"What—what's the trouble?" He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stared up at the chronometer above his head. "Midnight! I've been asleep only half an hour."

"I know. Sorry. But get a move on." I recrossed the cabin, passed by the big RCA transmitter and stove, and halted in front of the instrument table. The register showed the wind ENE, velocity 15 knots—near enough 17 miles per hour, on a night like this, with the ice-crystals and drift lifting off the ice-cap, clogging and slowing up the anemometer cups, the true speed was probably half as much again. And the pen of the alcohol thermograph was running evenly along the red circle of 40 degrees below zero—72 degrees of frost. I thought of the evil combination of these two factors of wind and cold and felt my skin crawl.

Already Jackstraw was silently climbing into his furs. I did the same—caribou trousers and parka with reindeer fur trimmed hood, all beautifully tailored by Jackstraw's wife—sealskin boots, woollen mittens and reindeer gloves. I could hear the plane quite clearly now, and so too, I could see, did Joss. The deep even throb of its motors was plain even above the frantic rattling of the anemometer cups.

"It's—it's an aeroplane!" You could see that he was still trying to convince himself.

"What did you think it was—one of your precious London double-deckers?" I slipped snow-mask and goggles round my neck and picked up a torch from the shelf beside the stove: it was kept there to keep the dry batteries from freezing. "Been circling for the past two or three minutes. Jackstraw thinks it's in trouble, and I agree."

Joss listened.

"Engines sound OK to me."

"And to me. But engine failure is only one of a dozen possible reasons."

"But why circle here?"

"How the devil should I know? Probably because he can see our lights—the only lights, at a guess, in 50,000 square miles. And if he has to put down, which God forbid, he stands his only chance of survival if he puts down near some human habitation."