So Jensen was responsible for my knowing more about Greenland than most people did. I knew there were about five hundred white people on the island, as well as fifteen thousand natives. With radio warning of what was about to happen, there was no reason why most of them should not have retreated to the central plateau and have escaped destruction.
As we flew, hour after hour, without sight of land, I began to get worried. The gasoline supply was getting low and there was nothing in sight but the tumbling ocean. It finally dawned on me that I must have set a course far south of the one I intended, unless Greenland had disappeared beneath the waves.
I wrote a note and passed it to Jim, telling him that I had probably made a mistake in direction and that I intended to turn at right angles to our present course and fly directly north. He nodded his head in approval after he had read the note, and I swept around in a wide curve for a final desperate effort to reach land.
I am not sure what the result would have been if we had not got help. I was staring steadily ahead when I felt a touch on my shoulder. I glanced back and saw Jim pointing to an object in the sky a few miles away, but approaching rapidly. For a moment I thought it was a bird, and then I saw it was a gigantic Fokker monoplane. It circled above us and I saw a man leaning out of the cabin window, making motions to us.
Jim handed me a piece of paper on which he had written, "I think he wants us to follow them."
I silently nodded my head and started in their direction. As soon as the observer noticed this he drew his head back into the cabin and the last stage of our journey began.
Following the big Fokker was a simple matter, as long as our gas held out. When an hour passed and then a second hour without sight of land, I began to get nervous. If we dropped into the sea there was not much chance of our being rescued.
When a blue haze appeared on the horizon and rapidly grew into a land of great frowning mountains, I breathed a sigh of relief. Greenland rose out of the ocean, with precipitous cliffs hundreds of feet high against which we could see immense breakers dashing themselves into spray.
We Start A Settlement