His voice trailing off into nothingness. He was asleep again.
Dave stared at him. Here was a new mystery. Was this man lying? Had he been in collusion with the Orientals, and was he trying to hide that fact; or had the rap on his head caused a lapse of memory, which blotted out all recollections of the affair in the case and mine?
“Look, Dave!” exclaimed Jarvis suddenly, “as I live it’s the City of Gold!”
In the east the sun was just peeping over the horizon. But Jarvis was not looking in that direction. He was looking west. There, catching the sun’s first golden glow, some object had cast it back, creating a veritable conflagration of red and gold.
Dave, remembering to have viewed such a sight in other days, and in what must have been something of the same location, stared in silence for a full minute before he spoke:
“If it is,” he said slowly, “there’s only one salvation for us. We’ve got to get down out of the clouds. The last time I saw that riot of color it was on the shore of the ocean, or very near it, and to drift over the Arctic Ocean in this crazy craft is to invite death.”
He sprang for the door which led to the narrow plank-way about the cabin and to the rigging where the valve-cord must hang suspended.