lowing out of the cavern wafted them far from
their comrades, and they therefore bent all their energies to the task
of getting home again. The light of the polar summer that lit the
mouth of the gulf was their guide that led them back to the old
familiar world.

"Happily for the adventurers, the direction of the wind continued
favorable to their voyage. They made about a hundred miles a day, and
in five days reached the edge of the outer ocean. Here again the
grandeur of the scene appalled them. Let the reader imagine a little
boat carrying twelve souls out of that monstrous cavern five hundred
miles in diameter. Think of fifteen hundred miles of ocean forming the
mouth of the world that shone in the Arctic sunlight like molten
silver surrounding an abyss of darkness.

"Dunbar and his companions had no sooner emerged from the gulf and
seen once more the light of the sun--our own sun--than they wept for
joy. But again, when they thought of the terrible barrier of ice they
had to cross again they began to wish they had remained with the
_Polar King_. Thus man fluctuates between this or that impulse, as he
is moved.

"'I say, captain,' said Walker, one of the men, 'don't you think it
about as safe to go back and find the ship as to run the chance of
being frozen to death on the ice?'

"'Well,' said Dunbar, 'when we left the ship everybody knew it was for
good. Our shipmates have chosen their course, as we chose ours, and
it's too late to go back now. As likely as not she may have struck a
rock and has gone to the bottom by this time.'

"As the boat cleared the cavern the sea fell down before them, until
at noonday the sun itself was visible, a joyful proof that they had at
last gained the normal surface of the earth again.

"When three days out of the gulf, the weather grew suddenly colder,
and the sky became obscured with clouds, completely hiding the sun
from sight. A furious snow-storm overtook the voyagers, who, benumbed
with cold, wished they were only back again under the hurricane-deck
of the _Polar King_. Fortunately, the wind blew steadily toward the
Arctic Circle, bringing them nearer home, but such was the anxiety and
suffering caused by insufficient protection from the inclement climate
that they cared not whither they drifted, so long as they could keep
alive.

"By the help of a little oil-stove they boiled their coffee under a
sail, which, spread horizontally above them, in some measure kept the
sn