not
appear to be making any headway. So far as I can judge we seem to be
simply drifting bodily to the westward and more toward the open sea."

"It is so," answered the professor. "We have risen above the range of
the variable winds, and are now feeling the influence of an adverse air
current, which, in this latitude, invariably blows _from_ the northward;
and if we were to maintain our present altitude, for which, however,
there is not the slightest necessity, we should have to struggle against
it for the next eight or nine hundred miles, in fact until we reach the
neighbourhood of the Arctic circle. There, or thereabout, we should
again have a fair wind, of which we may possibly yet be glad to avail
ourselves. In the meantime, however, we will increase our speed, if you
please--at all events, until we are clear of the land, when we can once
more descend into a favourable current. And as, until then, our rate of
travelling will be such as to make it difficult, if not impossible, to
maintain our footing on the deck, I would suggest the advisability of a
retreat to the pilot-house."

This suggestion having been promptly carried out, the speed of the ship
was increased to its utmost limit, whereby the rate of progression over
the ground was raised from nothing to about one hundred and eight miles
per hour. This rate of travelling--the adverse wind fortunately
remaining moderate--enabled them to reach Erris Head, the north-western
corner of county Mayo, in an hour and a half, or about eleven o'clock
A.M., at which hour they found themselves just running clear of the
land, with the bay and county of Donegal on their right hand, and the
broad expanse of the North Atlantic ahead.

At this point the professor turned to his companions and said:

"It now becomes necessary that we should come to a definite decision as
to the course to be steered. All routes are of course equally open to
us; but there are two which especially commend themselves to our
preference. One is the direct northerly route to the Pole, which will
take us to the eastward of Iceland, straight to the island of Jan Mayen,
and thence, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, into an icy sea which has
been but little explored. And the other is the usual route taken by
nearly all the great Arctic explorers, namely, up Davis Strait, through
Baffin's Bay, and thence, by way of Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel,
into the open Polar Sea, if such should actually ex