Consumed with enthusiasm and impatience, the travellers now effected a descent to the surface of the sea, that having been proved to be the situation in which the _Flying Fish_ made her greatest speed, and the journey was promptly proceeded with. A further run of twenty miles found them beneath a cloudless sky, with the wind, soft and balmy, fallen to the gentlest of zephyrs, and the temperature risen to the extraordinary height of forty-five degrees above zero. Their delight, especially that of the professor, was excessive at this wonderful change in their surroundings within so short a time; indeed von Schalckenberg became positively extravagant in his demonstrations, dancing about the deck like a schoolboy, laughing, cheering, clapping his hands, and uttering the most extraordinary prophecies as to what awaited them at the now not far distant pole. The moment was favourable for an astronomical observation; and the ship, notwithstanding their eagerness to press forward, was accordingly stopped for a few minutes to take the necessary sights, after which "Northward ho!" again became their watchword. A few minutes sufficed Mildmay to complete his calculations, and then, amidst vociferous cheering on the part of his companions, he announced to them the gratifying intelligence that they had approached to within a distance of _only one hundred and sixty miles of the North Pole_. At the moment when this announcement was made it was exactly ten minutes after six o'clock p.m. The speed gauge showed that the _Flying Fish_ was then making her way through the water at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles per hour; in a trifle over one hour more, therefore, if nothing prevented, they would reach the goal of their northward journey. Their enthusiasm became almost painful in its intensity; and as the _Flying Fish_ rushed at headlong speed through the rippling waters, tossing the wavelets aside in a great outward-curling fringe of sparkling foam, and as the minutes lagged slowly away, the eyes of the quartette in the pilot-house were strained with ever-increasing intensity in their vain efforts to pierce the mysteries of the horizon ahead. At exactly twenty minutes to seven o'clock, Mildmay electrified his companions, and put the finishing touch to their excitement, by raising an exultant shout of: "Land ho!" "Where?" "Show it me!" "I can't see it. You must be mistaken!" exclaimed his companions in chorus, after a breathless moment of vain peering into the pearly northern horizon. "There it is, directly ahead, looking just like the edge of a flat grey cloud showing above the water's edge," was the reply.