countenance he turned on Belfast, who had now come back, was rueful in the extreme. It was the image of grief and despair. "Did you see nothing whatever during the night, Professor?" he asked of Belfast, though he knew very well the answer he was to get. "Nothing whatever." "But you saw them once, didn't you?" "Them! Who?" "Our friends." "Oh! the Projectile--well--I think I must have made some oversight." "Don't say that! Did not Mr. M'Connell see it also?" "No. He only wrote out what I dictated." "Why, you must have seen it! I have seen it myself!" "You shall never see it again! It's shot off into space." "You're as wrong now as you thought you were right yesterday." "I'm sorry to say I was wrong yesterday; but I have every reason to believe I'm right to-day." "We shall see! Wait till to-night!" "To-night! Too late! As far as the Projectile is concerned, night is now no better than day." The learned Professor was quite right, but in a way which he did not exactly expect. That very evening, after a weary day, apparently a month long, during which Marston sought in vain for a few hours' repose, just as all hands, well wrapped up in warm furs, were getting ready to assume their posts once more near the mouth of the gigantic Telescope, Mr. M'Connell hastily presented himself with a dispatch for Belfast. The Professor was listlessly breaking the envelope, when he uttered a sharp cry of surprise. "Hey!" cried Marston quickly. "What's up now?" "Oh!! The Pro--pro--projectile!!" "What of it? What? Oh what?? Speak!!" "IT'S BACK!!" Marston uttered a wild yell of mingled horror, surprise, and joy, jumped a little into the air, and then fell flat and motionless on the platform. Had Belfast shot him with a ten pound weight, right between the two eyes, he could not have knocked him flatter or stiffer. Having neither slept all night, nor eaten all day, the poor fellow's system had become so weak that such unexpected news was really more than he could bear. Besides, as one of the Cambridge men of the party, a young medical student, remarked: the thin, cold air of these high mountains was extremely enervating. The astronomers, all exceedingly alarmed, did what they could to recover their friend from his fit, but it was nearly ten minutes before they had the satisfaction of seeing his limbs moving with a slight quiver and his breast beginning to heave. At last the color came back to his face and his eyes opened. He stared around for a few seconds at his friends, evidently unconscious, but his senses were not long in returning. "Say!" he uttered at last in a faint voice. "Well!" replied Belfast. "Where is that infernal Pro--pro--jectile?" "In the Pacific Ocean." "What??" He was on his feet in an instant. "Say that again!" "In the Pacific Ocean." "Hurrah! All right! Old Barbican's not made into mincemeat yet! No, sirree! Let's start!" "Where for?" "San Francisco!" "When?" "This instant!" "In the dark?"