jumping-off place into Space for
us."

"Still, I shouldn't like to miss seeing it," she said. "I want to see
what there is on that other side which nobody has ever seen yet, and
settle that question about air and water. Won't it just be heavenly to
be able to come back and tell them all about it at home? But just fancy
me talking stuff like this when we are going, perhaps, to solve some of
the hidden mysteries of Creation, and, may be, look upon things that
human eyes were never meant to see," she went on, with a sudden change
in her voice.

He felt a little shiver in the arm that was resting upon his, and his
hand went down and caught hers.

"Well, we shall see a good many marvels, and, perhaps, miracles, before
we come back, but why should there be anything in Creation that the eyes
of created beings should not look upon? Anyhow, there's one t