Hastings went murmuring by overhead long, broad,
comfortable-looking cars, that were brightly lit after dusk. As
they flew by at night, transient flares of light and a rumbling
sound of passage, they kept up a perpetual summer lightning and
thunderstorm in the street below.

Presently the English Channel was bridged--a series of great iron
Eiffel Tower pillars carrying mono-rail cables at a height of a
hundred and fifty feet above the water, except near the middle,
where they rose higher to allow the passage of the London and
Antwerp shipping and the Hamburg-America liners.

Then heavy motor-cars began to run about on only a couple of
wheels, one behind the other, which for some reason upset Tom
dreadfully, and made him gloomy for days after the first one
passed the shop...

All this gyroscopic and mono-rail development naturally absorbed
a vast amount of public attention, and there was also a huge
excitement consequent upon the amazing gold discoveries off the
coast of Anglesea made by a submarine prospector, Miss Patricia
Giddy. She had taken her degree in geology and mineralogy in the
University of London, and while working upon the auriferous rocks
of North Wales, after a brief holiday spent in agitating for
women's suffrage, she had been struck by the possibility of these
reefs cropping up again under the water. She had set herself to
verify this supposition by the use of the submarine crawler
invented by Doctor Alberto Cassini. By a happy mingling of
reasoning and intuition peculiar to her sex she found gold at her
first descent, and emerged after three hours' submersion with