. I have kept far to the westward to
avoid the magnetic pole, which might play havoc with my apparatus."

"Then your little side-trip is----"

"To the North Pole, of course!" he cried triumphantly.

How simple this vexed problem had become, after all! It had worsted the
most daring travellers of all countries for centuries. Thousands upon
thousands spent in sending expeditions to find the Pole had only called
for other thousands to fit out relief expeditions. Ship after ship had
been crashed, life after life had been clutched in its icy hand! But now
it had become an after-thought, a side-trip, a little excursion to be
made while waiting for midnight! And it is often that such a simple
solution of the most baffling difficulties is found at last.

The doctor had been observing his quadrant, and was now busy making
calculations. He called me up to his compartment.

"Longitude, 144 degrees and 45 minutes west; Latitude, 89 degrees 59
minutes and 30 seconds north. That is the way it figures out. We were
half a mile from the Pole when I took my observation. We must have just
crossed over it since then."

"Go down a little nearer, so we may see what it looks like!" I said
excitedly.

"I dare not go too close to all that ice, or we may freeze the mercury
in our thermometer and barometer. We must keep well in the sunlight, but
I will lower a little."

What mountains of crusted snow! What crags and peaks of solid ice! It
was impossible to tell whether it was land or sea underneath. Judging by
the general level it must have been a sea, but no water was visible in
any direction. The great floes of ice were piled high upon each other. A
million sharp, glittering edges formed ramparts in every direction to
keep off the invader by land. How impotent and powerless man would be to
scale these jagged walls or climb these towering mountains! How
absolutely impossible to reach by land, how simple and easy to reach
through the air! The North Pole and Aerial Navigation had been cousin
problems that baffled man for so long, and their solution had come
together.

"Empty a biscuit tin to contain this record, and we will toss it out
upon this world of ice, so that if any adventurer ever gets this far
north he may find that we have already been here," said the doctor,
bringing down a freshly-written page for me to sign. It read as
follows:--

"Aboard Anderwelt's Gravity Projectile, 12.25 a.m., June 12th, 1892.
The undersigne