are equally
as grateful as yourself for the mercy which has preserved us all from an
awful death. My very first thought on realising our extremely narrow
escape from destruction was to say 'Thank God!' but I did not say it
aloud as you did. It is in matters like these that people differ
according to their temperament and training; and it is not safe to judge
another because, in any particular circumstances, he does not act in
precisely the same way as we ourselves would."

Thus we travelled on and on, each day bringing us more than two million
miles nearer to our destination. Mars was apparently increasing in
diameter the nearer we drew to it, and the dark blue line around the
south polar snow-cap, indicating the lake of water from the melting
snow, was very conspicuous. The snow-cap had recently decreased rapidly,
being now near its minimum and irregular in shape, for in the southern
hemisphere it was now late in June. Pointing to the planet, I remarked,
"There is our destination! We see it now as the poet pictured it for us,
and the words of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes are very appropriate to the
present circumstances:

'The snow that glittered on the disc of Mars
Has melted, and the planet's fiery orb
Rolls in the crimson summer of its year!'"

On the 18th of September we passed between the earth and Mars, nearly in
a line with the sun. On that date Mars was in perigee, or at its nearest
point to the earth during the present year. Its distance from the earth
was then 36,100,000 miles, and it will not be so close again until the
24th of August 1924. We could not see the earth, as its dark side was
turned towards us, and it was also lost in the brilliancy of the sun.

At this date we had travelled 88,000,000 miles since we left the earth,
yet we knew it was there, level with our vessel, and only about
29,000,000 miles distant on our left hand, whilst Mars was only
7,000,000 miles from us on our right-hand side.

Our position now was as follows:--Taking an imaginary line drawn from
the _Areonal_ to Mars as the base line of an isosceles triangle, we were
moving along the left side of the triangle, and Mars was moving in a
slightly curved line along the right side. Our paths were therefore
converging, and if all went well we should both meet at the apex of the
triangle on the 24th September, as we had originally intended.

We therefore had six clear days to cover the distance of less than
12,000,000 miles, so