enison's face as they awaited his reply.

"Well," replied Denison slowly, as if carefully weighing his words, "I
have known Dr. Jones more than twenty years very intimately, and I tell
you candidly that you may rely implicitly upon his word. He is a
physician of remarkable skill, and to my positive knowledge has cured
several cases of cancer that had been, like your mother's, given up as
incurable. So I should hope a great deal if he gives you encouragement."

"God is good, and has heard our prayers," said Sam.

While this party spent the day until the middle of the afternoon
paddling from trap to trap, capturing three otters, and catching several
dozen beautiful trout and black bass, the Doctor and the Professor
ascended with Mr. Barton to the ship. As he passed through the elegant
rooms of the cabin, and saw the wonderful degree of comfort, and even
luxury, that our voyagers were enjoying, he cried out, like the Queen of
Sheba, "The half was never told!" And the wonderful metal of which
everything was composed where practicable--aluminum--excited his special
interest.

"Without this metal you could never have made the trip," he declared.
But when he had mounted the spiral stairway, and was standing in the
observatory, for some time he was speechless. As his eye ran up the
shining mast, then off over the glistening sides of the globe to the
earth, three hundred feet below, then away over the trackless wastes of
Labrador, he finally exclaimed, "This, gentlemen, is too wonderful for
me. I cannot give expression to my feelings. If you had told me that you
were visitors from Venus or Mars, I should be obliged to believe you."

And so they sat and discussed for an hour or more the object of the
expedition, and the probability of success. All agreed that, so far as
human thought and judgment could foresee, failure was hardly possible.
They descended to the cabin. The aluminum mast especially attracted the
attention of the old sailor.

"And you intend erecting this magnificent spar at the North Pole!" he
exclaimed, all his sailor instincts thoroughly aroused. "How do you
intend to manage that business, Doctor?"

"We shall be governed in that matter entirely by circumstances," replied
Dr. Jones. "I do not know what we may find there, and so cannot say
exactly what we may have to do. But I shall consider the trip a partial
failure if I do not leave this stately shaft, exactly to the quarter of
an inch, standing at the No