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.