"Tut, tut, Mattie. Cheer up, little girl," said the doctor, very soothingly, and patting her head with his steady, strong hand. "No mishap is possible. We cannot explode, collapse, burn, collide, nor capsize. No enterprise ever entered upon by man possessed so much of interest and importance, and was attended by so little of the element of danger. You were never safer in your life than you are at this moment. Think of it! Here we are above the clouds, the world with all its care and heartaches shut out, basking in this glorious sunlight, sailing on in this clear, bracing, microbeless atmosphere. The clouds beneath our feet, the sun above our heads, and God's empyrean all about us. What can be more inspiring and grand? How does the chorus of that old hymn run?
'Let us look above the clouds,
Above the clouds, above the clouds;
Up above the stormy clouds
To fairer worlds on high.'"
The Doctor sang this simple chorus in his great sonorous voice that rang out over the clouds like a bugle blast.
"Well, I declare Doctor, you will not let me get into a real good fright," cried Mattie, smiling through eyes filled with tears.
"No, indeed, I will not, Mattie. The only fear I have now is that we may keep breakfast waiting. Let's descend."
The forenoon passed away very uneventfully. About the middle of the afternoon they were treated to a splendid spectacle. A terrific thunder storm raged beneath them; and as they looked below into the inky depths of the thunder clouds, pierced and riven by jagged lightnings, followed by deafening bellowings and crashings of thunder, and then cast their eyes up to the sun shining in full-orbed splendor over all, they realized as never before the presence and majesty of Omnipotence.
At four o'clock, P.M. the storm clouds cleared away, and the bleak, uninviting face of Labrador was plainly visible. The ship had settled to an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, and was moving northeasterly at the rate of thirty miles an hour.
"Isn't that a settlement I see ahead a few miles?" asked Will.
The Doctor and Professor Gray decided that it must be a fort or trading post. The ship, meantime, was lowering quite rapidly, and was but eight hundred feet above the earth.
"I have a mind to drop anchor at that fort for the night," said Dr. Jones. "Some fresh meat, especially game and fish, would not be at all bad to take. What do you all say?"