"But what do you call that up yonder?" asked Professor Henderson, pointing to the calm-faced earth rolling tranquilly through the heavens, while her satellite, the moon, likewise appeared.
"We certainly are blessed with moons," said Sproul, nodding. "And mighty glad of it I be. As the day is so short now, and the sun is so hot, two moons to work by is a blessing indeed to us whalers."
"And you don't consider that new planet anything wonderful?" Jack
Darrow asked Captain Sproul.
"Not at all. We often see what they call sun dogs; don't we?"
"I have seen such things," admitted the youth, while he and Mark smiled at the old skipper's simplicity.
"That double moon is like that, I reckon," said Sproul, and that ended the discussion.
CHAPTER XXIX
WHEN THE SEA ROLLED BACK
The boys were interested in this novel kind of whaling; but they were more deeply interested in the possible outcome of the situation in which they, and their friends, and the fur-traders, and the bark's crew, were all placed.
The tearing away of this piece of our planet, on which the boys and their companions now sailed, must end finally in some terrible catastrophe. It would be catastrophe enough if the torn-away world never returned to the earth, but sailed forever and ever, round and round its parent planet. Our heroes and their companions would then be marooned without hope of rescue on a fragmentary planet in space, the said planet doomed to become a mere lump of dead and frozen matter adrift in the universe.