Curiously enough the sun made its first chill, brief reappearance on the anniversary of our sailing. Chill and brief it was, but that thin edge of light skirting the far northern horizon meant to all who saw it new hope, and a new hold on the realities of life.

The sky there had for some time been growing redder each day, and more than once we believed that the Captain’s calculation would be proved at fault, and that the sun itself must appear. But the Captain’s mathematics were sound, and the sun was on schedule time. In spite of Zar’s prophecy we were all there to bid it “howdy,” and there was not a soul on board, from the Admiral to the cook, that sent “regrets” to that reception. Captain Biffer had “bent on” a stiff new shirt for the occasion, and was smiling and triumphant.

“Wheah you reckon dat sun shinin’ warm, now?” Zar asked in an awed voice.

“In New York City,” answered her mistress, “just as it was the day we sailed.”

“Shall we be back there a year from now?” I asked.

She held my arm close. Chauncey Gale answered.

“I will. Too far away from the Bowery down here.”

But Ferratoni, who stood next me, said—speaking to himself, and so low that only I heard it—

“Not all of us will return.”

I did not seem to hear, either, and I doubt if he knew that he had spoken; but a thing said like that creates an impression, and it set me to wondering. Then the brief exhibition was over, and we descended hastily to the warmth and feast waiting for us below.

There would be still nearly two months before we were willing to attempt our journey inland. We did not much care to face darkness in unknown wastes, and our continuous day would not begin until late in October. We were determined, however, to make much sooner the trial ascension for the purposes of observation, and to test the carrying power of the Cloudcrest. By the middle of September our days were of good length, and on the twentieth the divisions of light and darkness would be equal. We decided to make our preliminary ascension on that day.

It was only by chance that Edith Gale missed taking part in this momentous event. She had begged to be allowed to do so, and while neither Gale nor I approved of her going, we had more than half consented when Ferratoni came to our rescue by suggesting that we ought by all means to make the carrying test with just those who expected to undertake the voyage later.

This, both Gale and I declared, was a weighty argument, and my fiancÉe at length yielded, though I must confess with but a poor show of either filial or spousal obedience. She had been quite prepared to undertake a voyage, too, and even this wild notion had not been surrendered without severe reasoning.

“One of this firm’s got to stay with the ship,” Gale had said, finally. “Now, if you’re going with the balloon, Johnnie, who’s going to stay? Nick or me?”

She gave it up, then, and perhaps she had never been really serious in the matter. Only she couldn’t bear the thought of our going away into the undiscovered lands without her. No one but Ferratoni and Mr. Sturritt were to accompany Gale and myself on the voyage inland, and Mr. Sturritt only on condition that the balloon in its trial ascension proved amply buoyant. He had counted on it from the first, having been with Gale in every undertaking for many years. Then, too, he wished to attend personally to our experiments with the food lozenge.

We were astir early on the morning of the twentieth, and had the gas going and the balloon inflated by ten o’clock. It was a clear winter morning, but still, and to us it seemed warm. Our entire population was gathered for the occasion.

“So you gwine to sail off into space, now, is yeh?” observed Zar, as we prepared to start.

“Yes, and your Miss Edith is going along,” I answered, jestingly.

Zar whirled about.

“Look heah, honey! You don’t mean to say you gwine up in dat skiff to pernavigate de skies, does yeh?”

“Of course, Zar. Why not?”

Miss Gale made a move as if to take her place in the boat, but the old woman, with a nimbleness and strength not consistent with her years, suddenly stepped forward and bore her off bodily, as she had so often done in childhood.

“Put me down, Zar!” pleaded Miss Gale, “put me down! I won’t go—I promise!”

The old woman set her mistress upright and regarded her sternly.

“Well, I dess reckon you won’t, honey,” she announced, “lessen you walk ovah my old dead body! You wouldn’t come on dis trip ef I’d knowed wheah we-all comin’ to. I mighty tiahd sech foolishness, an’ dey ain’ gwine be no moah of it! Airskiff! Humph! I guess not!”

We were all ready now. By a short, stout rope, running from a stanchion through a ring in the deck to another ring in the bottom of our boat-car and thus back to the stanchion again, our balloon was held close captive. Coiled on the deck beside us lay twenty-five hundred feet of smaller rope, one end of it attached to the ring beneath the car, and the other lashed firmly about an iron “bit”—thus constituting our anchorage while aloft. The Cloudcrest was very large, certainly, and pulled desperately in the clear, cold air, but it did not seem possible that she would be able to lift all that great length of line. A little more than a hundred yards away was the perpendicular blue barrier of ice, beyond whose lofty summit we hoped soon to look. Our shorter anchorage was all that detained us, and a man stood ready with a keen knife, to sever at the word. When ready to descend we had only to open the valve above and let out the gas. We expected to be back in an hour.

Chauncey Gale took his seat last. He kissed his daughter as if he were starting on a journey. This inclination had seized me also, but not the resolution so I had merely pressed her hand. All except the man with the knife drew back.

“Ready! One, two, three, cut!”

There was a sharp hissing sound, a sudden upward jerk, and a white world fell away beneath us. The cold air rushed by and took our breath. Then presently it passed less swiftly. The weight of our anchor rope was beginning to tell. Like Alice falling into Wonderland we were going slowly enough at length to take in things as we went along. There were no empty jam-pots, but the swift panorama of the stratified wall was interesting. Ferratoni handed me the telephone.

“All right, below?” I called.

“All right!” came the voice of Edith Gale, “but how small you are getting!”

“We feel bigger than we look!”

“Is Daddy all right?”

“Yes, he’s getting out a sleeping-bag, so if he feels cold he can get into it.”

Gale seized the transmitter.

“Slander,” he called. “We’ve already found two hot bricks in Nick’s pocket, and he’s been begging like a stray kitten to be taken home!”

Up, and up, and up! The Billowcrest below grew small, then smaller, and became at last a toy boat tossed into a snowdrift. Nearer and nearer came the verge of the barrier.

“Can’t you see over it yet?” called the voice in the phone. “It looks as if you could.”

“Not yet! Soon, though. We’re half crazy with excitement!”

“Tell me the instant you can see over, and just what you can see!”

“Yes, of course! In another second now—we——”

There was a sudden movement of the car. Looking up I saw that the balloon bag, now lifting above the barrier, had been caught in an upper current of air from the north, and was being carried inward, to the wall. In another instant it struck the jagged edge of the precipice, rebounded, was caught again by the air current and lifted, and with a wild sweep went plunging over the barrier, dragging us almost horizontally behind!

There came some startled cries through the telephone. Then, from behind, a sudden jerk that nearly flung us from the car. We had reached the end of our rope, so to speak, and had been pulled up, short. Too short, for the taut line, drawn across the sharp edge of ice, could not stand the strain. Well for us that it did not. We were already clawing tooth and nail at everything in sight, and our angle was becoming momentarily more precipitous. The car swung suddenly downward into an easier position, and then once more a white world dropped away beneath. We did not need to guess what had happened. We knew. The line had parted, and on the wings of a thirty mile wind we were bound for the South Pole.