only in English or in American. I have some highly dried
samples of vivid adventure ready for immediate consumption.
Twopence more and up goes the donkey, up, up, up to be
a satellite to an undiscovered star. Brave Donkey! I
follow."--R.S.]

CHAPTER I.

The iceberg was moving. There was no doubt of it. Moving with
a terrible sinuous motion. Occasionally an incautious ironclad
approached like a foolish hen, and pecked at the moving mass. Then
there was a slight crash, followed by a mild convulsion of masts, and
spars, and iron-plates, and 100-ton guns, then two or three gurgles
and all was still. The iceberg passed on smiling in triumph, and
British Admirals wrote to the _Times_ to declare that they had
known from the first that H.M.S. _Thunderbomb_ had been so faultily
constructed, as to make a contest with a hen-coop a certainty for the
hen-coop.

[Illustration]

And still the iceberg was moving. Within its central chamber sat a
venerable man, lightly clad in nankeen breeches, a cap of liberty,
and a Liberty silk shirt. He was writing cabalistically. He did not
know why, nor did he know what "cabalistically" meant. This was his
punishment. Why was he to be punished? Those who read shall hear.
The walls of the chamber were fitted with tubes, and electric wires,
and knobs and buttons. A bright fire burned on the hearth. The thick
Brussels carpet was littered with pot-boilers, all fizzing, and
sputtering, and steaming, like so many young Curates at a Penny