The World Peril of 1910 Part 36

Soon after daybreak on the first of May, one of the airs.h.i.+ps that had been guarding Whernside dropped on the top of Winter Hill, and the captain gave Lennard a cablegram which read thus:

"LENNARD, Bolton, England: Good shot. As you left no pieces for us to shoot at we've let our shot go. No use for it here. Hope it will stop next celestial stranger coming this way. America thanks you.

Any terms you like for lecturing tour.--HENCh.e.l.l."

Lennard did not see his way to accept the lecturing offer because he had much more important business on hand: but a week later, after a magnificent and, if the word may be used, multiple marriage ceremony had been performed in Westminster Abbey, five airs.h.i.+ps, each with a bride and bridegroom on board, rose from the gardens of Buckingham Palace and, followed by the cheers of millions, winged their way westward. Thirty-five hours later there was such a dinner-party at the White House, Was.h.i.+ngton, as eclipsed all the previous glories even of American hospitality.

Nothing was ever seen of the projectile which "The Pittsburg Prattler"

had hurled into s.p.a.ce. Not even the great Whernside reflector was able to pick it up. The probability, therefore, is that even now it is still speeding on its lonely way through the Ocean of Immensity, and it is within the bounds of possibility that at some happy moment in the future and somewhere far away beyond the reach of human vision, its huge charge of explosives may do for some other threatened world what the one which the Bolton Baby coughed up into s.p.a.ce just in the nick of time did to save this home of ours from the impending Peril of 1910.

THE END