The h2g2 Literary Corner: A Honeymoon in Space
Created | Updated Jun 19, 2016
We'll let this adventure speak for itself. It's too funny not to.
A Honeymoon in Space
From:
George Griffith (George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones)
A Honeymoon in Space
London, 1901.
Everybody on board the St. Louis1 was up on deck by this time, and the excitement rose to fever-heat as the strange vessel swept down towards them from the middle sky, passed them like a flash of light, swung round the stern, and ranged up alongside to starboard some twenty feet from the bridge rail.
She2 was about a hundred and twenty feet long, with some twenty feet of depth and thirty of beam, and the Captain and many of his officers and passengers were very much relieved to find that, as far as could be seen, she carried no weapons of offence.
As she ranged up alongside, a sliding door opened in the glass-domed roof amidships, just opposite to the end of the St. Louis' bridge. A tall, fair-haired, clean-featured man, of about thirty, in grey flannels, tipped up his golf cap with his thumb, and said:
"Good morning, Captain! You remember me, I suppose? Had a fine passage, so far? I thought I should meet you somewhere about here."
The Captain of the St. Louis, in common with every one else on board, had already had his credulity stretched about as far as it would go, and he was beginning to wonder whether he was really awake; but when he heard the hail and recognised the speaker he stared at him in blank and, for the moment, speechless bewilderment. Then he got hold of his voice again and said, keeping as steady as he could:
"Good morning, my Lord3! Guess I never expected to meet even you like this in the middle of the Atlantic! So the newspaper men were right for once in a way, and you have got an air-ship that will fly?"
"And a good deal more than that, Captain, if she wants to. I am just taking a trial trip across the Atlantic before I start on a run round the Solar System. Sounds like a lie, doesn't it? But it's coming off. Oh, good morning, Miss Rennick! Captain, may I come on board?"
"By all means, my Lord, only I'm afraid I daren't stop Uncle Sam's mails, even for you."
"There's no need for that, Captain, on a smooth sea like this," was the reply. "Just keep on as you are going and I'll come alongside."
He put his head inside the door and called something up a speaking-tube which led to a glass-walled chamber in the forward part of the roof, where a motionless figure stood before a little steering wheel.
The craft immediately began to edge nearer and nearer to the liner's rail, keeping speed so exactly with her that the threshold of the door touched the end of the bridge without a perceptible jar. Then the flannel-clad figure jumped on to the bridge and held out his hand to the Captain.
As they shook hands he said in a low tone, "I want a word or two in private with you, as soon as possible."
The commander saw a very serious meaning in his eyes. Besides, even if he had not made his appearance under such extraordinary circumstances, it was quite impossible that one of his social position and his wealth and influence could have made such a request without good reason for it, so he replied:
"Certainly, my Lord. Will you come down to my room?"
Hundreds of anxious, curious eyes looked upon the tall athletic figure and the regular-featured, bronzed, honest English face as Rollo Lenox Smeaton Aubrey, Earl of Redgrave, Baron Smeaton in the Peerage of England, and Viscount Aubrey in the Peerage of Ireland, followed the Captain to his room through the parting crowd of passengers. He nodded to one or two familiar faces in the crowd, for he was an old Atlantic ferryman, and had crossed five times with Captain Hawkins in the St. Louis.
Ed. Note: Oh, all right. What follows is a lot of (to us) boring talk about the Boxer Rebellion and other stop-press news from 1900. We also meet the heroine, who's pretty, and supposed to marry Lord Somebody-or-Other, but decides on Lord Redgrave, because he's much nicer looking and has his own airship. They end up in space somehow. It's all very thrilling, but totally unscientific, because the author was (surprise!) a journalist. Griffith was very popular in his day, and his son grew up to be a real engineer and design a Rolls Royce engine, so his dad's interest in 'science' was not totally wasted.
