"How long will they live, do you suppose? As soon as these clouds clear away the temperature will go up to an enormous figure, with the sun beating down continuously and no night."
"How hot do you suppose it will get?"
"You can guess about it as well as I can. A hundred-and-fifty degrees, maybe higher. Certainly hot enough to kill all animal and vegetable life."
Off to a New Land
The tragedy seemed so overwhelming, as I stood on that sandstone cliff and looked out over the water which had buried Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and, as far as I knew, the whole civilized world, that it hardly seemed worth-while for Jim and me to make an effort to survive.
He looked at me curiously. "Buck up, old boy. Things can't be any worse than they seem, and they may be better. We can die fighting, anyway."
"I suppose we'll have to do that, but it hardly seems worth the effort." I thought over the situation for a moment. "I guess the first thing to do is to get the plane in condition to take off as soon as it stops raining. We'll fly toward the pole."
"Maybe we'll find some other people who escaped," he suggested.
"Probably," I replied as we started back to the plane.