The plane swept around and drifted back toward Iceland on the other tack. Beneath, the points of broken ice began to sparkle, tipped by the brief rays of the sun. The sheets of unbroken ice were as blue as the sea itself. As the plane moved southward there were fewer open channels and pools. It seemed, before noon, as though able men cast away in this ice might make their way to one shore or the other. Yet, if they did, neither the Greenland nor Iceland coasts afforded much hope of succor. The first named was utterly barren for hundreds of miles, while the fishing settlements on Iceland were far apart on this northwestern coast. Now and again somebody spied something moving on the ice, and down the flying boat would swoop that the object might be the better examined. In each case the searchers were disappointed. Several times small herds of seals were made out, or a pair of walruses. Once a huge polar bear was seen drifting down a channel, enthroned on a lump of ice. It had evidently been fishing at the edge of the open water and the chunk of ice had broken away from the parent field. A school of round-backed whales, some ten of them, were observed swimming down a channel, evidently making for the warmer seas. “Let Mr. Damon and his party catch one of those whales or a bear, and they’ll be fixed all right for food,” said Ned, chuckling. “Wouldn’t Mr. Damon be blessing everything in nature if he came to eating blubber?” Tom drove his flying boat first to the east until they could see the coast of the big island they had left the night before, and then turned her about and drove west until Greenland was in sight. At each lap he brought their course many miles southward. Little floating on the surface of the sea escaped their keen gaze. It was mid-afternoon when Captain Olaf Karofsen, looking through Tom’s powerful glasses, began to show more excitement. Even with only the naked eye there could be seen ahead two tall pinnacles like cathedral towers. There was a narrow space between them, and miles upon miles of hummock ice and low bluffs lay about the two spires. “Dot iss she!” exclaimed Captain Karofsen. “I vould not fool you, Misder Swift. Dot is de perg I see Mr. Damon and the sick man undt my five sailors from the _Kalrye_ climb upon when their boat was smashed. I could not mistake those two points like chimneys.” “Is there anything moving on that great field of ice?” demanded Tom anxiously. His companions used their eyes, and the binoculars, as well, to the best advantage. Tom drove the flying boat nearer and nearer to the pinnacles of ice. Not a moving object was descried beneath them. The great iceberg seemed to be as abandoned as any of the other fields they had flown over during their marvelous journey through the air. CHAPTER XIX THE DESERT OF ICE