exactly."

This was accordingly done. From the observatory with a sextant he made
an observation every six hours, making allowance for the declination of
the sun, meantime. This was an exceedingly delicate problem, but the
Professor was fully equal to it. At the end of twenty-four hours he and
the Doctor again donned their furs, stepped over the railing of the
balcony and walked out upon the snow. The rest of the party had amused
themselves while awaiting the Professor's observations by setting up
little mounds of ice, upon what they guessed to be the spot where the
learned Professor would declare the geographical pole to be. His mind,
meantime, was too engrossed with the momentous business in hand to pay
the least attention to their frivolities; and, utterly unmindful of the
fur-clad figures that stood scattered about, each by its respective ice
mound, he measured a certain number of lengths of a sharp pointed steel
rod which he carried in his hand, directly to Mrs. Jones, and with a
side swipe of his foot he swept aside her pile of ice lumps, raised the
steel rod in both hands and drove it down with all his force just where
the ice mound had stood, and cried with all his power in a fur-muffled
voice, "The North Pole!" And Mrs. Jones jumped up and down as nimbly as
her load of furs and fireboxes would permit, banged her great sealskin
mittens together, and cried, "Goody! Goody! I guessed it! I am the
discoverer of the North Pole! I always knew that a woman would be the
first one there!"

CHAPTER XIX.

The Planting of the Flagstaff.

The whole of the party now shouted--Sing always excepted. That
individual was strictly attending to his business in the kitchen during
the excitement. They ran--or waddled, for they moved with difficulty,
loaded as they were--to the spot where the two men and Mrs. Jones were
standing. They gathered in a circle about the steel rod that marked the
exact spot for which the boldest navigators and explorers have longed,
and striven, and died by thousands during many decades of the past.

The Doctor broke out in his sonorous voice, the rest immediately joining
him in the familiar doxology, "Old Hundred,"

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

When they had finished, at a signal from the Doctor, they all kneeled
upon the icy pavement, and he offered up a fervent prayer of praise and
thanksgiving for the preservation of their lives, and for the wonderful
success that had at