the north-western tip of Greenland. The tower there
gave us its routine signal, which we answered in kind. There was little
traffic along here; a few local cars in the lowest lanes.

Shortly after six, when we were above Grantland, another of the great
trans-Arctic passenger liners went over us. The San Francisco Night
line, for Mid-Eurasia and points South. It was crossing Greenland, from
San Francisco, Vancouver, Edmonton, to the North Cape, the Russias, and
African points south of Suez.

At seven o'clock, with the sun circling the lower sky, the fog under us
suddenly dissipated completely. We were over the Polar ocean. Masses of
drift ice and slush, but for the most part surprisingly clear. At eight
o'clock, flying low--no more than a thousand feet--we sighted the steel
tower with foundations sunk into the ocean's depths which marks the top
of our little Earth.

We flashed by the tower in a moment, answering the director's signal
perfunctorily. Southward now, on the 110th East Meridian, without
deviating from the straight course we had held.

It was truly a beautiful sight, this Polar ocean. Masses of ice,
glittering in the morning sunlight. A fog-bank to the left; but
everywhere else patches of green water and floes that gleamed like
millions of precious stones as they flung back the light to us. Or
again, a mass of low, solid ice, flushed pink in the morning light. And
behind us, just above the horizon, a segment of purple sky where a storm
was gathering--a deep purple which was mirrored in the placid patches of
open water, and darkened the ice-floes to a solemn, sombre hue.

Elza was entranced, though she had made many trans-Polar trips. But
Georg, now again at the controls, kept his eyes on the instruments; and
the doctor, trying vainly once more to talk with his laboratory, now so
close ahead of us, sat in moody silence.

It was 9:38 when we sighted, well off to the right, the rocky headland
of Cape Chelusin[7]--the most northerly point of Eurasia. A long, low
cliff of grey rock, ridged white with snow in its clefts. We swung
toward it, at greatly decreased speed, and at an altitude of only a few
hundred feet.

[Footnote 7: Now Cape Chelyuskin, Laimur Peninsula, Siberia.]

This was all a bleak, desolate region--curiously so--and I think, one of
the very few so desolate on Earth. As we advanced, the Siberian coast
spread out before us. Mountains behind, and a strip of rocky lowland
along the sea. There