“Thank’ee, sir,” said Peter, laughing; “I’ll see to that, sir.”
It was some time before De Vere succeeded in gaining Captain McBain’s consent to the embarkation of his boys on this wild and strange adventure, but he was talked over at last.
“It is all for the good of science, I suppose,” he said, half doubtfully, as he shook hands with our heroes before they took their places in the car. “God keep you, boys. I’m not at all sure I’ll ever see one of you again.”
The ropes were let go, and upwards into the clear air rose the mighty balloon.
“Here’s a lark,” said Allan.
“A skylark,” said Rory. “Let us sing, boys—let us sing as we soar, ‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves.’”
Standing on the quarter-deck, and gazing upwards, McBain heard the voices growing fainter and fainter, and saw the balloon lessening and lessening, till the song could no longer be heard, and the balloon itself was but a tiny speck in the heaven’s blue. Then he went down below, and busied himself all day with calculations. He didn’t want to think.
Meanwhile, how fared it with our boys? Here they were, all together, embarked upon as strange an expedition as it has ever probably been the lot of any youth or youths to try the chance of. Yet I do not think that anything approaching to fear found place in the hearts of one of them. The situation was novel in the extreme. With a slow and steady but imperceptible motion—for she was weightily ballasted—the “Perseverando,” as they had named the balloon, was mounting skywards. There was not the slightest air or wind, nor the tiniest of clouds to be seen anywhere, and down beneath and around them was spread out a panorama, which but to gaze upon held them spell-bound.
There was the island itself, with its rugged hills looking now so strangely flattened and so grotesquely contorted; to the west and to the north lay the white and boundless sea of ice, but far to the eastward and south was the ocean itself, looking dark as night in contrast with the solid ice.