me that was to result in the perpetuation of atomic
disintegration for the uses of mankind and the subsequent alteration of
civilization, both political and economic. Innocently, ingeniously,
ingenuously, he mapped it all out. No one must know what he was about.
Oh, no! He must steal away, in disguise if need be, and reach Pax alone.
Three would be a crowd in that communion of scientific thought! He must
take with him the notes of his own experiments, the diagrams of his
apparatus, and his precious zirconium; and he must return with the great
secret of atomic disintegration in his breast, ready, with the
discoverer's permission, to give it to the dry and thirsty world. And
then, indeed, the earth would blossom like the rose!

A strange sight, the start of the Hooker Expedition!

Doctor Jelly's coloured housemaid had just thrown a pail of blue-gray
suds over his front steps--it was 6:30 A.M.--and was on the point of
resignedly kneeling and swabbing up the doctor's porch, when she saw the
door of the professor's residence open cautiously and a curious human
exhibit, the like of which had ne'er before been seen on sea or land,
surreptitiously emerge. It was Prof. Bennie Hooker--disguised as a
salmon fisherman!

Over a brand-new sportsman's knickerbocker suit of screaming yellow
check he had donned an English mackintosh. On his legs were gaiters, and
on his head a helmetlike affair of cloth with a visor in front and
another behind, with eartabs fastened at the crown with a piece of black
ribbon--in other words a "Glengarry." The suit had been manufactured in
Harvard Square, and was a triumph of sartorial art on the part of one
who had never been nearer to a real fisherman than a coloured fashion
plate. However, it did suggest a sportsman of the variety usually
portrayed in the comic supplements, and, to complete the picture, in
Professor Hooker's hands and under his arms were yellow pigskin bags and
rod cases, so that he looked like the show window of a harness store.

"Fo' de land sakes!" exclaimed the Jellys' coloured maid, oblivious of
her suds. "Fo' de Lawd! Am dat Perfesser Hookey?"

It was! But a new and glorified professor, with a soul thrilling to the
joy of discovery and romance, with a flash in his eyes, and the savings
of ten years in a large roll in his left-hand knickerbocker pocket.

Thus started the Hooker Expedition, which discovered the Flying Ring and
made the famous report to the Smithsonian Institut