midnight
`` England in the person of Lord Redgrave , and America in the person of his Countess , leave this world to-night to tell the other worlds of our system , if haply they may find some intelligible means of communication , what this world , good and bad , is like . And it is within the bounds of possibility that in doing so they may inaugurate a wider fellowship of created beings than the limits of this world permit ; a fellowship , a friendship , and , as the _ Astronef _ entitles us to believe , even a physical communication of world with world which , in the dawn of the twentieth century , may transcend in sober fact the wildest dreams of all the philanthropists and the philosophers who have sought to educate humanity from Socrates to Herbert Spencer . '' After the _ Astronef 's _ forward searchlight had flashed its farewells to the thronging , cheering crowds of Washington , her propellers began to whirl , and she swung round northward on her way to say goodbye to the Empire City . A little before midnight her two lights flashed down over New York and Brooklyn , and were almost instantly answered by hundreds of electric beams streaming up from different parts of the Twin Cities , and from several men-of-war lying in the bay and the river . `` Goodbye for the present ! Have you any messages for Mars ? '' flickered out from above the _ Astronef 's _ conning-tower .