“Of reaching the end of our voyage?”
“That we can never hope for,” declared the Frenchman, in a gloomy tone.
“Then—what?” bluntly demanded the aviator.
Leblance arose to his feet, running one hand over his eyes with a swift movement as if to restore impaired vision or brush away tears. He proceeded to a map attached to the wall just above the pilot table. His fingers traced the course already traversed by the Albatross.
“We are here,” he said, halting the faltering index. “Ahead, observe, is an island. It is two hundred miles southwest of the coast of France. We may possibly reach it by exhausting every utility we possess. If we do not, within the next forty-eight hours——”
The professor shrugged his shoulders slowly, sadly this time. An expression of ineffable solemnity crossed his noble face.
He pointed down as if indicating unknown depths waiting to swallow them up. Then he again ran his finger across the map, pausing at that little dark speck that marked the island.
“A change of wind,” he said, “a single break in the apparatus, a trifling leak, and we are at the mercy of the mishap of our lives! That island—it is our last forlorn hope!”
CHAPTER XXIV
GOAL!
“It’s too bad,” said Hiram, and the young aviator’s assistant was very nearly at the point of tears.