glowing against the dark sky, lit by the soft radiance of the streets beneath.  To the right, not a hundred yards away, rose Saint Edward’s tower, mellowed now to clear orange by the lapse of three-quarters of a century; to the left a flight of buildings, of an architectural design which he did not understand, but which gave him a sense of extreme satisfaction; in front towered the masses of Buckingham Palace as he seemed always to have known it.

The platform of the flying ship on which he stood hung in dock at least three hundred feet high above the roads beneath.  He had examined the whole vessel just now from stem to stern, and had found it vaguely familiar; he determined to examine it again presently.  There was no gas-bag to sustain it—­so much he had noticed—­though he could not say whence he had the idea that gas-bags were usual.  But it seemed to him as if the notion of airships did carry some faint association to his mind, although far less distinct than that of motor-cars and even trains.  He had enquired of his companion an hour or two earlier as they had discussed their journey as to whether they would not go by train and steamer, and had received the answer that these were never used except for very short journeys.

Here, then, he stood and stared.

It was very quiet up here; but he listened with considerable curiosity to the strange humming sound that filled the air, rising and falling, as of a beehive.  At first he thought it was the working of engines in the ship; but he presently perceived it to be the noise of the streets rising from below; and it was then that he saw for the first time that foot-passengers were almost entirely absent, and that practically the whole roadway, so far as he could make out from the high elevation at which he stood, was occupied by cars of all descriptions going this way and that.  They sounded soft horns as they went, but they bore no lights, for the streets were as light as day with a radiance that seemed to fall from beneath the eaves of all the buildings that lined them.  This effect of lighting had a curious result of making the city look as if it were seen through glass or water—­a beautifully finished, clean picture, moving within itself like some precise and elaborate mechanism.

He turned round at a touch on his arm.

“You would like to see the start, perhaps,” said the old priest.  “We are a little late to-night.  The country mails have only just arrived.  But we shall be off directly now.  Come this way.”

The upper deck, as the two turned inwards, presented an extremely pleasant and reassuring picture.  From stem to stern it ran clear, set out, however, with groups of tables and chairs clamped to the floor, at which sat a dozen parties or so, settling themselves down comfortably.  There were no funnels, no bridge, no break at all to the delightful vista.  The whole was lighted by the same device as were the streets, for round the upper edges of the transparent walls that held out the wind shone a steady, even glow from invisible lights.