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The motor by which they worked was, I thought, very ingenious. It is a small electric engine of eleven-horse power, set between the tubes, and has an armature of the finest chemically pure iron wire, wound with silver and insulated with collodion reduced by chemical means to cellulose. The armature, by an automatic device, is balanced to suit all degrees of speed, and has a revolution of 15,000 per minute. The reciprocating parts are of aluminum; the bearings are compressed graphite, lubricated with a volatile oil kept viscous by solid carbonic acid held in a box on the bearings. The motor and mechanism weigh only one hundred and twenty pounds; and the electricity is generated by oxidizing gas-retort carbon in fused soda, with oxide of copper as a reducer.

The idea of the ship is radically unlike former machines, which either depended on disturbing and churning up the air or relied on aeroplanes or the rush of air under an upward slant.

This latter and successful contrivance rests on the solid building up of a compressed air foundation beneath it, so that it cannot possibly fall. The direction is controlled in two or three ways; the usual one being by ordinary artificial silk sails, together with a large rudder of stretched silk for tacking and steering, as on the water. By using an aluminum screw, with an auxiliary engine, instead of the silk rudder, one is independent of the wind, and can raise the speed of the air-ship to between sixty and eighty miles an hour.

At the foot of the mountain we changed to one of these equipages, and, as we flew along, we saw many others scudding by in all quarters, far and near. The flotation sail — i.e., the hollow silk sail inflated with gas — I learned, had come into universal use for water-vessels as well, and had added immensely to the speed and excitement of yacht-racing. In fact, as we skirted the great lakes and passed over rivers and ponds, I had a chance to observe craft of all sorts and sizes with these sails, whizzing like arrows before the wind or leaning gracefully away from it and skimming the liquid surface as lightly as water-bugs, but much more beautiful and useful in their movements.

The shutter principle, also, Graemantle told me, had been adapted to steam-ships, or, rather, electric ocean liners and freighters; by using several hundred thin blades at the stern, in lieu of the old propeller, and also on the sides, which — by direct thrust when turned flat against the water — utilized the motion of the waves to condense air, and drove the vessel forward. Sun-engines, which derived electricity directly from sunlight, and another process that extracted it from coal in cloudy weather, supplied the motive power; and electrolysis along the sides of the ship reduced the skin friction of her passage through the deep.

Here and there Eva and I noticed, with curiosity — and Zorlin was with us in this certain little air packets that were flying around — “all by their lonesome;” as Eva said — always north and south and east or west. They were too small for anyone but a pigmy to hide in, and, in fact, there was no one in them. They went automatically. Zorlin, at last, was unable to maintain his reserve any longer. “What are they?” He asked.

Hammerfleet came to the fore with: “Merely express and mail earners. We have any quantity of them all over the country and the world. The magnetic lines generally keep them straight on their course; but if they are blown aside, a current is generated by their mechanism that puts them in line again. An automatic aneroid barometer, working a valve, keeps them at the right altitude.”

“But where do they go to?” Asked Eva.

“Look now this minute, and you will see. Watch that one. You notice it is driving straight for that tall skeleton wooden tower yonder?”

“Yes.”

We fixed our gaze upon the tower. The little express carrier drew near; and, as it touched the top of the tower, was clutched and held firm by an iron frame that caught its