Its farthest electric effluences were lost in the Southern Cross, whose four bright stars were gleaming overhead.

The phenomenon was one of incomparable magnificence, and the light showed the face of the country as a confused mass of white.
It need not be said that they had approached so near to the pole that the compass was constantly affected, and gave no precise indication of the course pursued.

Its inclination was such that at one time Robur felt certain they were passing over the magnetic pole discovered by Sir James Ross.

And an hour later, in calculating the angle the needle made with the vertical, he exclaimed: "the South Pole is beneath us!" A white cap appeared, but nothing could be seen of what it bid under its ice.
A few minutes afterwards the aurora died away, and the point where all the world's meridians cross is still to be discovered.
If Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans wished to bury in the most mysterious solitudes the aeronef and all she bore, the moment was propitious.

If they did not do so it was doubtless because the explosive they required was still denied to them.
The hurricane still raged and swept along with such rapidity that had a mountain been met with the aeronef would have been dashed to pieces like a ship on a lee shore.