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Title: A Honeymoon in Space
Author: George Chetwynd Griffith
Release date: October 5, 2006 [eBook #19476]
Most recently updated: January 1, 2021
Language: English
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A HONEYMOON IN SPACE
by
GEORGE GRIFFITH
Author of "Valdar the Oft-Born," "The Virgin of the Sun," "The Rose of
Judah," &c., &c.
Illustrated by Stanley Wood and Harold Piffard
London
C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.
Henrietta Street
1901
Arno Press
A New York Times Company
New York--1975
Reprint Edition 1974 by Arno Press Inc.
Reprinted from a copy in The Library
of the University of California, Riverside
A Honeymoon in Space
[Illustration: "_The Earth, the Earth--thank God, the Earth!_"]
Contents
PROLOGUE--The First Cruise of the _Astronef_
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter X.
Chapter XI.
Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.
Chapter XV.
Chapter XVI.
Chapter XVII.
Chapter XVIII.
Chapter XIX.
Chapter XX.
Epilogue
List of Illustrations
"THE EARTH, THE EARTH--THANK GOD, THE EARTH!"
A HIDEOUS SHAPE ROSE OUT OF THE WATER BEHIND THEM
IT TOOK THE STRANGE-WINGED CRAFT AMIDSHIPS
SNOW PEAKS AND CLOUD SEAS
CAME FORWARD TO MEET THEM WITH BOTH HANDS OUTSTRETCHED
WHOLE MOUNTAIN RANGES OF GLOWING LAVA WERE HURLED UP MILES HIGH
WITHOUT ANY APPARENT EFFORT HE RAISED HER ABOUT FIVE FEET FROM THE FLOOR
THE HUGE PALELY LUMINOUS EYES LOOKED IN UPON THEM
PROLOGUE
THE FIRST CRUISE OF THE _ASTRONEF_
About eight o'clock on the morning of the 5th of November, 1900, those
of the passengers and crew of the American liner _St. Louis_ who
happened, whether from causes of duty or of their own pleasure, to be on
deck, had a very strange--in fact a quite unprecedented experience.
The big ship was ploughing her way through the long, smooth rollers at
her average twenty-one knots towards the rising sun, when the officer in
charge of the navigating bridge happened to turn his glasses straight
ahead. He took them down from his eyes, rubbed the two object-glasses
with the cuff of his coat, and looked again. The sun was shining through
a haze which so far dimmed the solar disc that it was possible to look
straight at it without inconvenience to the eyes.
The officer took another long squint, put his glasses down, rubbed his
eyes and took another, and murmured, "Well I'm damned!"
Just then the Fourth Officer came up on to the bridge to relieve his
senior while he went down for a cup of coffee and a biscuit. The Second
took him away to the other end of the bridge, out of hearing of the
helmsman and the quartermaster standing by, and said almost in a
whisper:
"Say, Norton, there's something ahead there that I can't make out. Just
as the sun got clear above the horizon I saw a black spot go straight
across it, right through the upper and lower limbs. I looked again, and
it was plumb in the middle of the disc. Look," he went on, speaking
louder in his growing excitement, "there it is again! I can see it
without the glasses now. See?"
The Fourth did not reply at once. He had the glasses close to his eyes,
and was moving them slowly about as though he were following some
shifting object in the sky. Then he handed them back, and said:
"If I didn't believe the thing was impossible I should say that's an
air-ship; but, for the present, I guess I'd rather wait till it gets a
bit nearer, if it's coming. Still, there _is_ something. Seems to be
getting bigger pretty fast, too. Perhaps it would be as well to notify
the old man. What do you think?"
"Guess we'd better," said the Second. "S'pose you go down. Don't say
anything except to him. We don't want any more excitement among the
people than we can help."
The Fourth nodded and went down the steps, and the Second began walking
up and down the bridge, every now and then taking another squint ahead.
Again and again the mysterious shape crossed the disc of the sun, always
vertically as though, whatever it might be, it was steering a direct
course from the sun to the ship, its apparent rising and falling being
due really to the dipping of her bows into the swells.
"Well, Mr. Charteris, what's the trouble?" said the Skipper as he
reached the bridge. "Nothing wrong, I hope? Have you sighted a derelict,
or what? Ay, what in hell's that!"
His hands went up to his eyes and he stared for a few moments at the
pale yellow oblate shape of the sun.
At this moment the _St. Louis'_ head dipped again, and the Captain saw
something like a black line swiftly drawn across the sun from bottom to
top.
"That's what I wanted to call your attention to, sir," said the Second
in a low tone. "I first noticed it crossing the sun as it rose through
the mist. I thought it was a spot of dirt on my glasses, but it has
crossed the sun several times since then, and for some minutes seemed to
remain dead in the middle of it. Later on it got quite a lot larger, and
whatever it is it's approaching us pretty rapidly. You see it's quite
plain to the naked eye now."
By this time several of the crew and of the early loungers on deck had
also caught sight of the strange thing which seemed to be hanging and
swinging between the sky and the sea. People dived below for their
glasses, knocked at their friends' state-room doors and told them to get
up because something was flying towards the ship through the air; and in
a very few minutes there were hundreds of passengers on deck in all
varieties of early morning costume, and scores of glasses, held to
anxious eyes, were being directed ahead.
The glasses, however, soon became unnecessary, for the passengers had
scarcely got up on deck before the mysterious object to the eastward at
length took definite shape, and as it did so mouths were opened as well
as eyes, for the owners of the eyes and mouths beheld just then the
strangest sight that travellers by sea or land had ever s Next |