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.