We went over to a window, and I pointed out the planet, remarking, "There it is; that little red star is the world which we hope to land upon in a few weeks' time. You will notice that it does not lie quite in the direction in which we are moving, for I must tell you that we are not on our course to Mars at present. I thought we should all be glad to have a look at the moon from a close point of view now we have the chance, and M'Allister will remember that I gave him instructions just before supper to direct our course so as to head off the moon in its journey." "Quite right, Professor, so you did," said M'Allister; "but I did not fully understand the reason of your instructions." "But," interrupted John, "are we not going rather out of our way?" "Yes, that is so, John," I replied, "but a few thousand miles more or less will make very little difference to us at the rate we shall travel, especially if you allow for the fact that the earth and moon are both moving nearly in the direction we wish to go. Besides, I hope to approach sufficiently near the moon to enable us to add a little more power to our store, so it will not all be lost time; and we can also use the moon to give us a fresh start. But for the fact that it would be best for us to reach the moon before it has waned to any large extent we might have delayed our start for many days, and, whilst considerably shortening our journey, still arrived at Mars on the date we have fixed." Our chronometer was housed in a substantial non-magnetic cubicle, with a very thick glass window, in order to protect it from the magnetism and electricity which pervaded our vessel. On looking at the chronometer I found the time was nearly eleven o'clock. We had, therefore, been nearly two hours on our journey and had travelled some three hundred miles, mostly in an upward direction from the earth; so if there were any of the earth's atmosphere around our vessel it must be of the most extreme tenuity, and we might safely increase our speed. I accordingly gave M'Allister the order to switch on the power gradually, up to our full speed, and it was not long before we were rushing through space at the rate of over eighty-three thousand miles an hour. At this rate, as I told them, we might expect to reach the moon in a little over sixteen hours, allowing for loss in slackening down at the latter part of the journey. "It so happens," I said, "that the moon's present distance from the earth is rather less than 226,000 miles, being its nearest approach to the earth during this month." John at once asked, "How it happened that, if the moon were only this comparatively short distance away from us, I reckoned it would require over sixteen hours to reach it at the tremendous speed we were now moving"; and added, "I thought we should be there in about three hours."