At daylight, on the following morning, all were up and looking out upon wild Canadian forests. Here and there were small towns and settlements, but they realized that they were fast hastening beyond the pale of civilization. The wind had moved during the night into the southwest, and the Professor informed them that they were sailing at the rate of more than thirty miles an hour.
"If this wind will only continue, we shall not be long reaching our destination," said the Doctor. "While I am enjoying the trip splendidly, yet I am anxious to reach the Pole as soon as possible. After that we will start on a general sightseeing tour. But until I have planted our aluminum shaft exactly upon the north end of the earth's axis, sightseeing is but incidental and secondary."
All day they skimmed like a frigate bird across the face of Canada, at an altitude of about two thousand feet. All were delighted with the behavior of the ship. Her capacity for floating and retaining heat far exceeded their most sanguine expectations.
It was interesting to watch the fast changing appearance of the country, and they could note that the timber was rapidly growing smaller. Clearings and settlements became more and more rare, and as the day closed they were looking upon primitive, unbroken forests, known only to hunters, both white and red.
Another night passed without incident. The wind held all night in the same quarter. On the following morning the beautiful ship was enveloped in a dense fog. "We are in the midst of a great cloud," said Professor Gray.
"I think we will rise a few hundred feet and see if we can get out of it," replied Dr. Jones.
The temperature within the globe was raised a few degrees, and the ship rapidly rose to twenty-five hundred feet altitude. This carried them high above the clouds, and it was with new and strange sensations that our aerial navigators looked down upon the dense cloud that obscured the face of the earth from their view. The sun, meantime, was shining with what seemed to them greatly increased splendor in this super-cloud region.
"Well, girls," cried the Doctor, "I am for some exercise. Who will mount with me to the observatory?"
They each assented, and a few moments later were sitting in that elevated place, very warm and breathless from the unwonted exercise of the long climb. This was Mattie's first visit to the observatory, and her eyes dilated with terror as she looked over the rolling sides of the massive globe.
"O, Doctor, Doctor! isn't this perfectly awful! Think of what the very slightest mistake or mishap would do. We should go flying down through those clouds, and be dashed to pieces in those uninhabited Canadian forests. And I suppose that our friends would never hear of us again.