sly pursuing their avocation of fishermen, and--unlike the
sea-otters--paying little or no attention to their strange visitors.
And finally, as they drew nearer in with the land, seals of various
kinds were passed, sportively chasing each other, and pausing for a
moment to raise their heads inquisitively and turn their mild glances
upon the flying ship.

When within some ten miles of the land, it was deemed advisable to rise
out of the water and to complete the journey at a few feet above its
surface, thus taking the most effectual of precautions against
accidental collision with a sunken rock. As the ship drew in still
closer with the land, her speed was reduced; and, at a quarter after
seven o'clock on that calm July evening, she once more settled down,
like a wearied sea-fowl, upon the surface of the water, and let go her
anchor in a depth of twelve fathoms, at a distance of half a mile from
the shore, in a fine roomy well-sheltered bay of crescent form, the two
horns or outer extremities of which rose sheer out of the water in the
form of a pair of bold rocky spurs, backed up on the landward side by a
sweep of low grassy hills, crowned, at a short distance from the shore,
with a forest of majestic pines.

"Well!" ejaculated the professor, as he finally turned away and went
below to dinner, after feasting his eyes on the splendid landscape,
gloriously lighted up by the rays of the evening sun, "I was prepared to
see many unexpected sights in the event of our reaching the North Pole,
but grass and trees!--well, I was _not_ prepared to find _them_."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

ANOTHER STARTLING DISCOVERY.

Notwithstanding the state of excitement which the travellers had been
thrown into by the successful accomplishment of this, the first, and,
perhaps, the most difficult part of their novel enterprise, they managed
to secure a tolerably sound night's rest--if one may venture to term
night any part of the twenty-four hours at that season and in that
region, where the sun had never once sunk beneath the horizon since the
twenty-first of the preceding March, and where the day had still two
months more to run before it should wane into the long six-months' night
of winter. But, as might be expected, they were up bright and early on
the following morning, eager to explore this strange new polar land, and
scarcely patient enough to sit down and consume with becoming leisure
the appetising breakfast which the still imperturb