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    A Honeymoon in Space
    A Honeymoon in Space
    A Honeymoon in Space
    Ebook237 pages3 hours

    A Honeymoon in Space

    By George Griffith

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    About this ebook

    One of the first novels about interplanetary travel, A Honeymoon in Space takes readers on a journey across the solar system

    Lenox, the Earl of Redgrave, has made the greatest scientific discovery in the history of the world: a flying ship with the power to break free of Earth’s gravity and take to the stars. But before he uses it to expand humanity’s understanding of the universe, he has some personal business to attend to—namely, wooing an old flame.
     
    The lady in question is Zaidie, the daughter of Lenox’s colleague Professor Rennick. With Zaidie about to be forced into a loveless marriage, Lenox knows he must do something drastic. He steals her away and takes her out of this world—literally. Griffith’s accounts of other planets are spectacularly engaging—from subterranean civilizations on the moon to the warlike Martians to the musical inhabitants of Venus. This remarkable adventure makes for a memorable honeymoon indeed.
     
    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateFeb 24, 2015
    ISBN9781504005906
    Author

    George Griffith

    George Griffith (1857–1906) was one of Britain’s great writers of science fiction and a noted explorer. After working as a schoolmaster in his twenties, Griffith found fame with the publication of The Angel of the Revolution, an account of a terrorist group that uses air warfare to take over the world. Griffith was also an avid explorer, setting the record for voyaging around the world when he performed the feat in just sixty-five days. 

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    Reviews for A Honeymoon in Space

    2/5

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    • 3/5
      This is not an easy book.

      Humans have established a colony on Mars. It's driven and funded by an international consortium of universities--the United Universities, or UU. The colony consists of six towers, of which the West, Chinese, and Sud-Am towers figure most prominently in the story. The colonists have been chosen for atheism and emotional stability. It's not altogether clear that they succeeded on the second point. Among the odd choices made is that the colonists get assigned computer-generated names, meaning nothing, to symbolize having cut their ties to Earth. It's as if they've established a sixties commune, more than a colony on Mars, in some respects.

      The big problem haunting the colonists is that, ten years in, they've had a long series of miscarriages and stillbirths and horribly deformed babies that didn't live even five minutes, but no successful live births. The colony seems doomed.

      Most of the action, which mostly consists of conversation and interior thoughts, is on Mars, but we also get interludes on Earth, where we learn that the colonists are probably in even more trouble than they realize. Earth is sinking into s growing series of wars--which include a successful invasion of eastern North America. The UU is getting tired of supporting a colony that seems doomed anyway.

      It isn't just the tough subject matter that makes this book hard to enjoy. It's clear that Mr. Aldiss dislikes, if not the human race, at least the 21st century. There are items called "screamers" which, in context, appear to most likely be cell phones. Some other items are called "shriekers," which might be tvs, or maybe something else. It appears that "partners" has completely displaced "husband/wife," which might imply an adoption of gender-neutral terminology, but no. The man in a couple is called the "partner," while the woman is the "partness." There is not one single likable, admirable, compelling, or even especially interesting character in the book. All the interest comes from their circumstances--though it can't be denied that a colony striving to survive on Mars is a pretty interesting circumstance.

      I do want to be clear that none, or at least very little, of this is a failure of writing. Aldiss hasn't lost it. This book surely has an audience, and audience that will think I am a nut with low tastes.

      I'm just not that audience.

      I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 3/5
      Received via NetGalley from the Open Road Media in exchange for an honest and completely unbiased review.

      Also posted on Silk & Serif

      Finches of Mars is the work of science fictions most eminent authors. I researched Aldiss upon completion of this book and learned that most of his books require analysis and intellectual musings. The concept of all the Universities in the world sending people to Mars to colonize only to discover child birth nearly impossible. Children are the future of any colonization effort, so how will they survive? Obviously, the effects of countless still births is an under explored concept. Unfortunately, perhaps Aldiss should have turned his eye to a different topic for his final book.

      Aldiss weaves a story that is at times incoherent and often feels like two books set into one. The author spends plenty of time on plenty of issues such as theology, philosophy and sociology but falls short in connecting all these ideas into a steady stream throughout the book. Although Aldiss compares the colonizers of Tharsis to the Galapagos Finches from Darwin's Origin of Species the ending does very little to sustain this collation.

      However, the book's messages are extremely relevant to today's concerns regarding global warming, over population and religious strife. The tacit writing style was thought provoking. However, the overall story line was weak because there was only a rarely revisited concept linking all these character's experiences together: Darwinism. The ending was abrupt and tried to link Darwinism to the Tharsis colony, but failed miserably. I didn't hate this book, it just lacked a common thread to link all the random character experiences together.

      My suggestion would be read this book when you want something to inspire thoughtfulness, but aren't particularly picky about the story arch being a common thread. This book would appeal to readers who enjoy science fiction, literary analysis, deep sociological issues, philosophy or Aldiss' earlier work.

      Farewell Brian W Aldiss from the realm of science fiction, you will be missed!
    • 2/5
      Years ago, when I was still learning what science fiction is, a Bulgarian publisher decided to translate and make available the Helliconia Trilogy. I loved it. It made me appreciate what Aldiss can do when he puts his mind to it. Unfortunately he seems to have forgotten how to do that. The story should have been a good one - humanity made it to Mars, made colonies and is surviving. And all would have been great if babies could be born - but all of them die - most before birth, some after birth. But they never survive - and without it, the world really do not belong to the humans. There are passages that hint at what Aldiss can do and the story is heart-breaking. But far more often, it is disjointed and alogical, sounding more as an exercise or a rough draft. How exactly that could happen in such a novel is beyond me. The saving grace of the whole book are the ideas - they are there, underdeveloped but still visible. And the high expectations for the last SF novel of one of the best authors did not help - a lot of my frustration was because of this - I would have accepted some of it from a new author that is still learning the craft - or at least I would have accepted it a bit better. I think I need to go and reread the Helliconia Trilogy - I really do not want to have "Finches of Mars" as my last memory of Aldiss.
    • 1/5
      Brian W. Aldiss has stated that Finches of Mars is his final science fiction novel, and all I can say is, "Thank God!" He was named a Grand Master of Science Fiction in 1999; while his earlier work (none of which I have read) may be stellar, he is now, at 90, clearly resting on his laurels because Finches of Mars is a disjointed and virtually unreadable disaster.I probably should have paid closer attention to the book's description on NetGalley before requesting an ARC. The publisher states that it is "[a] novel of philosophy as much as science fiction," and that is exactly how it comes across: as a random series of philosophical musings with no real plot and little connection beyond the same cast of cold and boring characters. As to the first point (randomness), consider this passage:"He got up to make for Kinshasa, and work, and study. His nose was still bleeding.Food rations were getting smaller, but they had no worries about water shortages; or rather, they had not thought to worry about its running out: soundings had shown that the cavern containing the subterranean water was vast."Given the absence of any transition whatsoever between these two paragraphs, one might be forgiven for believing that both the bleeding nose and the food shortage occurred at the same time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, yet the concluding reference to a cavern of subterranean water abruptly notifies the reader that we are now on Mars, miles and years away from the blow Rasir received from his uncle.As to the second point (unbelievable characters), upon returning from an expedition during which they discovered possible evidence of a previous life form on Mars's surface, the colonists' first priority is not to engage in scientific analysis, but to argue over what word they should use for"the new emotion many of them experienced on this occasion when walking on Mars. Eventually they decided to adopt metanipoko. An intensity of regret and delight. Stroy ventured to suggest selbsthilfloszwang. It was considered but not adopted. . . . Several people came up to Stroy after the meeting to say they regretted her new word had not been adopted."Seriously? If all conversations on Mars were this trivial, no wonder some of the universities supporting the colony withdrew their funding, leading to the smaller food rations which concerned Rasir two chapters earlier.Or what about this conversation between a doctor and her dying patient:"She held his hand, regarding him gravely. "Are we in some way a dream of the cosmos? Although it goes against my profession, I mean the profession of healing, I sometimes find myself inclining to a belief that we are insubstantial beings.He blinked at her, acknowledging that indeed he was a prime example of an insubstantial being."I suspect the patient's blink was not an acknowledgement of his insubstantiality, but an indication of his perplexity over the identity of the nut holding his hand.Aldiss fans may want to read Finches of Mars for completeness; those looking for a good story with relatable characters should go elsewhere.I received a free copy of Finches of Mars through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
    • 2/5
      The sketches of well-known and respected artists are as sought-after as their more complete works of art. They convey the ideas and inspirations of the artist, the stages of development of the artist's conception and oeuvré, as well as displays of virtuoso technique. It is in this frame of mind that one must approach Finches of Mars. The work is a series of scenes with a soupçon of dialog and action, a collection of generously delineated ideas from the narrator/author. These are sketches of some problems a fledgling utopia might face when separated by time and distance from its parent civilization, in this case a nightmare dystopia on Earth brought on by overpopulation.Of course, lack of normal resources is a major concern - normal gravity, breathable air, potable water, native food, acceptable levels of radiation, etc. However, some of the most intransigent problems are found in the human psyche and libido, the problems the human race will bring with it, no matter how tightly circumscribed the selection criteria for potential colonists. Brian Aldiss goes a long way to carefully select his colonists in order to avoid the wars and disputations occurring on earth. Most particularly, they must be atheists or agnostics so as to avoid religious differences. They also must be highly intelligent and well educated, supposedly relying on logic rather than emotion to resolve conflicts, although that criteria needn't apply to people employed to do menial labor in the colony.Beyond the expected difficulties in this struggling community, Aldiss has posited that the effect of lesser gravity causes most fetuses to abort and any that survive until birth die within hours of delivery of the infant. This problem means that, unless it is successfully dealt with, the colony has no long term viability.This is a good setup for a novel. There are economic conflicts (dependency on the distant dystopian civilization for food and other resources), ecological conflicts, social conflicts and physical conflicts galore, even in a supposed utopia! What follows, though, is not a completed work of art; rather, it is a series of sketches of some of the kinds of events that could take place as the colonists face each of these conflicts. There is occasional dialog as a scene is set, sometimes some action. Maybe three-quarters of the content is the narrator, in a third-person omniscient point of view, describing, sketching, the current situation and its moral and ethical implications.The concepts are quite interesting, and if one accepts the restrictions used to select colonists, then the makings of an interesting novel are all present. The scenes are presented in a chronological order, but there are a couple of massive discontinuities. Due to these large gaps in time and to the large range of conflicts to address, character development is minimal. Rather, a sketch is presented of the driving force in several of the actors - sexual urges, forsaken love, spirituality. Interestingly, it is all of these physical and emotional forces which provide the conflicts in these hyper-intelligent mentally-centered colonists.This is an interesting sketchbook of ideas, placed in a tentative plot-order by the major conflict of the lack of viable birth on Mars. The play of morality and ethics when emotional drives lead to conflicts in an intellectual environment is quite tantalizing. But a completed masterpiece, this is not. One can only wish that Aldiss would take this rich store of ideas and sketches and complete it, turning it into a novel where the characters develop beyond their original raison d'être and demonstrate by their actions and dialogue how they resolve their many conflicts, rather than having a narrator/author describe the development and resolution of each. But as a sketchbook of Brian Aldiss' inspirations, concepts, techniques and fertile mind, it is worth reading, exploring and enjoying.I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
    • 2/5
      The only good thing you can say about this novel is that it’s better than White Mars. Essentially, this is a rewriting of that 1999 utopian novel co-written with Sir Roger Penrose.This may be advertised as an environmental dystopian novel with Earth a mess from war, global warming, bee colony collapse, overpopulation, environmental disaster, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and ignorance. Humanity’s colony on Mars, improbably run and sponsored by a consortium of universities, the United Universities, may be threatened by women being unable to give birth. This, though, is ultimately a utopian novel. The Martian colony is about Mankind Achieving a Renewed Society. Like all utopian works, we get a list of what’s wrong with our world and the solutions. Aldiss is a good enough writer where he abbreviates these sections and has characters give counterarguments. But the arguments are too brief to be convincing, the characters who give them so numerous and thinly described that only two hydrologists, the first men on Mars, are in any way memorable or even distinguishable from the rest of the Martian crowd.We get Martian life of a decidedly plausible nature instead of the ludicrous moving mountain of Mons Olympus in White Mars. Aldiss, who has long returned to evolutionary themes in his career, talks about evolution here, but he seems to falter. Are we to see the Martian society as a sort of organism speciating from general humanity, Hamiltonian fitness at work via a carefully (though, it turns out, not so much) group of people?. Or are we to see the evolution happening on the individual level in which case, by analogy, he’s given us Lamarckism and not Darwinian evolution? We also seem to be a bit shy about saying races are subspecies of man that have, by definition, significantly different traits manifested, partly, in their history.At least we are spared the boring, cheap mysticism of White Mars and its talk of particle physics.

    Book preview

    A Honeymoon in Space - George Griffith

    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. I looked again, and it was plumb in the middle of the disc. Look, he went on, speaking louder in his growing excitement, there it is again! I can see it without the glasses now. See?

    The Fourth did not reply at once. He had the glasses close to his eyes, and was moving them slowly about as though he were following some shifting object in the sky. Then he handed them back, and said:

    "If I didn’t believe the thing was impossible I should say that’s an air-ship; but, for the present, I guess I’d rather wait till it gets a bit nearer, if it’s coming. Still, there is something. Seems to be getting bigger pretty fast, too. Perhaps it would be as well to notify the old man. What do you think?"

    Guess we’d better, said the Second. S’pose you go down. Don’t say anything except to him. We don’t want any more excitement among the people than we can help.

    The Fourth nodded and went down the steps, and the Second began walking up and down the bridge, every now and then taking another squint ahead. Again and again the mysterious shape crossed the disc of the sun, always vertically as though, whatever it might be, it was steering a direct course from the sun to the ship, its apparent rising and falling being due really to the dipping of her bows into the swells.

    Well, Mr. Charteris, what’s the trouble? said the Skipper as he reached the bridge. Nothing wrong, I hope? Have you sighted a derelict, or what? Ay, what in hell’s that!

    His hands went up to his eyes and he stared for a few moments at the pale yellow oblate shape of the sun.

    At this moment the St. Louis’ head dipped again, and the Captain saw something like a black line swiftly drawn across the sun from bottom to top.

    That’s what I wanted to call your attention to, sir, said the Second in a low tone. I first noticed it crossing the sun as it rose through the mist. I thought it was a spot of dirt on my glasses, but it has crossed the sun several times since then, and for some minutes seemed to remain dead in the middle of it. Later on it got quite a lot larger, and whatever it is it’s approaching us pretty rapidly. You see it’s quite plain to the naked eye now.

    By this time several of the crew and of the early loungers on deck had also caught sight of the strange thing which seemed to be hanging and swinging between the sky and the sea. People dived below for their glasses, knocked at their friends’ state-room doors and told them to get up because something was flying towards the ship through the air; and in a very few minutes there were hundreds of passengers on deck in all varieties of early morning costume, and scores of glasses, held to anxious eyes, were being directed ahead.

    The glasses, however, soon became unnecessary, for the passengers had scarcely got up on deck before the mysterious object to the eastward at length took definite shape, and as it did so mouths were opened as well as eyes, for the owners of the eyes and mouths beheld just then the strangest sight that travellers by sea or land had ever seen.

    Within the distance of about a mile it swung round at right angles to the steamer’s course with a rapidity which plainly showed that it was entirely obedient to the control of a guiding intelligence, and hundreds of eager eyes on board the liner saw, sweeping down from the grey-blue of the early morning sky, a vessel whose hull seemed to be constructed of some metal which shone with a pale, steely lustre.

    It was pointed at both ends, the forward end being shaped something like a spur or ram. At the after end were two flickering, interlacing circles of a glittering greenish-yellow colour, apparently formed by two intersecting propellers driven at an enormous velocity. Behind these was a vertical fan of triangular shape. The craft appeared to be flat-bottomed, and for about a third of her length amidships the upper half of her hull was covered with a curving, domelike roof of glass.

    She’s an air-ship of some sort, there’s no doubt about that, said the Captain, so I guess the great problem has got solved at last. And yet it ain’t a balloon, because it’s coming against the wind, and it’s nothing of the æroplane sort neither, because it hasn’t planes or kites or any fixings of that kind. Still it’s made of something like metal and glass, and it must take a lot of keeping up. It’s travelling at a pretty healthy speed too. Getting on for a hundred miles an hour, I should guess. 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. Just keep on as you are going and I’ll come alongside.

    He put his head inside the door and called something up a speaking-tube which led to a glass-walled chamber in the forward part of the roof, where a motionless figure stood before a little steering wheel.

    The craft immediately began to edge nearer and nearer to the liner’s rail, keeping speed so exactly with her that the threshold of the door touched the end of the bridge without a perceptible jar. Then the flannel-clad figure jumped on to the bridge and held out his hand to the Captain.

    As they shook hands he said in a low tone, I want a word or two in private with you, as soon as possible.

    The commander saw a very serious meaning in his eyes. Besides, even if he had not made his appearance under such extraordinary circumstances, it was quite impossible that one of his social position and his wealth and influence could have made such a request without good reason for it, so he replied:

    Certainly, my Lord. Will you come down to my room?

    Hundreds of anxious, curious eyes looked upon the tall athletic figure and the regular-featured, bronzed, honest English face as Rollo Lenox Smeaton Aubrey, Earl of Redgrave, Baron Smeaton in the Peerage of England, and Viscount Aubrey in the Peerage of Ireland, followed the Captain to his room through the parting crowd of passengers. He nodded to one or two familiar faces in the crowd, for he was an old Atlantic ferryman, and had crossed five times with Captain Hawkins in the St. Louis.

    Then he caught sight of a well and fondly remembered face which he had not seen for over two years. It was a face which possessed at once the fair Anglo-Saxon skin, the firm and yet delicate Anglo-Saxon features, and the wavy wealth of the old Saxon gold-brown hair; but a pair of big, soft, pansy eyes, fringed with long, curling, black lashes, looked out from under dark and perhaps just a trifle heavy eyebrows. Moreover, there was that indescribable expression in the curve of her lips and the pose of her head; to say nothing of a lissome, vivacious grace in her whole carriage which proclaimed her a daughter of the younger branch of the Race that Rules.

    Their eyes met for an instant, and Lord Redgrave was startled and even a trifle angered to see that she flushed up quickly, and that the momentary smile with which she greeted him died away as she turned her head aside. Still, he was a man accustomed to do what he wanted: and what he wanted to do just then was to shake hands with Lilla Zaidie Rennick, and so he went straight towards her, raised his cap, and held out his hand saying, first with a glance into her eyes, and then with one upward at the Astronef:

    Good morning again, Miss Rennick! You see it is done.

    Good morning, Lord Redgrave! she replied, he thought, a little awkwardly. Yes, I see you have kept your promise. What a pity it is too late! But I hope you will be able to stop long enough to tell us all about it. This is Mrs. Van Stuyler, who has taken me under her protection on my journey to Europe.

    His lordship returned the bow of a tall, somewhat hard-featured matron who looked dignified even in the somewhat nondescript costume which most of the ladies were wearing. But her eyes were kindly, and he said:

    Very pleased to meet, Mrs. Van Stuyler. I heard you were coming, and I was in hopes of catching you on the other side before you left. And now, if you will excuse me, I must go and have a chat with the Skipper. He raised his cap again and presently vanished from the curious eyes of the excited crowd, through the door of the Captain’s apartment.

    Captain Hawkins closed the door of his sitting-room as he entered, and said:

    Now, my Lord, I’m not going to ask you any questions to begin with, because if I once began I should never stop; and besides, perhaps you’d like to have your own say right away.

    Perhaps that will be the shortest way, said his lordship. "The fact is, we’ve not only the remains of this Boer business on our hands, but we’ve had what is practically a declaration of war from France and Russia. Briefly it’s this way. A few weeks ago, while the Allies thought they were fighting the Boxers, it came to the knowledge of my brother, the Foreign Secretary, that the Tsung-li-Yamen had concluded a secret treaty with Russia which practically annulled all our rights over the Yang-tse Valley, and gave Russia the right to bring her Northern Railway right down through China.

    "As you know, we’ve stood a lot too much in that part of the world already, but we couldn’t stand this; so about ten days ago an ultimatum was sent declaring that the British Government would consider any encroachment on the Yang-tse Valley as an unfriendly act.

    "Meanwhile France chipped in with a notification that she was going to occupy Morocco as a compensation for Fashoda, and added a few nasty things about Egypt and other places. Of course we couldn’t stand that either, so there was another ultimatum, and the upshot of it all was that I got a wire late last night from my brother telling me that war would almost certainly be declared to-day, and asking me for the use of this craft of mine as a sort of dispatch-boat if she was ready. She is intended for something very much better than fighting purposes, so he couldn’t ask me to use her as a war-ship; besides, I am under a solemn obligation to her inventor—her creator, in fact, for I’ve only built her—to blow her to pieces rather than allow her to be used as a fighting machine except, of course, in sheer personal self-defence.

    "There is the telegram from my brother, so you can see there’s no mistake, and just after it came a messenger asking me, if the machine was a success, to bring this with me across the Atlantic as fast as I could come. It is the duplicate of an offensive and defensive alliance between Great Britain and the United States, of which the details had been arranged just as this complication arose. Another is coming across by a fast cruiser, and, of course, the news will have got to Washington by cable by this time.

    By the time you get to the entrance of the Channel you will probably find it swarming with French cruisers and torpedo-destroyers, so if you’ll be advised by me, you’ll leave Queenstown out and get as far north as possible.

    Lord Redgrave, said the Captain, putting out his hand, "I’m responsible for a good bit right here, and I don’t know how to thank you enough. I guess that treaty’s been given away back to France by some of our Irish statesmen by now, and it’d be mighty unhealthy for the St. Louis to fall in with a French or Russian cruiser—"

    That’s all right, Captain, said Lord Redgrave, taking his hand. "I should have warned any other British or American ship. At the same time, I must confess that my motives in warning you were not entirely unselfish. The fact is, there’s some one on board the St. Louis whom I should decidedly object to see taken off to France as a prisoner of war."

    And may I ask who that is? said Captain Hawkins.

    Why not? replied his lordship. It’s the young lady I spoke to on deck just now, Miss Rennick. Her father was the inventor of that craft of mine. No one would believe his theories. He was refused patents both in England and America on the ground of lack of practical utility. I met him about two years ago, that is to say rather more than a year before his death, when I was stopping at Banff up in the Canadian Rockies. We made a travellers’ acquaintance, and he told me about this idea of his. I was very much interested, but I’m afraid I must confess that I might not have taken it up practically if the Professor hadn’t happened to possess an exceedingly beautiful daughter. However, of course I’m pretty glad now that I did do it; though the experiments cost nearly five thousand pounds and the craft herself close on a quarter of a million. Still, she is worth every penny of it, and I was bringing her over to offer to Miss Rennick as a wedding present, that is to say if she’d have it—and me.

    Captain Hawkins looked up and said rather seriously:

    Then, my Lord, I presume you don’t know—

    Don’t know what?

    That Miss Rennick is crossing in the care of Mrs. Van Stuyler, to be married in London next month.

    The devil she is! And to whom, may I ask? exclaimed his lordship, pulling himself up very straight.

    To the Marquis of Byfleet, son of the Duke of Duncaster. I wonder you didn’t hear of it. The match was arranged last fall. From what people say she’s not very desperately in love with him, but—well, I fancy it’s like rather too many of these Anglo-American matches. A couple of million dollars on one side, a title on the other, and mighty little real love between them.

    But, said Redgrave between his teeth, I didn’t understand that Miss Rennick ever had a fortune; in fact I’m quite certain that if her father had been a rich man he’d have worked out his invention himself.

    Oh, the dollars aren’t his. In fact they won’t be hers till she marries, replied the Captain. They belong to her uncle, old Russell Rennick. He got in on the ground floor of the New York and Chicago ice trusts, and made millions. He’s going to spend some of them on making his niece a Marchioness. That’s about all there is to it.

    Oh, indeed! said Redgrave, still between his teeth. "Well, considering that Byfleet is about as big a wastrel as ever disgraced the English aristocracy, I don’t think either Miss Rennick or her uncle will make a very good bargain. However, of course that’s no affair of mine now. I

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