Part 9 (1/2)

Upon one pretext or another the professor purposely delayed the rising of the party froth reached the deck they found the so abundantly fulfilled A scene of surpassing loveliness aze, and, to enjoy it more fully and completely, it was promptly decided to descend to the ocean's surface The sea on all sides was thickly covered with detachednot s, , in one or two instances, fro from two to three hundred feet above the surface of the water The sun was nearing the horizon, and, with his golden bealittered against the rosy grey of the horizon like burnished s in particular were the objects of the travellers' especial wonder and admiration One, at a distance of some six miles to the eastward, resee of marble ruins Its perpendicular sides were rent here and there with deep fissures, and in the centre there yawned an immense cavern, the interior of which displayed every conceivable shade of the reen, from the transparent tint of the e bluff near at hand casting a strangely- contrasting shadow of the deepest, purest ultraleah orange and cri frouishable from black And, to complete the fairy-like beauty of the picture, the body of the berg, a pure radually assues, in which the rays of the sun gleamed and sparkled so brilliantly that the antic opal

The other large berg, which in the first instance was only remarkable for its enormous size, lay on the western horizon at a distance of some eleven aze upon it, presented the appearance of a vastabove the rosy waters But as they looked upon it the setting sun drew round toward its rear, and then the pale blue opaque tint gradually quickened into translucency and quivered here and there with sudden golden and roseate glealealed in the reen, war the edge of the horizon, passed behind the berg, when it at once fla had taken fire For a space of perhaps half aspectacle continued with scarcely diold to cri in depth of colour until it stood out against the horizon an immense mass of blood-red hue The red deepened into purple, the purple into violet, and at last, probably when the sun had entirely sunk beneath the horizon, the violet faded gradually to a pale cold lifeless grey

”Superb!”

”Magnificent!”

”Delightful!”

”Beautiful as a dream!”

Such were the exclamations which burst froh at the transitory nature of the beauties they had just been witnessing, when lo! the scene to the eastward had donned new glories The sun had vanished below the horizon, and the lower portions of the bergs were therefore in cold blue shadow; but as the glance travelled upwards the blue becarees into a delicate aradually warh the richest rose and orange tints to the purest golden-yellow, out of which the projecting points and pinnacles of ice flashed and sparkled like living flame This fairy-like spectacle lasted for a short tiolden flashes vanished one by one; the yellow becae deepened into cried into a cold cobalt blue as the light died out of the western sky; and finally the stars came out one by one until the entire firhtfall on the sea”

Enthralled by the surpassing witchery of the scene, some time elapsed before either of the travellers cared to break the silence At length, however, the baronet turned to the professor and said:

”I owe you a debt of never-dying gratitude, professor, for having been theme to a scene of such indescribable beauty as that which we have just witnessed; I have looked upon s, but never upon anything to equal this We ht, have we not?

for surely the Polar world can have no spectaclethan the one which we have just witnessed?”

”We _have_ been fortunate; there is no doubt about that,” was the reply

”But you have not yet seen the hts far exceed in beauty e have looked upon to- night But it grows chilly and an insidious fog is gathering round us; we ht in safety, for, e by chance to be caught between two icebergs of even ordinary size, not even the enor Fish_ would save her from destruction”

”And what do you propose to do, then, professor, in order to ensure our safety?”

”There are two courses open to us One is to sink to the bottoh to secure us fros And the other is to ascend into the calht can be passed in a state of absolute safety”

”Very well, then; let us ascend into the 'calm belt,' by all means,”

said the baronet ”And, by the way, I should feel extreed if you would kindly explain to us what the 'calm belt' is; I for one never heard of it before”

”I will do so with pleasure,” replied the professor ”You must know, then, in the first place, that there are certain atular and precise in their action as those of the ocean, both being created by the same cause--namely, the tendency of a warm fluid to rise and of a colder one to flow into the vacated space Thus the air on the equator, being heated by the vertical rays of the sun, rises, creating a partial vacuum which the cold air fro toward the poles to restore the balance Thus at a few degrees north of the equator the upper stratu northward And it continues so to do until it reaches the vicinity of the thirtieth parallel of latitude, when, having lost most of its heat by constant exposure to open space, it beco the place of the polar current, whichover the teh it has descended to the surface of the earth, still radual way northward, as well as local circu polar current; and by the tiain, by contact with the earth, become the warmer of the two currents, when it once ions of the atmosphere, to descend no more until it reaches the vicinity of the pole, when it sinks, and at the same ti happens in the southern hereat at fro from the equator to the pole

The lower current, or that which sweeps along the surface of the earth,local influences that it is frequently deflected greatly from its proper course, sometimes so much so that its course becoions of the at influences are very little if at all felt Now, if I have succeeded inthis plain to you, you will readily understand that where the top of the lower current and the bottom of the upper current touch each other there will be so much friction that a neutral or 'calm belt' will occur in which the air will be motionless And it is in this calm belt--which occurs between the altitudes of three thousand and twelve thousand feet above the earth's surface--that I propose we should take refuge to-night”

The professor's small audience duly expressed their thanks for the extre lecture to which they had just been treated, and then the party retreated to the pilot-house; the door was closed to exclude the cold air of the upper regions which they were about to visit; and an ascent was ht was passed in an atmosphere so co, Lieutenant Mildmay's observations showed them to be in the exact spot which they had occupied on the previous evening

It was decided over the breakfast-table that , that the journey northward should be prosecuted, as far as possible, upon the surface of the sea; and the _Flying Fish_ was accordingly put in motion on the required course iress was particularly slow, not exceeding, on the average, a speed of six miles per hour, as drift ice was reh they occasionally encountered a floe of several acres in extent; and, far away to the northward, quite a large asseress would have been wearisoator in possession of such e as those enjoyed by the in Fish's_ pilot-house; but to the, and, almost before they knew it, they found thereatly in size, so-house of moderate dimensions, whilst others fully equalled, if, indeed, they did not exceed, the proportions of the rouped so closely together that a passage between theer; and the party were in the act of discussing the question which channel it would becliffs of ice before theand plunge, a distance of some two hundred and fifty feet, with a terrific splash into the water and disappear

The deep thunderous roar of its plunge smote the ears of the watchers next moment, and they looked on with breathless interest to see ould follow The h, they considered, fully five thousand tons; and they were not surprised to see that the loss of so , which at once began to rock ponderously to and fro, creating a terrific commotion in the water when conjoined with that caused by the plunge into the sea and the reappearance a second or two later of the detachedwell- defined ridge, sinified scale--to that caused by the plunge of a stone into the water This ridge spread out in a circular form all round the spot where the an to travel outward in the forht Onward it rolled, its s a singular and so spectacle The fears of the beholders, however, if they had any, were groundless, for, though the threatening wave swept forith a velocity of soh over and along the cylindrical sides of the _Flying Fish_, hissing and roaring le drop of spray on her deck This as quickly followed by several others, each of which, however, was less for one Meanwhile, the draun The oscillation of the parent berg, though it was probably quite unaffected by the portion of the circular hich dashed furiously against its sides, became momentarily itation of the sea in its neighbourhood, an agitation so great that the surface of the ocean soon assues leaping wildly hither and thither with a continuous roar like that of the surf beating on a rocky shore, and soon assu such di Fish_, and dashed the walls of the pilot-house Other frag crashes froious--orvibration of the air fro voluan to go to pieces Then, indeed, the sight and the acco The air resounded with the continuous roar of the disrew dizzy and bewildered as it watched their swaying forms; and the surface of the ocean was es sweptin mid-career, shattered each other into a wild tee h into the air as though they had been fragments of cork So er masses of ice dashed to and fro, that it was dee Fish_ out of harly raised a few fatho commotion which leaped and roared around her Scarcely had this been acco not one-tenth part of the tis was seen to roll coe that it visibly affected even the is, which, in their turn, rolled slowly over one after the other, to the acco ice as their dis ocean disturbance was, as rand and utterly indescribable; and it no doubt contributed in no inconsiderable degree to the total destruction of the bergs, which, once started, continued to roll over and over, every lurch causing a further disments became so small as to be incapable of further division

Then ensued co those of the hoarse roar of the angry surges and the grinding crash of ice-blocks dashed violently together Gradually these too subsided; and, in half an hour from the coain rippling crisply under the influence of a n remained to tell a new arrival upon the scene--had there been one--what an awful teed there so short a tihted the coast of Greenland about noon; the landa lofty snow-covered leamed like silver in the brilliant sunshi+ne As they neared the coast the water becaed into a broad channel coed at a trifle less than half-speed, or at the rate of about sixty ht they crossed, according to their ”dead reckoning,” the Arctic circle; and hted eyes upon the glorious spectacle of thethe northern horizon

At this point the channel between the Greenland coast and the pack-ice narrowed very considerably; and their rate of progress northward next day was reduced to a speed of between two and threeto be just started, and then stopped again for a few minutes in order to keep the speed down to this very low limit But they were all as yet so new to Arctic scenery--everything was so entirely novel to them--that even this snail's pace failed to prove wearisoloriously fine