Explore "From Pole To Pole" by George Griffith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When the moment chosen for departure came, there remained no possible doubt as to the correctness of the Professor's hypothesis. The sun was dipping below the horizon and the long polar night was beginning. The full moon shone down from the zenith through a cloudless, mistless atmosphere. The sloping snow-field and the curved edge of the Axial Tunnel were brilliantly illuminated. They could see for miles along the ice-cliffs, far enough to make certain that they were part of a circle so vast that anything like an exact calculation of its circumference was impossible.
The breeze was still straight to the southward, to the centre of the tunnel. The balloons were inflated until the Brenda--as the strange vehicle had been named by a majority of two to one--began to pull at the ropes which held her down. Then, with a last look round at the inhospitable land they were leaving--perchance never to see land of any sort again--they went in through the curved sliding door to windward. Princeps started the engine, the balloons began to fill out, and three of the four mooring-ropes were cast off as the Brenda began to rock and swing like the car of a captive balloon.