In regard to his being rescued and ever reaching the land of the living again, Lieutenant Peary said he feared the chances were very slight. It all depended on the place where the balloon had descended.
If it had fallen north of Spitzbergen, it seemed unlikely that he would ever be heard of again; if, however, the winds had carried it southward, he might have taken refuge on an ice-pack, and would be floated southward with it, and eventually rescued.
Dr. Nansen, in his recent famous voyage, proved that there is a strong current flowing across the Polar Sea. By following this, a ship could be carried from one side of the Arctic Ocean to the other.
When Dr. Nansen went north it was his hope to get his ship, the Fram, into the pack, or rough ice that was being carried along in this current, and drift with it across the Pole.
He did not succeed in reaching the Pole, but his ship did drift across the Polar Sea exactly as he had supposed it would do.
It is Mr. Peary's belief that if Andrée gets on to the pack-ice, he may drift southward as Nansen did. Mr. Peary does not believe that any of the pigeons carried by Andrée could live in the Arctic cold, and be able to fly southward with a message.
The fastest ocean voyage on record has just been made by the magnificent North German Lloyd steamer, Kaiser Wilhelm the Great.
The speed record has hitherto been held by the Lucania, which made the trip from Queenstown to Sandy Hook in five days and seven hours, but that great record has now been beaten. At the rate at which the new German steamer travels, she can make the trip in four days and twenty-one hours.
The Kaiser Wilhelm does not, however, travel over the shorter route from Queenstown, but comes the longer way, from Southampton. She made this trip in five days and twenty hours, beating the St. Paul by two hours all but five minutes, and on her return trip beat her own record by thirteen hours.