Ah! he's going to speak us! Hope he's honest." Everybody on board the _St.Louis_ was up on deck by this time, and the excitement rose to fever-heat as the strange vessel swept down towards them from the middle sky, passed them like a flash of light, swung round the stern, and ranged up alongside to starboard some twenty feet from the bridge rail.
She was about a hundred and twenty feet long, with some twenty feet of depth and thirty of beam, and the Captain and many of his officers and passengers were very much relieved to find that, as far as could be seen, she carried no weapons of offence.
As she ranged up alongside, a sliding door opened in the glass-domed roof amidships, just opposite to the end of the _St.Louis'_ bridge.

A tall, fair-haired, clean-featured man, of about thirty, in grey flannels, tipped up his golf cap with his thumb, and said: "Good morning, Captain! You remember me, I suppose?
Had a fine passage, so far?
I thought I should meet you somewhere about here." The Captain of the _St.Louis_, in common with every one else on board, had already had his credulity stretched about as far as it would go, and he was beginning to wonder whether he was really awake; but when he heard the hail and recognised the speaker he stared at him in blank and, for the moment, speechless bewilderment.

Then he got hold of his voice again and said, keeping as steady as he could: "Good morning, my Lord! Guess I never expected to meet even you like this in the middle of the Atlantic! So the newspaper men were right for once in a way, and you _have_ got an air-ship that will fly ?" "And a good deal more than that, Captain, if she wants to.

I am just taking a trial trip across the Atlantic before I start on a run round the Solar System.

Sounds like a lie, doesn't it?
But it's coming off.
Oh, good morning, Miss Rennick! Captain, may I come on board ?" "By all means, my Lord, only I'm afraid I daren't stop Uncle Sam's mails, even for you." "There's no need for that, Captain, on a smooth sea like this," was the reply.