The days passed—the quantity of the food they consumed grew daily less and less, and they were growing weaker and weaker every day. At length they gave up their cup of tea in the mornings—their tea had gone. Then they halved their dinner portions making one day’s share of food last two! But all the same the dreaded day came only too soon, and five hundred and ninety-five days after Alan had put up his calendar, they found they had only a few tins of concentrated food left. They were all hungry. Little John Alan grew fretful, his mother feverish. There was silence in the little front cabin, the silence of the grave. The little party were all half asleep, when suddenly Alan rose. “What’s the matter?” he asked quickly.
“What is it?” asked his uncle.
“Don’t you realize?—we’ve stopped! We’ve stopped!” It was true, the Argenta was stationary at last! At the same moment Masters came rushing in.
“We’ve stopped!” he cried. “The engines have refused again to work.”
They all crowded round the little “lookout,” but could see nothing. For the first time for nearly two years their vision was limited. Gone was the brightness of Jupiter, gone the glorious Magellanic Cloud—gone, too, the many thousand points of light that enriched the heavens. All about them was a moving vapour. It was unlike clouds, but surged and swirled like heavy snow flakes. It was a whitish vapour that looked like steam—that altered again and took on the hue of thick yellowish smoke.
“Where are we?” asked Mavis. “Can’t we get out?”
“We’ll see,” said Alan soothingly.
But still Mavis went on pleadingly. “Oh surely our chance has come at last. If we opened the shutters now, we might get free altogether.”
The next morning, Murdoch was missing. His bed had not been slept in. “Where’s Murdoch?” asked Alan of Masters.
“I don’t know. I’ve been expecting him to relieve me in the engine room every minute. Is he in the kitchen?”