Arctic dirge. But their howls were lost in the noise of the engines.

As for the boys, their cheeks burned. Truly, this was to be their
greatest adventure--"An adventure quite worthy the heart of a true
soldier," as the Major had expressed it. Many problems they left
behind unsolved, but these were quite crowded out of their minds by
the one supreme problem: Would they reach the Pole, and would they
reach it first?

Somewhere on the shores of Melville Bay, near the banks of Melville
Island, frozen in the ice for the winter, was the little gasoline
schooner which had engaged to furnish them fuel for the last lap of the
journey north and the return. The gas would cost a pretty penny, to be
sure, for it would compel the trader to return to Nome earlier than he
had intended doing, but money seemed no object to the zealous explorer.

Setting their course a little east of north, they shot directly away.
Bruce, who was driving, settled back easily in his place. The machine was
soaring beautifully. The engines worked in perfect time. Everything
promised a safe and speedy trip. Now and again a belated flock of
snow-geese, as if drawn by an invisible thread, shot by them; and now,
far below, they caught sight of moving brown specks, which told of
caribou still passing southward from the summer pasture in the unexplored
lands far to the North. The fleeting panorama was of constantly changing
interest and beauty.

Soon they left the land behind. They were passing over Prince Albert
Sound. Its surface was already white with ice. Land again, then Melville
Sound--last lap on this three hundred mile journey. Bruce found himself
unable to believe they were over a great body of salt water. Surely these