ut and take my place as one
of the seamen. A little later the captain asked me for an explanation.
I told him that my experience had been so horrible that I was fearful of
my memory, and begged him to permit me to leave the question
unanswered until some time in the future. "I think you are recovering
considerably," he said, "but you are not sane yet by a good deal."
"Permit me to do such work as you may assign," I replied, "and if it
does not compensate you sufficiently, I will pay you immediately after I
reach Stockholm--to the last penny." Thus the matter rested.

On finally reaching Stockholm, as I have already related, I found that
my good mother had gone to her reward more than a year before. I
have also told how, later, the treachery of a relative landed me in a
madhouse, where I remained for twenty-eight years--seemingly unending
years--and, still later, after my release, how I returned to the life of
a fisherman, following it sedulously for twenty-seven years, then how
I came to America, and finally to Los Angeles, California. But all this
can be of little interest to the reader. Indeed, it seems to me the
climax of my wonderful travels and strange adventures was reached when
the Scotch sailing-vessel took me from an iceberg on the Antarctic
Ocean.

PART SIX. CONCLUSION

IN concluding this history of my adventures, I wish to state that I
firmly believe science is yet in its infancy concerning the cosmology
of the earth. There is so much that is unaccounted for by the world's
accepted knowledge of to-day, and will ever remain so until the land of
"The Smoky God" is known and recognized by our geographers.

It is the land from whence came the great logs of cedar that have been
found by explorers in open waters far over the northern edge of the
earth's crust, and also the bodies of mammoths whose bones are found in
vast beds on the Siberian coast.

Northern explorers have done much. Sir John Franklin, De Haven Grinnell,
Sir John Murray, Kane, Melville, Hall, Nansen, Schwatka, Greely, Peary,
Ross, Gerlache, Bernacchi, Andree, Amsden, Amundson and others have all
been striving to storm the frozen citadel of mystery.

I firmly believe that Andree and his two brave companions, Strindberg
and Fraenckell, who sailed away in the balloon "Oreon" from the
northwest coast of Spitzbergen on that Sunday afternoon of July
11, 1897, are now in the "within" world, and doubtless are being
entertained, as my father an