"Ah! Mr. Andrew Provost," he exclaimed in thick but urbane tones. "We have met again. This is fortunate. But you see now; you see the German triumph. You see the Zeppelin with which they have conquered the air. Ah, it is magnificent!" Andrew had scarcely time to shake his hand and recognize this plump little person. He was vastly impressed at the sight some four thousand feet above him, and away to the left. He could have shouted with delight himself. The object, in fact, claimed his whole attention. "A Zeppelin!" he cried. "A real Zeppelin! One of Germany's air dreadnoughts--magnificent!" It was magnificent. Seldom yet have Englishmen had the opportunity of seeing one of those leviathans of the air. At a period when balloons have become common objects in the sky, when the whole world almost has become accustomed to aeroplanes scooping through the air, the people of most countries are still strangers to the sight of a mighty airship swimming in space. And there was one, a long, sinuous hull of neutral colour, so that even in broad daylight it was not too easily visible, floating horizontally in the sky, like some gigantic cigar, while fore and aft, immediately beneath the hull, were two boat-shaped objects, a little darker than the mass above supporting them. There was the dull hum of machinery too. "Moving along slowly," gasped Andrew, still wonderstruck at such a sight. "What's she doing?" "Finishing a continuous run of twenty-four hours and more," declared the little stranger, whom we will now introduce as Mr. Carl Reitberg. "Just showing us how fresh she is, and how easy the task has been," he cried in tones of the utmost pride. "See! She has more to show us. She has taken in fuel from the steamer yonder, and could sail again for another twenty-four hours. But she wishes to experiment with her bombs. Look, mein Herr! There is a float down below her. She will pulverize it. She will smash it. She will drop a bomb plumb into it, and, piff! it is gone. That, mein Herr, is the work of the latest Zeppelin." Perhaps a thousand passengers crowded the rails and watched the monster of the air, and it was as Mr. Reitberg had so proudly announced. The Zeppelin was manoeuvring away from the Hamburg-Amerika liner. Ahead of her, some five miles to the east, was a dot upon the ocean. Andrew swung his glasses to his eyes and fixed them upon that object. "A float of some sort--yes," he said. "She is motoring towards it. Then she will stop above it." "No--not at all," declared Mr. Reitberg. "She will continue at her fastest pace. Yet she will strike it. Watch. See--ah! Did I not say so? It is marvellous! There!"