Jack soon made his report.
"Yes, it looks good to me!" he cried, with a hopeful ring to his voice.
"I can see a crack or two that would be bad for us to run into; but
there's a clear field over on the north side of the floe. I'm sure we
could make it without getting badly shaken up. Then it's our only chance;
if we miss this what else could we do?"
"Nothing," Tom replied quietly. "But I'm going to circle the berg, and
see what lies on the other side."
"Whatever we decide to do," remarked Beverly, who seemed to have
recovered to a great extent from his first perturbation, "we must lose no
time about carrying it out. That feed pipe might become fully clogged at
any minute, you know. Then besides, the sun is ready to dip down behind
the sea horizon, when we'll soon be plunged into darkness."
"Yes," agreed Tom, "we mustn't fool away our time. It's going to be no
easy job to make a safe landing on the ice, something none of us has ever
practiced. But it'd be still worse to go at it haphazard."
The others knew what was in Tom's mind. Should they seriously injure the
big bombing plane there would be no way of making repairs. On land it
could be turned over to the repair-shop, and inside of a week perhaps
emerge once more in as good shape as ever. No such convenience could be
looked for out there in mid-Atlantic!
In a short time they had circled the great mass of ice. They all fully
realized now how cold it was, and why the sea water must be affected for
a mile or more all around such a tremendous bit of the Arctic regions.
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