"Minus ten for'ard and a point above zero aft, sir."
The Captain glanced at the thermometer on the navigation room bulkhead. The mercury stood at minus twenty-five degrees or fifty-seven below freezing point.
"I almost wish we had taken the east coast route and gone through Davis Strait," remarked Whittinghame. "It wouldn't have been anything like so cold."
"She'll do it all right, sir," declared Parsons. "Besides, we shan't find it any colder at the Pole itself."
"And it will save us at least six hours," added Dacres.
Acting under his suggestion two quarter-masters took ten minute spells at the wheel, for beyond that period a man's outstretched arms would be numbed.
Mile after mile was reeled off with the utmost rapidity. There was nothing to be seen but the dreary expanse of cliffs, snow and ice—cliffs that outvied the canons of Colorado for height, and snow and ice that had covered what at one time might have been a fertile land for perhaps millions of years. It was a vision of the earth during the Glacial Age.
At seven o'clock, or twenty-two hours after the "Meteor" had left Portsmouth, Dacres pointed to a huge winding track of ice that, according to the most modest estimate, was at least fifty miles wide.
"We're nearly there, sir," he said. "We've struck the head of the Humboldt Glacier. With luck we ought to sight the open sea in another hour. We are covering one degree of longitude every three minutes now."
Whittinghame nodded. It was almost too cold to talk. Speaking was accompanied by a volume of white vapour that, rapidly congealing, fell upon the floor in showers of fine ice. To touch a piece of metal with bare hands caused painful blisters, as many of the crew learnt to their cost. The airship was little more than a floating icebox.