"Aye, aye, sir! Good-bye!" came cheerily from the quarterdeck of the little ship, and they had passed beyond hailing distance. "Poor, brave fellows," sighed the Doctor. "They have reached an amazingly high latitude," said the Professor. "They have crossed the 83rd parallel, very nearly as high as Nansen got with his expedition last year." "I declare that I am sorry for them, and really dislike to take the glory of the discovery from them. But we cannot stop now, and it is utterly impossible for them to get there anyway." "They would have soon been shut in, and probably forever as they were heading," observed Will. North and east, as they could distinctly see from their elevation of two thousand feet, far as the eye could reach, all was one vast field of huge piles of ice, exceedingly rough and broken, with here and there towering spires that seemed to reach up toward the globe like grizzly arms that would prevent them from penetrating the secrets of the north that had been held for untold centuries. As the Doctor had informed the captain of the ship, away to the west was a certain amount of open sea, but it was of limited extent, and the prospects of the poor fellows getting much farther looked more than doubtful. "And what is to become of them if they cannot get through?" asked Mrs. Jones. "I cannot tell," returned the Doctor, "but the chances are that they will be crushed in the ice." "O dear, what a fate!" cried Mrs. Jones. "Can we do nothing for them?" "Nothing at all, my dear. They are beyond our reach, and it is not likely that they would desert their ship if we could offer to take them with us. Such men are not easily turned from their purpose." "All we can do then is to pray that God will preserve them, and permit them to return safely home," said the sympathetic little woman. "And let us ask Him that this favoring gale may continue a few hours longer," added Dr. Jones. There was no thought of retiring as the usual hour for doing so arrived. They all felt impressed with the thought that they were now looking upon scenes never before seen by mortal eye, and that they were very near the object of their journey. How their hearts warmed and palpitated with the thought! "We have crossed the 85th parallel," said the Professor, "and in six or seven hours will reach the Pole at this rate." "This is the Lord's doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes," quoted the Doctor with great fervency. Busy feet climbed and descended the spiral stairway many times that night, but could see nothing but a frozen sea in every direction. The wind blew from due south, and they were flying at tremendous speed directly toward the Pole as if drawn there by a great magnet. The cold was intense--the thermometer registering more than 60 deg. below zero. But as we said before, no wind was ever felt aboard Silver Cloud, and it has been ascertained that man can endure almost any degree of cold if it be quiet and still.