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Rh twenty to twenty-five miles an hour in a northerly direction, a little east. Notwithstanding the friction upon the surface of the ice or sea of the trailing guide-ropes with which Andrée hoped to keep his airship always in contact with the earth, the balloon must have traveled nearly as fast as the wind. If his voyage had continued a little east of north, at a speed of twenty miles an hour, at noon the second day out he would have found himself some 250 miles on the other side of the Pole, which he would have passed at a distance of perhaps one hundred miles on his left.

But the pigeon message tells a different story. At noon of the second day out, July 13th, Andrée writes that he had reached latitude 82° 2′ north, and longitude 15° 5′ east. In other words, instead of an aërial voyage 900 miles or more to the northward, passing near the Pole, he was then only 145 geographical miles north and 45 miles east of the point of departure. Moreover, at the hour of writing his message he was making "good progress eastward, ten degrees south," instead of to the north.

Professor Eckholm, who would have been one of Andrée's fellow-voyagers had the expedition started in 1896, and who is an accomplished meteorologist, has advanced a rational theory to account for Andrée's lack of progress northward during the first two days. Gathering the meager weather reports made by captains of such sealing sloops as were in the vicinity, Professor Eckholm suggests that

the wind in which the "Ornen" ascended was part of a cyclonic or whirling storm, the currents moving inward toward the center of the area of low barometric depression, where comparative calm prevailed. Professor Eckholm assumes that such a center of depression existed north-west of Danes' Island and that therefore the balloon was borne first to the north, then to the northwest and west, and into the area of calms, whence it emerged with the general course of the storm, and began its flight to the eastward. This would explain the movements of the airship during the forty-six hours which elapsed between the ascension and the writing of Andrée's message. It would