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Even the splash of waves against the further side of the big ice-floe seemed like the pounding of a monster hammer, at least to Jack's excited imagination. They were now drawing perilously near the brink. Was Tom ever going to elevate the plane and attempt the rise from the flat surface of the ice?

The long-impending catastrophe has come at last. I hardly know what to write about it. The Captain is gone. He may come back to us again alive, but I fear me I fear me. It is now seven o'clock of the morning of the 19th of September. I have spent the whole night traversing the great ice-floe in front of us with a party of seamen in the hope of coming upon some trace of him, but in vain.

It was not half an hour later when something happened that was calculated to chill the hearts of those bold navigators, such as even close contact to the ice-floe and berg could never bring about.

Things change rapidly in this Arctic world. We'd better explore our ice-floe, hadn't we? And don't you think we could eat a bit before we go?" Cheered by the very thought of something to be done, Lucile munched her half of the pilot biscuit and bit of reindeer meat contentedly.

He awoke at last to start and stare. The sun was painting the peaks of distant ice-piles with a touch of pink and gold. He experienced a strange sensation. For one brief moment he fancied himself on the mainland of Alaska. This, he realized, was not entirely impossible; the ice-floe might have circled about to carry him near to the coast again.

"That is because the wind is blowing over an ice-floe," said her father, pointing to a large field of ice which seemed to be drifting slowly toward them. "Look, look, Birger!" cried Gerda, "there are some seals on the ice." "Yes," said Birger, "and there is a seal-boat sailing up to catch them."

So the voyagers remained drifting on the ice-floe, about four miles in circumference, but by no means assured from disruption, which might occur at any moment. The ice continued to drift, and now and then pieces broke off. On the 16th the dreaded event occurred the floe parted the castaway party on one side, and the house, etcetera, on the other.

She stood in the midst of this desert, and as he had seen her sway on the ice-floe, so he saw her now stretching unavailing arms to the brazen heavens and sink No! it was not a desert, it was not a sea, ice-bound or torrid, it was a toppling city, massed against impenetrable night one moment, then shown to its awful full the next by the sudden tearing through of lightning-flashes.

"You look the part of Rip's dog, old fellow," he laughed; "you surely do." Yet, as he thought more soberly, he realized that there was really no reason for supposing that the ice-floe had returned him to the mainland of America. "Might be a point of the mainland of Asia," he reasoned. "The people who come here hunting may be Chukches."

There could be no questioning this great good fortune. The one remaining problem was to reach the shore of that island. They did not dare to abandon their kiak, sleeping-bag, and scanty supplies, for who could tell them that this was not a small uninhabited island? They had traveled many miles with the ice-floe in some direction, perhaps many directions. Who could say where they were now?