The Empire City read the farewell message.
"Thank God for the peace. Goodbye for the present. We shall convey the
joint compliments of John Bull and Uncle Sam to the peoples of the
planets when we find them. _Au revoir!_"
The message was answered by the blaze of the concentrated searchlights
from land and sea all directed on the _Astronef_. For a moment her
shining shape glittered like a speck of diamond in the midst of the
luminous haze far up in the sky, and then it vanished for many an
anxious day from mortal sight.
A few moments later Zaidie pointed over the stern and said:
"Look, there's the moon! Just fancy--our first stopping place! Well, it
doesn't look so very far off at present."
Redgrave turned and saw the pale yellow crescent of the new moon
swimming high above the eastern edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
"It almost looks as if we could steer straight to it right over the
water--only, of course, it wouldn't wait there for us," she went on.
"Oh, it'll be there when we want it, never fear," he laughed, "and,
after all, it's only a mere matter of about two hundred and forty
thousand miles away, and what's that in a trip that will cover hundreds
of millions? It will just be a sort of jumping-off place into Space for
us."
"Still, I shouldn't like to miss seeing it," she said. "I want to see
what there is on that other side which nobody has ever seen yet, and
settle that question about air and water.
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