From Great-uncle Gem! Lee’s eyes devoured the line of words on the yellow sheet. “God bless you, and keep you, and help you to show to the world the stuff you’re made out of, Lee Renaud. (Signed) G. Renaud.”
Lee gulped. “G-gosh, I bet he sold a silver candlestick to get cash to send this!” The boy was humble and exultant at the same time. Somebody believed in him.
The ship was riding the air now. It rose majestically, like a gigantic silvery bird, turned its prow into the north and was off.
Before the Nardak stretched uncharted wastes—the ocean of air.
CHAPTER XIV
DANGER AHEAD
A new feeling permeated the ship. She was on her own now, headed for the great North. Only a few miles separated her from the city of Adron, but it might as well have been ten thousand leagues, so definitely was the voyage on.
After so much confusion of last visitors aboard, supplies being stored, a hundred things underfoot, the crew had to get down to the business of making affairs ship-shape. Some donned overalls, some stripped to the waist. Men moved swiftly along the catwalk, up and down connecting ladders.
Up in the keel corridors of the hull men were happily busy. Down in the navigating section men were happily busy. In the heat of the engine gondolas, slung four to each side of the hull, half-naked fellows, with sweat dripping down their bodies, tuned the six hundred horsepower gasoline motors for power, and more power. Ninety, ninety-five, a hundred miles an hour—speed was coming up! They were on the way, hurrah!
This huge floating bubble of gas prisoned in fabric was to be men’s home for many months. So the expedition settled down to making itself feel at home.
Bob Tucker, the expedition’s photographer, and three assistants, set to work checking up on the complicated mechanism of the aerial cameras and the million feet of film that was to be aimed at the Arctic topography. Theirs would be the task of getting a picture record of the lay of the land in the mineral section, so as to help the geologists in their scientific deductions.