int is reached I believe she will find herself in an open sea,
where she may rise to the surface. But if this should not be the case, a
comparatively thin place in the ice will be chosen, and a great opening
blown through it by means of an ascensional shell, several of which
she will carry. She will then rise to the surface of the water in this
opening, and the necessary operations will be carried on."

"Mr. Clewe," said Margaret Raleigh, "the thing is so terrible I cannot
bear to think of it. The Dipsey may have to sail hundreds and hundreds
of miles under the ice, shut in as if an awful lid were put over her. No
matter what happened down there, she could not come up and get out; it
would be the same thing as having a vast sky of ice stretched out above
one. I should think the very idea of it would make people shudder and
die."

"Oh, it is not so bad as all that," answered Clewe. "There is nothing
so dear to the marine explorer as plenty of water, and plenty of room to
sail in, and under the ice the Dipsey will find all that."

"But there are so many dangers," said she, "that you cannot provide
against in advance."

"That is very true," said he, "but I have thought so much about them,
and I have studied and consulted so much about them, that I think I have
provided against all the dangers we have reason to expect. To me the
whole business seems like very plain, straightforward sailing."

"It may seem so here," said Margaret Raleigh, "but it will be quite
another thing out under the arctic ice."

Preparations for the expedition were pushed forward as rapidly as
possible, and Clewe would have been delighted to make this voyage into
the unseen regions of the nether ice, but he knew that it was his duty
not to lose time or to risk his life when he was on the brink of a
discovery far more wonderful, far more important to the world, than the
finding of the pole. Therefore he determined that he would go with the
expedition no farther than the point where the ice would prevent the
farther progress of the vessel in which they would sail from New York.

It was not to be supposed that Roland Clewe intended to intrust such an
expedition to the absolute command of such a man as old Samuel Block.
There would be on board the Dipsey an electrician who had long been
preparing himself for this expedition; there were to be other scientific
men; there would be a submarine engineer, and such minor officers and
assistants as would be