six o'clock
This lunch-hour passed even more pleasantly and rapidly than others had done , for the discussion as to the possibilities of Venus was continued in a quite delightful mixture of scientific disquisition and that converse which is common to most human beings on their honeymoon . As there was nothing more to be done or seen for an hour or two , the afternoon was spent in a pleasant siesta in the luxurious deck-saloon ; because evening to them would be morning on that portion of Venus to which they were directing their course , and , as Zaidie said , when she subsided into her hammock : It would be breakfast-time before they could get dinner . As the _ Astronef _ fell with ever-increasing velocity towards the cloud-covered surface of Venus , the remainder of her disc , lit up by the radiance of her sister-worlds , Mercury , Mars , and the Earth , and also by the pale radiance of an enormous comet , which had suddenly shot into view from behind its southern limb , became more or less visible . Towards six o'clock it became necessary to exert nearly the whole strength of her engines to check the velocity of her fall . By eight she had entered the atmosphere of Venus , and was dropping slowly towards a vast sea of sunlit cloud , out of which , on all sides , towered thousands of snow-clad peaks , rounded summits , and widespread stretches of upland about which the clouds swept and surged like the silent billows of some vast ocean in Ghostland . `` I thought so ! '' said Redgrave , when the propellers had begun to revolve and Murgatroyd had taken his place in the conning-tower .