"And how happy are we," said Captain Ganoe, "to be welcomed by a fellow countryman after our long voyage in these unknown waters. We have not looked in the face of a fellow being for nearly two years, and we welcome you to the deck of the Ice King, as the saviors of all that is left of its once numerous crew."
The new comer threw his arms around the Captain's neck, and embraced him as a mother would her long lost child, sobbing with sudden emotion until we were all shedding tears in sympathy. Then leaving Captain Ganoe he embraced each of us in turn.
"I never was so happy in my life," he exclaimed. "I hope you will excuse me for thus giving way to my feelings. I had thought I would never again look into the face of a single human being from my own native land, and this meeting with so many overcomes me."
"No apologies are necessary," said Captain Ganoe. "We appreciate the man who has feelings and is not ashamed to show them, while we could not have any respect for the man who is destitute of feeling."
"Thank you," said the newcomer, "and now permit me to introduce myself. My name is, or rather was, James MacNair, an American born Scotchman."
Captain Ganoe then introduced himself, Battell, Huston and myself. MacNair in turn introduced our visitors as the twin sisters, Polaris and Dione, of the Life Saving Service, and then continued:
"Ever since they discovered me, almost starved, on a desolate island far to the north, these self devoted saviors of humanity, have kept an especial lookout for stranded mariners from the frozen north. And since they captured your little balloon with the dispatch I translated for them, they have known that an entire crew had passed the ice barriers, and they have been more than ever on the alert for an opportunity to render assistance, and conduct you into a safe harbor. They feared that you would be disabled by the almost perpetual calms on these waters, and be carried to the southern verge by these ocean currents which seem to carefully avoid the land. You see with all their watchfulness you have been carried nearly to the equator without being discovered, and you are now fully one thousand miles from land."
"It was indeed fortunate," said Captain Ganoe "that we continued to commit dispatches to the care of the winds."
"That is true," said MacNair, "but it is more fortunate that you sent up dispatches just when you did, for at that time, the sun begins to heat the air at the southern verge and it rises to higher altitudes and the air in the vicinity flows in to fill the vacuum. This produces a current of air that flows south from the northern verge. It was this breeze which occurs but once a year that brought your balloons south. Had they been sent up at the beginning of the northern summer they would have been carried south on the outside by your equinoctial storms. This is my theory. It may not be a correct one but it satisfies me."