"Nothing broken on board?" asked Robur.

"No," answered Tom Turner. "But we don't want to have another game of
humming-top like that!"

For ten minutes or so the "Albatross" had been in extreme peril. Had
it not been for her extraordinary strength of build she would have
been lost.

During this passage of the Atlantic many were the hours whose
monotony was unbroken by any phenomenon whatever. The days grew
shorter and shorter, and the cold became keen. Uncle Prudent and Phil
Evans saw little of Robur. Seated in his cabin, the engineer was busy
laying out his course and marking it on his maps, taking his
observations whenever he could, recording the readings of his
barometers, thermometers, and chronometers, and making full entries
in his log-book.

The colleagues wrapped themselves well up and eagerly watched for the
sight of land to the southward. At Uncle Prudent's request Frycollin
tried to pump the cook as to whither the engineer was bound, but what
reliance could be placed on the information given by this Gascon?
Sometimes Robur was an ex-minister of the Argentine Republic,
sometimes a lord of the Admiralty, sometimes an ex-President of the
United States, sometimes a Spanish general temporarily retired,
sometimes a Viceroy of the Indies who had sought a more elevated
position in the air. Sometimes he possessed millions, thanks to
successful razzias in the aeronef, and he had been proclaimed for
piracy. Sometimes he had been ruined by making the aeronef, and had