that I wouldn't throw away the chance; so I fell off a point,steadied my helm, and went for him. You should have heard me whiz,and seen the electric fur fly! In about a minute and a half I wasfringed out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around for milesand miles and lit up all space like broad day. The comet wasburning blue in the distance, like a sickly torch, when I first

swinging along at a good round gait, everything taut and trim, andthe wind in my favor--I judged I was going about a million miles aminute--it might have been more, it couldn't have been less--when Iflushed a most uncommonly big one about three points off mystarboard bow. By his stern lights I judged he was bearing aboutnortheast-and-by-north-half-east. Well, it was so near my course

Halley's comets, for instance--it warn't anything but just a flashand a vanish, you see. You couldn't rightly call it a race. Itwas as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraphdespatch. But after I got outside of our astronomical system, Iused to flush a comet occasionally that was something LIKE. WEhaven't got any such comets--ours don't begin. One night I was

for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then thatwas going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of abrush together. But it was generally pretty one-sided, because Isailed by them the same as if they were standing still. Anordinary comet don't make more than about 200,000 miles a minute.Of course when I came across one of that sort--like Encke's and

Well, when I had been dead about thirty years I begun to get alittle anxious. Mind you, had been whizzing through space all thattime, like a comet. LIKE a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over thelot of them! Of course there warn't any of them going my way, as asteady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle likethe loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart