John was setting down these figures and doing a little figuring on the margin of his paper. “We left on May twenty-ninth,” said he, “and got here July eighth—forty days into two thousand miles—that makes fifty miles a day we’ve averaged, including all the stops. You see that fifty miles a day, kept up, gets you into the thousands in time, doesn’t it? After we struck the steamboat we began to raise the average.”
“Well,” said Jesse, looking off to the dull-brown slopes of the tundra-covered mountains which lay to the westward, “if what that trader-man told me is true, we’ll slow down considerably before we get to the top of that pass in the Rockies yonder.”
They were all sitting on the crest of the bluff of Fort McPherson landing, where a long log slab, polished by many years of use, had been erected as a sort of lookout bench for the people who live the year around at Fort McPherson.
“What time is it, Rob?” asked Jesse, suddenly.
Rob pulled out his watch. “It’s eleven-thirty,” said he. “Get the cameras, boys! Here’s a good place for us, right here at the end of the bench. It’s almost midnight. Look over there!”
The three of them looked as he pointed. The Midnight Sun of the Arctic hung low on the horizon, but not lower now than it had been for some time. Its rays, reflected from the surface of the Peel River just beyond, shone with a pale luster such as they had never before known.
With some sort of common feeling which neither of them could have explained, each of the three boys took off his cap and laid it on the bench beside him as he stood looking at that strange spectacle given to so few travelers to see—the unsinking Midnight Sun!