"Quick! Professor!" cried Mark. "Jack, Washington, everybody! Hurry up!"
"What's the matter?" asked the inventor, running to the conning tower.
In answer Mark pointed outside.
"A snow storm!" exclaimed the captain. "We must expect them up north.
But this is worse than I thought!"
He glanced ahead. Nothing could be seen but a wall of white. The wind increased until it blew with almost the force of a cyclone, and the ship swayed fearfully.
"Stop the engines!" cried the professor. "We had better drift than run the chances of hitting an iceberg if we should suddenly take a drop down to the ground."
Washington, awakened from his sleep, turned off the power. Then began a fight between the ship and the elements; a battle between the Monarch and the wind and snow. Which was to win?
The airship was, apparently, in the heart of the storm. It was tossed this way and that, now up and now down, though because of the quantity of gas in the bag the craft was buoyed up. The gas generating machine had not been stopped, only the machinery that moved the propeller.
How the wind howled! How the snow blew! It was a blinding storm, for from the windows of the conning tower and from those on either side of the cabin nothing could be discerned five feet away. Through the window in the bottom of the ship nothing showed but a sea of white flakes.
The cold was intense, seventy degrees below zero being marked on the thermometer. Even with the gasolene stoves going it was chilling inside the airship, for the cutting, biting wind found many cracks through which to enter.