ibe it in full. All explorers who have tried to
get to the north pole have met with the same bad fortune. They could not
pass over the vast and awful regions of ice which lay between them and
the distant point at which they aimed; the deadly ice-land was always
too much for them; they died or they turned back.

"When flying-machines were brought to supposed perfection, some twenty
years ago, it was believed that the pole would easily be reached,
but there were always the wild and wicked winds, in which no steering
apparatus could be relied upon. We may steer and manage our vessels in
the fiercest storms at sea, but when the ocean moves in one great tidal
wave our rudders are of no avail. Everything rushes on together, and our
strongest ships are cast high upon the land.

"So it happened to the Canadian Bagne, who went in 1927 in the best
flying-ship ever made, and which it was supposed could be steadily kept
upon its way without regard to the influence of the strongest winds;
but a great hurricane came down from the north, as if square miles of
atmosphere were driving onward in a steady mass, and hurled him and his
ship against an iceberg, and nothing of his vessel but pieces of wood
and iron, which the bears could not eat, was ever seen again. This was
the last polar expedition of that sort, or any sort; but my plan is so
easy of accomplishment--at least, so it seems to me--and so devoid of
risk and danger, that it amazes me that it has never been tried before.
In fact, if I had not thought that it would be such a comparatively easy
thing to go to the pole, I believe I should have been there long ago;
but I have always considered that it could be done at some season when
more difficult and engrossing projects were not pressing upon me.

"What I propose to do is to sink down below the bottom of the ice in the
arctic regions, and then to proceed in a direct line northward to the
pole. The distance between the lower portions of the ice and the bottom
of the Arctic Ocean I believe to be quite sufficient to allow me all the
room needed for navigation. I do not think it necessary to even consider
the contingency of the greatest iceberg or floe reaching the bottom of
the arctic waters; consequently, without trouble or danger, the Dipsey
can make a straight course for the extreme north.

"By means of the instruments the Dipsey will carry it will be
comparatively easy to determine the position of the pole, and before
this po