d only three words. These were transmitted to
the two assistant engineers in the fore and aft engine-houses. At a
sign the helmsman changed the-direction of the "Albatross" a couple
of points to the southwest; at the same time Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans felt that a greater speed had been given to the propellers.

In fact, the speed had been doubled, and now surpassed anything that
had ever been attained by terrestrial Engines. Torpedo-boats do their
twenty-two knots an hour; railway trains do their sixty miles an
hour; the ice-boats on the frozen Hudson do their sixty-five miles an
hour; a machine built by the Patterson company, with a cogged wheel,
has done its eighty miles; and another locomotive between Trenton and
Jersey City has done its eighty-four.

But the "Albatross," at full speed, could do her hundred and twenty
miles an hour, or 176 feet per second. This speed is that of the
storm which tears up trees by the roots. It is the mean speed of the
carrier pigeon, and is only surpassed by the flight of the swallow
(220 feet per second) and that of the swift (274 feet per second).

In a word, as Robur had said, the "Albatross," by using the whole
force of her screws, could make the tour of the globe in two hundred
hours, or less than eight days.

Is it necessary to say so? The phenomenon whose appearance had so
much puzzled the people of both worlds was the aeronef of the
engineer. The trumpet which blared its startling fanfares through the
air was that of the mate, Tom Turner. The flag planted on the chief
monuments of Europe, Asia, America, was the flag of Robur the
Conqueror and his "Albatross."

And if up to then the engineer had taken many precautions against
being recognized, if by preference he traveled at night, clearing the
way with his electric lights, and during the day vanishing into the
zones above the clouds, he seemed now to have no wish to keep his
secret hidden. And if he had come to Philadelphia and presented
himself at the meeting of the Weldon Institute, was it not that they
might share in his prodigious discovery, and convince "ipso facto"
the most incredulous? We know how he had been received, and we see
what reprisals he had taken on the president and secretary of the
club.

Again did Robur approach his prisoners, who affected to be in no way
surprised at what they saw, of what had succeeded in spite of them.
Evidently beneath the cranium of these two Anglo-Saxon heads there
was a t