Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

Like a comet! Why, Peters, I laid over the lot of them! Of course there warn?t any of them going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso, whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and then that was going my way for an hour or so, and then we had a bit of a brush together.

But it was generally pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them the same as if they were standing still. An ordinary 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 Halley?s comets, for instance?it warn?t anything but just a flash and a vanish, you see.

You couldn?t rightly call it a race. It was as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a telegraph despatch. But after I got outside of our astronomical system, I used to flush a comet occa-sionally that was something like. We haven?t got any such comets?ours don?t begin. One night I was swinging along at a good round gait, everything taut and trim, and the wind in my favor?I judged I was going about a million miles a minute?it might have been more..