The Doctor sighed. "We can't help it, I suppose--but it's a cruel blow."

"There's many a break in a long airplane voyage anywhere," he consoled
himself, "and I think the chances for accidents in the Arctic are about
trebled. I don't wish our rivals any fatal catastrophe, but a little
tough luck--say a wing demolished; or an engine burned out--might not be
so much to my displeasure."

The days that followed were spent in various ways. Hunting seals and
polar bears was something of an out-the-way pleasure for seafaring men.
Then there were checkers and cards, besides the daily guess as to their
position at noon.

Strangely enough, for once in the history of Arctic currents, they found
themselves being carried where they wanted to go, in a direct line for
Point On-na-tak, and during the entire four days and a half there was
hardly a point's deviation from the course. On the evening of the fourth
day, Dave thought he sighted land, and the midnight watch reported
definitely that there was land to the port bow; two points, one more
easily discerned than the other. This news brought the whole crew on
deck. And for two hours there was wild speculation as to the nature of
the country ahead of them; the possibility of inhabitants and their
treatment of strangers. Azazruk, the Eskimo, thought that he had heard
from an old man of his tribe that the point was inhabited by a people who
spoke a different language from that spoken by the Chukches of East Cape
and Whaling, on the Russian side of Behring Strait. But of this he could
not be sure. If the old engineer knew anything of these shores other than
the facts he had already stated concerning wood and coal, he did not
venture to say. And no one asked.