The great white way E-Book

Albert Bigelow Paine

• Herausgeber: Publisher s11838
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The great white way written by Albert Bigelow Paine who was an American author and biographer best known for his work with Mark Twain. This book was published in 1901. And now republish in ebook format. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book.

Leseprobe

The great white way

A record of an unusual voyage of discovery, and some romantic love affairs amid strange surroundings

By

Albert Bigelow Paine

Contributor: Mr. Chase

Illustrator: Bernard J. Rosenmeyer

Chauncey Gale

Table of Contents

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ OF THE GREAT WHITE WAY.

I. ANSWER TO AN OLD SUMMONS.

II. I RENEW AN OLD DREAM.

III. EVEN SEEKING TO REALIZE IT.

IV. TURNING TO THE SEA, AT LAST, FOR SOLACE.

V. I OVERHAUL THE STEAM YACHT, BILLOWCREST.

VI. WHERE ALL THINGS BECOME POSSIBLE.

VII. I LEARN THE WAY OF THE SEA, AND ENTER MORE FULLY INTO MY HERITAGE.

VIII. THE HALCYON WAY TO THE SOUTH.

IX. ADMONITION AND COUNSEL.

X. CAPTAIN BIFFER IS ASSISTED BY THE PAMPEIRO.

XI. IN GLOOMY SEAS.

XII. WHERE CAPTAIN BIFFER REVISES SOME OPINIONS.

XIII. IN THE “FIGHTING-TOP.”

XIV. AN EXCURSION AND AN EXPERIMENT.

XV. AS REPORTED BY MY NOTE-BOOK.

XVI. FOLLOWING THE PACEMAKER.

XVII. INVESTIGATION AND DISCOVERY.

XVIII. A “BORNING” AND A MYSTERY.

XIX. A LONG FAREWELL.

XX. THE LONG DARK.

XXI. AN ARRIVAL AND A DEPARTURE.

XXII. ON THE AIR-LINE, SOUTH.

XXIII. THE CLOUDCREST MAKES A LANDING.

XXIV. THE GREAT WHITE WAY.

XXV. WHERE THE WAY ENDS.

XXVI. THE WELCOME TO THE UNKNOWN.

XXVII. THE PRINCE OF THE PURPLE FIELDS.

XXVIII. A HARBOR OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS.

XXIX. A LAND OF THE HEART’S DESIRE.

XXX. THE LADY OF THE LILIES.

XXXI. THE POLE AT LAST.

XXXII. AN OFFERING TO THE SUN.

XXXIII. THE TOUCH OF LIFE.

XXXIV. THE PARDON OF LOVE.

XXXV. DOWN THE RIVER OF COMING DARK.

XXXVI. THE “PASSAGE OF THE DEAD.”

XXXVII. THE RISING TIDE.

XXXVIII. STORM AND STRESS.

XXXIX. WHERE DREAMS BECOME REAL.

XL. CLAIMING THE REWARD.

“The South Pole for us all!”

DRAMATIS PERSONÆOFTHE GREAT WHITE WAY.

Nicholas Chase, a young man with a dream of discovery, and an inherited love of the sea.

Chauncey Gale, a merry millionaire, with a willingness to back his judgment.

Edith Gale, his daughter, a girl with accomplishments and ideas.

Zar, colored maid and former nurse of Edith Gale. A woman with no “fool notions” about the South Pole.

Ferratoni, an Italian electrician with wireless communication, and subtle psychic theories.

Captain Joseph Biffer, Master of the Billowcrest. An old salt, with little respect for wild expeditions.

Terence Larkins, First Officer of the Billowcrest, with a disregard of facts.

Mr. Emory, Second Officer of the Billowcrest.

William Sturritt, Steward of the Billowcrest, and inventor of condensed food tablets.

Frenchy, a bosun who stirs up trouble.

Prince of the Purple Fields, a gentle despot of the Port of Dreams.

Princess of the Lilied Hills, His Serene Sister, whose domain is the deepest South.

Three maidens of the Land of Dreams and Lotus.

A shipwrecked sailor, whose rescue is important to all concerned.

Cabin boy, stewardess, and crew of the Billowcrest.

Courtiers, populace, etc., of the Land of the Sloping Sun.

I.ANSWER TO AN OLD SUMMONS.

For more than ten generations my maternal ancestors have been farers of the sea, and I was born within call of high tide. At the distance of a thousand miles inland it still called me, and often in childhood I woke at night from dreams of a blue harbor with white sails.

It is not strange, therefore, that I should return to the coast. When, at the age of thirty, I found myself happily rid of a commercial venture—conducted for ten years half-heartedly and with insignificant results—it was only natural that I should set my face seaward. My custom, of which there was never any great amount, and my goodwill, of which there was ever an abundance, I had disposed of to one who was likely to reverse these conditions—his methods in the matter of trade being rather less eccentric than my own. He had been able to pay me in cash the modest sum agreed upon, and this amount I now hoped to increase through some marine investment or adventure—something that would bring me at once into active sea life—though I do not now see what this could have been, and I confess that my ideas at the time were somewhat vague.

II.I RENEW AN OLD DREAM.

Perhaps first of all I wished to visit the South Pole—not an unreasonable ambition it would seem for one backed by ten generations of sea captains and ocean faring—but one that I found not altogether easy to gratify. For one thing, there was no Antarctic expedition forming at the time; and then, my notions in the matter were not popular.

From boyhood it had been my dream that about the earth’s southern axis, shut in by a precipitous wall of ice, there lay a great undiscovered world. Not a bleak desolation of storm-swept peaks and glaciers, but a fair, fruitful land, warmed and nourished from beneath by the great central heat brought nearer to the surface there through terrestrial oblation, or, as my geography had put it, the “flattening of the poles.”

I had held to this fancy for a long time on the basis of theory only, and, perhaps, the added premise that nature would not allow so vast a tract as the Antarctic Continent to lie desolate. But, curiously enough, about the time I arrived in New York I met with what seemed to me undoubted bits of evidence in the reports of some recent polar observations.

Borchgrevink, a Norwegian explorer, returning with a poorly fitted Antarctic expedition, reported, among other things, a warm current off Victoria Land, at a point below the 71st parallel, and flowing approximately from the direction of the pole![1]

1.  “It seems to me,” he says, in an article printed in the Century Magazine (January, 1896), “that an investigation of the origin and consequences of the warm current running northeast, which we experienced in Victoria Bay, is of the greatest importance.”

True, Borchgrevink believed the Antarctic Continent to be an exceptionally cold one, but for this he was not to blame. No man can help what he does or does not believe in these matters regardless of sound logic and able reasoning to the contrary.—N. C.

Nansen, another Norwegian, in the Arctic Polar Sea, had been astonished to find that the water at a great depth, instead of being colder than at the surface as he had expected, was warmer! He had also found that as he progressed northward from 80° the thermometer had been inclined to rise rather than to fall. To be sure, when he arrived at a point within a little more than two hundred miles of the earth’s axis, he had found only a continuance of ice—a frozen sea which undoubtedly extended to the pole itself; but this frigidity I attributed to the fact that it was a sea into which, from the zone of fierce cold below, were constantly forced huge ice-floes. These, as I conceived, would maintain the condition of cold in the Arctics by shutting out the under warmth, through which, however, they would be gradually melted—to be discharged in those great Arctic currents which Nansen and other explorers had observed. The lack of thickness in the ice forming about the pole had also been noted with some surprise. This too, I claimed, was due to the warm earth beneath it which, while it could not much affect the general climate, when some three miles of very chilly water and several feet of substantial ice lay between, did serve as a provision of nature to prevent the northern sea from becoming one mighty solidified mass.

Now, ice-floes could not be forced inland, as would have to be the case in the Antarctics where there was admittedly a continent instead of a sea. Around this continent, it was said, there lay a precipitous frozen wall which no man had ever scaled. What lay beyond, no man of our world had ever seen. But in my fancy I saw those ramparts of eternal ice receding inward to a pleasant land, as the snow-capped Sierras slope to the verdant plains of California. A pleasant land—a fair circular world—temperate in its outer zone, becoming even tropic at the center, and extending no less than a thousand miles from rim to rim. There, I believed, unknown to the world without, a great and perhaps enlightened race lived and toiled—loved and died.

III.EVEN SEEKING TO REALIZE IT.

But scientists, I was grieved to find, took very little stock in these views. Even such as were willing to listen declared that the earth’s oblation counted for nothing. Most of them questioned the existence of a great central heat—some disputed it altogether. The currents and temperatures reported by Nansen, Borchgrevink and others, they ascribed, as nearly as I can remember, to centrifugal deflections, to gravitatory adjustments—to anything, in fact, rather than what seemed to me the simple and obvious causes. As a rule, they ridiculed the idea of a habitable world, or even the possibility of penetrating the continent at all. When I timidly referred to a plan I had partially conceived—something with balloons in it—they despised me so openly that I was grateful not to be dismissed with violence. I cannot forego one brief example.

He was a stout, shiny-coated man, with the round eyes and human expression of a seal. He took me quite seriously, however, which some of them had not. Also himself, and the world in general. When I had briefly stated my convictions he put his fingers together in front of his comfortable roundness and regarded me solemnly. Then he said:

“My dear young man, you are pursuing what science terms an ignis fatuus, commonly and vulgarly known as a will-o’-the-wisp. You are wasting your time, and I assure you that neither I nor my associates in science could, or would, indorse your sophistries, or even stand idly by and see you induce the unthinking man of means to invest in an undertaking which we, as men of profound research and calm understanding, could not, and therefore would not approve.” He cleared his throat with a phocine bark at the end of this period and settled himself for the next. “Men in all ages,” he proceeded, “have undertaken, in the cause of science, difficult tasks, and at vast expenditure, when there was a proper scientific basis for the effort.”

He paused again. My case was hopeless so far as he was concerned—that was clear. I would close the interview with a bit of pleasantry.

“Ah, yes,” I suggested, “such as the ‘hunting of the snark,’ for instance. Well, perhaps I shall find the snark at the South Pole, when I get there, who knows?”

The human seal lifted one flipper and scratched his head for a moment gravely. Then he said with great severity:

“Young man, I do not recall the genus snark. I do not believe that science recognizes the existence of such a creature. Yet, even so, it is most unlikely that its habitat should be the South Pole.”

I retired then, strong in the conclusion that the imagination of the average scientist is a fixed equation, and his humor an unknown quantity. Also that his chief sphere of usefulness lies in being able to establish mathematically a fact already discovered by accident. The accident had not yet occurred, hence the time for the scientist and his arithmetic was not at hand.

I now sought capital without science, but the results though interesting were not gratifying.

A millionaire editor, a very Crœsus of journalism, was my final experience in this field. He didn’t have any time to throw away, but I seemed reasonably well-fed, and he saw I was in earnest, so he was willing to listen. He put his feet upon a table near me while he did it. When I got the bald facts out and was getting ready to amplify a little he broke in:

“How long would it take you to go there and get back?” he asked.

“I hardly know—five years, perhaps—possibly longer.”

The millionaire editor took his feet down.

“Humph! Hundred thousand dollars for a Sunday beat and five years to get it! No, I don’t think we want any South Poles in this paper——”

“But in the cause of human knowledge and science,” I argued.

“My friend,” he said, “the only human knowledge and science that I am interested in is the knowledge and science of getting out, next Sunday and the Sunday after, a better paper than that lantern-faced pirate down the street yonder. When you’ve found your South Pole and brought back a piece of it, come in, and I’ll pay you more for the first slice than anybody else, no matter what they offer. But you’re too long range for us just at present. Good day!”

IV.TURNING TO THE SEA, AT LAST, FOR SOLACE.

Having thus met only with rebuff and disaster in the places where it seemed to me I had most reason to expect welcome and encouragement, I turned for comfort to those who, like my forbears, went down to the sea in ships. Along South Street, where the sky shows through a tangle of rigging, and long bowsprits threaten to poke out windows across the way, I forgot my defeats and even, for a time, my purpose, as I revelled in my long-delayed heritage of the sea.

It was the ships from distant ports that fascinated me most. My Uncle Nicholas—a sailor who was more than half a poet—had been in the foreign trade. I remembered him dimly as a big brown-faced man who had told me of far lands and shipwrecks, and rocked me to sleep to the words and tune of an old hymn, of which I could still repeat the stanza beginning,

“The storm that wrecks the winter sky.”

His vessel with all on board had disappeared somewhere in the dark waters below Cape Horn more than twenty years before. I had inherited half of his name and a number of precious trinkets brought home during his early days of seafaring—also, it was supposed, something of his tastes and disposition. In a manner I was his heir, and the tall-masted, black-hulled barks that came in from the Orient—to be pushed as quietly into place at the dock as if they had but just been towed across the East River from Brooklyn—these, it seemed to me, were his ships, hence, my ships that were coming in, at last.

I found in them treasures of joy unspeakable. Those from around the Horn seemed to bring me direct messages from the lost sailor. I felt that had he lived he would have believed in my dreams and helped me to make them reality. At times I even went so far as to imagine that his ship had not gone down at all, but had sailed away to some fair harbor of the South, whence he had not cared to return.

It thrilled me even to touch one of those weather-beaten hulls. The humblest and most unwashed seaman wrought a spell upon me as he made a pretense of polishing a bit of brass or of mopping up the afterdeck. He had braved fierce storms. He had spent long nights spinning yarns in the forecastle. Perhaps he had been wrecked and had drifted for weeks in an open boat. It might be that he had been driven by storms into those gloomy seas of the South—even to the very edge of my Antarctic world!

When they would let me I went on board, to fall over things and ask questions. My knowledge of shipping was about what could be expected of one whose life had been spent on the prairies of the West, with now and then a fleeting glimpse of a Mississippi River steamer. I suppose they wondered how I could be so interested in a subject, concerning which I displayed such a distressing lack of knowledge. They were willing to enlighten me, however, for considerations of tobacco or money, and daily I made new bosom friends—some of them, I suspect, as unholy a lot of sea-rovers as ever found reward at the end of a yard-arm.

I did not seek technical instruction. What I yearned for was their personal experiences, and these they painted for me in colorings of the sea and sky, and in such measure as the supplies were forthcoming. Almost to a man they readily remembered my Uncle Nicholas, but as they differed widely concerning his stature, complexion and general attributes, I was prone to believe at last that they would have recalled him quite as willingly under any other name; and indeed I found this to be true when I made the experiment, finally, of giving his name as Hopkins, or Pierce, or Samelson, instead of the real one, which had been Lovejoy.

I gathered courage presently to interview the officers, but these I found rather less entertaining, perhaps because they were more truthful. Only one of them recalled my Uncle Nicholas, a kindly first mate, and I suspect that even this effort resulted from a desire to please rather than from any real mental process or strict regard for verities.

I suppose I annoyed them, too, for I threw out a hint now and then which suggested my becoming a part of their ship’s company, though in what capacity or for what purpose neither I nor they could possibly imagine. As for my Antarctic scheme, I presently avoided mentioning it, or, at most, referred to it but timidly. Indeed, I demeaned myself so far at times as to recall it in jest as the wild fancy of some mythical third party whose reasoning and mentality were properly matters of ridicule and contempt.

For I had discovered early in the game that the conception of a warm country at the South Pole appealed as little to the seaman as to the scientist. The sailors whom I had subsidized most liberally regarded me with suspicion and unconsciously touched their foreheads at the suggestion, while the kindly first officer, who had been willing to remember my uncle, promptly forgot him again and walked away.

I passed my days at length in wandering rather silently about the docks and shipping offices, seeking to invest my slender means in some venture or adventure of the sea that would take me into many ports and perhaps yield me a modest income besides. I consulted a clairvoyant among other things, a greasy person on Twenty-third Street, who took me into a dim, dingy room and told me that I was contemplating something-or-other and that somebody-or-other would have something-or-other to do with it. This was good as far as it went. I was, in fact, contemplating most of the time. I was ready for anything—to explore, to filibuster, to seek for hidden treasure—to go anywhere and to do anything that would make me fairly and legitimately a part and parcel with the sea. I read one morning of a daring voyager who in a small boat had set out to sail around the world alone. I would have given all that I possessed to have gone with him, and for a few moments I think I even contemplated a similar undertaking. But as I did not then know a gaff from a flying-jib, and realizing that my voyage would probably be completed with suddenness and violence somewhere in the neighborhood of Sandy Hook, I resisted the impulse. As for my Antarctic dream, its realization seemed even farther away than when as a boy I had first conceived it, some fifteen years before.

V.I OVERHAUL THE STEAM YACHT, BILLOWCREST.

It was early spring when I had arrived in New York, and the summer heat had begun to wane when I first set eyes on the Billowcrest, and its owner, Chauncey Gale.

On one of those cool mornings that usually come during the first days of August I was taking a stroll up Riverside Drive. Below me lay the blue Hudson, and at a little dock just beyond Grant’s Tomb a vessel was anchored. Looking down on her from above it was evident, even to my unprofessional eye, that she was an unusual craft. Her hull was painted white like that of a pleasure yacht and its model appeared to have been constructed on some such lines. Also, an awning sheltered her decks, suggesting the sumptuous pleasures of the truly rich. But she was much larger than any yacht I had ever seen, and fully bark-rigged—carrying both steam and sail. She was wider, too, in proportion to her length, and her cabins seemed rather curiously disposed. A man laboring up the slope took occasion to enlighten me. He had just investigated on his own account.

“Great boat, that,” he panted. “Cost a million, and belongs to a man named Gale. Made his money in real estate and built her himself, after his own ideas. He wasn’t a sailor at all, but he’d planned lots of houses and knew what he wanted, and had the money to pay for it. No other boat like her in the world and not apt to be; but she suits him and she goes all right, and that’s all that’s necessary, ain’t it?”

I said that it was, and I presently went down to look at her. I do not now remember that I was prompted by any other motive than to see, if possible, what a man looked like who could afford to disregard the laws and traditions of ship architecture, and build and own a million dollar steamer after his own model, and for his own pleasure. Also, I had a natural curiosity to learn something of what sort of vessel would result from these conditions.

As I drew nearer I was still further impressed with her remarkable breadth of beam, suggesting comfort rather than speed, and by the unusual flare and flatness of her hull, reminding me of the model of Western steamers built for log jams and shallow water. Connecting with the dock was a small gangway, at the top of which stood a foreign-looking sailor in uniform. Across his cap, in white letters, was the word, “Billowcrest.” He regarded me distrustfully as I walked up and down, and one or two suggestions I made, with a view of conveying to him my good opinion of his boat, as well as the impression that I knew a lot about yachts in general, he acknowledged grudgingly and in mixed tongues. I disapproved of him from the start, and as later events showed, with sufficient reason. Having looked over the vessel casually I halted at last in front of the gangway.

“I should like to come on board,” I said.

The polyglot dissented.

“No admit. Mis’r Gale command.”

“Is Mr. Gale himself on board?”

I assumed a manner of severity with a view of convincing him that I was of some importance, and at the same instant ascended the gang-plank, extending my card before me. Of course the card meant nothing to him except that I was able to have a card, but I could see that he hesitated and was lost. Evidently he had little knowledge of the great American game when I could intimidate him with one card.

He returned presently, and scowlingly led me into a little saloon forward. Then he disappeared again and I was left to look at my surroundings. A desk, a fireplace with a gas-log, some chairs suggestive of comfort, a stairway, probably leading to the bridge above. The evidences of the real estate man’s genius were becoming apparent. I might have been in the reception hall of any one of a thousand country cottages in the better class suburbs of New York. I had barely made these observations when a door to the right of the stairway opened. In a cottage it would have led to the dining-room, and did so, as I discovered later, on the Billowcrest. A tall, solemn-looking man entered, and I rose, half extending my hand, after the manner of the West.

“Mr. Gale,” I said.

The solemn man waved me aside—somewhat nervously it seemed.

“No—I’m—that is, I’m not Mr. Gale. I’m only the—his steward,” he explained. “Mr. Gale is—er—somewhat busy just now and would like to know if your errand is im—that is, I should say, a personal matter. Perhaps I—I might answer, you know.”

My heart warmed instantly toward this sober-faced man with thin whitening hair and nervous hesitation of manner. I was about to tell him that I only wanted to go over the yacht, and that he would do admirably when I thrilled with a sudden impulse, or it may have been an inspiration.

“Please tell Mr. Gale,” I said, “that I am sorry to disturb him, but that I would really like to see him personally. I will not detain him.”

The solemn man retired hastily, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him. I heard him murmur something within, which was followed by a rather quick, hearty response.

“All right, Bill. Newspaper man, I guess,—tell him I’m coming!”

The tall man whose name, it seemed, and inappropriately enough, was Bill, returned with this announcement. Close behind him followed a stout, clear-eyed man of perhaps fifty. A man evidently overflowing with nerve force and energy, appreciative of humor, prompt and keen in his estimate of human nature, and willing to back his judgments with his money. Undismayed and merry in misfortune, joyous and magnanimous in prosperity, scrupulously careful of his credit, and picturesquely careless of his speech—in a word, Chauncey Gale, real estate speculator, self-made capitalist and American Citizen.

I did not, of course, realize all of these things on the instant of our meeting, yet I cannot refrain from setting them down now, lest in the reader’s mind there should exist for a moment a misconception of this man to whom I owe all the best that I can ever give.

He came forward and took my hand heartily.

“Set down,” he commanded, “and tell us all about it.”

“Mr. Gale,” I began, “I have been admiring your yacht from the outside, and I came on board to learn more about her purpose—how you came to build her, what you intend to do with her, her dimensions, and so on.”

I was sparring for an opening, you see, and then he had taken me for a reporter.

“What paper you on?”

I was unprepared for this and it came near being a knockout. I rallied, however, to the truth.

“I’m on no paper, Mr. Gale; I’m a man with a scheme.”

“Good enough! What is it?”

“To go to the South Pole.”

We both laughed. There had been no suggestion of annoyance or even brusqueness in Mr. Gale’s manner, which was as encouraging as possible, and as buoyant. But half unconsciously I had adopted its directness, and perhaps this pleased him.

“Say, but that’s a cool proposition,” he commented. “We might get snowed up on that speculation, don’t you think so?”

“Well, of course it might be a cold day before we got there, but when we did——”

Mr. Gale interrupted.

“Look here,” he broke in, “I’m glad you ain’t on a paper, anyway. I’ve not much use for them, to tell the truth. I’ve paid ’em more’n a million dollars for advertising, and when I built this yacht they all turned in and abused me. They got what they thought was a tip from some sea-captain, who said she wouldn’t steer, or float, or anything else, and that I’d never get out of the harbor. Well, she floats all right, doesn’t she?”

I looked properly indignant and said that she did.

“I’ve been around the world twice in her,” he continued, “me and my daughter. She isn’t fast, that’s a fact, but she’s fast enough for us, and she suits us first-rate. I don’t know whether she’d do to go to the South Pole in or not. I’ll tell you how she’s built, and what I built her for, and you can see for yourself.”

I did not allow myself to consider Mr. Gale’s manner or remarks as in the slightest degree encouraging to my plans. The fact that he had cut short my attempted explanation rather indicated, I thought, that this part of our interview was closed.

“I built her myself,” he proceeded, “after my own ideas. She’s a good deal on the plan of a house we used to live in and liked, at Hillcrest. My daughter grew up in it. Hillcrest was my first addition, and the Billowcrest is my last. I’m a real-estate man, and all the money I ever made, or lost, came and went in laying out additions. I’ve laid out and sold fifty-three, altogether. Hillcrest, Stonycrest, Mudcrest, Dingleside, Tangleside, Jungleside, Edgewater, Bilgewater, Jerkwater and all the other Crests and Sides and Hursts and Waters and Manors you’ve heard of for the past twenty years. I was the first man that ever used the line, ‘Quit Paying Rent and Buy a Home,’ and more people have quit paying rent and bought homes from me than from any man that ever took space in a Sunday paper. My daughter is a sort of missionary. She makes people good and I sell ’em homes and firesides. Or maybe I sell ’em homes first and she makes ’em good afterwards, so they’ll keep up their payments. Whichever way it is, we’ve been pretty good partners for about twenty-five years, and when the land and spiritual improvement business got overdone around here I built this boat so we could take comfort in her together, and maybe find some place in the world where people still needed homes and firesides, and missionary work. She’s two hundred and sixty feet long and fifty feet in the beam, twin screw and carries sixteen thousand square feet of calico besides. She’s wide, so she’ll be safe and comfortable, and I built her flat so’s we could take her into shallow water if we wanted to. She’s as stout as a battle-ship and she’s took us around the world twice, as I said. We’ve had a bully time in her, too, but so far we’ve found no place in this old world where they’re suffering for homes and firesides or where they ain’t missionaried to death. Now, what’s your scheme?”

It seemed the opportune moment. My pulse quickened and stopped as I leaned forward and said:

“It’s to find a new world!”

“At the South Pole?”

“At the South Pole.”

“What’s the matter with the North?”

“The North Pole is a frozen sea—a desolation of ice. At the South Pole there is a continent—I believe a warm one.”

“What warmed it?”

“The oblation of the earth, which brings the surface there sufficiently near the great central heat to counteract the otherwise low temperature resulting from the oblique angle of the direct solar rays.”

I had gone over this so often that in my eagerness I suppose I parroted it off like a phonograph. Gale was regarding me keenly—mystified but interested.

“Look here,” he said. “I believe you’re in earnest. Just say that again, please; slow, and without any frills, this time.”

I was ready enough to simplify.

“Mr. Gale,” I began, “you are aware, perhaps, that when we dig down into the earth we find that it becomes rapidly warmer as we descend, so that a heat is presently reached at which life could not exist, and from this it has been argued that the inner earth is a mass of fire surrounded only by an outer crust of some fifty miles in thickness. We also know by observation and experiment that the diameter of the earth between the poles is some twenty-six miles less than it is at any point on the equator. This is known as the earth’s oblation, or, as the school-books have it, the flattening of the poles.”

I paused and Gale nodded; apparently these things were not entirely unfamiliar to him. I proceeded with my discourse.

“You will see, therefore, that at each polar axis the earth’s surface is some thirteen miles nearer to this great central heat than at the equator, and this I believe to be sufficient to produce a warmth which prevents the great ice-floes of the Arctic Sea from solidifying about the North Pole; while at the South, where there is a continent into which ice-floes cannot be forced, I am convinced that there will some day be found a warm habitable country about the earth’s axis. Whoever finds it will gain immortality, and perhaps wealth beyond his wildest dreams.”

I had warmed to this explanation with something of the old-time enthusiasm, and I could see that Gale was listening closely. It may have appealed to his sense of humor, or perhaps the very wildness of the speculation attracted him.

“Say,” he laughed, as I finished, “the world turning on its axle would help to keep it warm there, too, wouldn’t it?”

I joined in his merriment. The humors of the enterprise were not the least of its attractions.

“But that would be a bully place for a real-estate man,” he reflected. “First on the ground could have it all his own way, couldn’t he? Build and own railroads and trolley lines, and lay out the whole country in additions. Sunnybank, Snowbank, Axis Hill—look here, why ain’t anybody ever been there before?”

“Because nobody has ever been prepared to surmount the almost perpendicular wall that surrounds it, or to cross the frozen zone beyond. The ice-wall is anywhere from one to two thousand feet high. I have a plan for scaling it and for drifting over the frozen belt in a balloon to which, instead of a car, there will be attached a sort of large light boat with runners on it, so that it may also be sailed or drawn on the surface, if necessary. The balloon idea is not, of course, altogether new, except——”

But Gale had gone off into another roar of merriment.

“Well, if this ain’t the coldest, windiest bluff I ever got up against,” he howled. “Think of going up in a balloon and falling off of an ice-wall two thousand feet high! Oh, Lord! What is home without a door-knob!”

“There does appear to be an element of humor in some phases of my proposition,” I admitted, “but I have faith in it, nevertheless, and am quite sincere in my belief of a warm Antarctic world.”

“Of course you are. If you hadn’t been I wouldn’t ‘a’ let you talk to me for a minute. Let’s hear some more about it. Do you think this ship would do? When do you want to start?”

“As for the ship,” I hastened to say, “it would almost seem that she had been built for the purpose. With her splendid sailing rig, her coal could be economized, and used only when absolutely necessary. Her light draught makes it possible to take her into almost any waters. The shape of her hull and her strength are calculated to withstand an ice-squeeze, and her capacity is such that enough provisions in condensed forms could be stored away in her hold to last for an almost indefinite length of time. As for starting——”

A cloud had passed over Gale’s face at the mention of an ice-squeeze, but now he was laughing again.

“Condensed food! Oh, by the great Diamond Back, but that will hit Bill! That’s his hobby. He’s invented tablets condensed from every kind of food under the sun. You saw Bill awhile ago. Used to be my right-hand man in real estate, and is now my steward, from choice. Never had a profitable idea of his own, but honest and faithful as a town clock. What he calls dietetics is his long suit. He don’t try many of his experiments on us, but he does on himself; that’s why he looks like a funeral. Oh, but we must have Bill along—it’ll suit him to the ground!”

He touched a button at his elbow.

“Food tablets might prove a great advantage,” I admitted, “especially if we made an extended trip in the balloon.”

“Bill can make ’em for us all right. Soup tablets, meat tablets, bread tablets—why, you can put a meat tablet between two bread tablets and have a sandwich, and carry a whole table d’hôte dinner in a pill-box. Here, boy, tell Mr. Sturritt to step up here, if he’s not busy. Tell him I’ve got important news for him.”

Clearly it was but a huge joke to Mr. Gale. I was willing to enter into the spirit of it, however. He turned to me as the boy disappeared.

“Of course, we can’t expect to find anybody living there.”

“Why not? Nature never yet left a habitable country unoccupied. We shall undoubtedly find a race of people there—perhaps a very fine one.”

He regarded me incredulously a moment, and then thumped the desk at his side vigorously.

“That settles it! Johnnie’s missionary work’s cut out for her. It’s a great combination, and we can’t lose! Balloons, tablets, missionary work, and homes and firesides! A regular four-time winner!”

He was about to touch the bell again when there came a light tap at the door near me, and a woman’s voice said:

“Mayn’t I have some of the fun, too, Daddy?”