are too cleanly for that, begging your pardon. Here
is our general bath. It's quite a tub, isn't it?"

"I should think so," said Leo, surveying quite a spacious apartment,
about which were pipes and faucets, clothes-lines and screens.

Here his friend left him, and he was glad to doff his garments for a
plunge. He found that he could make the water hot or cold at will, and
so luxurious was it that he would have stayed in any length of time had
not a crowd of elves come chattering in, and with whoop and scream
surrounded him. Though they could not see him, they were conscious of
some disturbing force in the water, and in an instant a lot of them had
scrambled on his back, and were making a boat of him. They pulled his
hair and his ears unmercifully, and because he swam slowly, with their
weight upon him, they whacked and thumped him like little pirates. But
he had his revenge, for with one turn he tumbled them all off, and
sprang from the bath, leaving them to squirm and squabble by themselves.

Laughing heartily at their antics, he rejoined Knops and Paz, whom he
found poring over some maps spread out before them.

"We have been discussing the length of a journey to the Geysers of
Iceland, also to the hot springs of the Yellowstone, but I am afraid
either would require too much time. Was your bath agreeable?"

"Very," said Leo, describing how he had been pummelled.

"Those were the fellows from the steam-rooms--stokers probably. Rough
enough they are. Do you care to have a glance at them at work?"

"Don't care if I do," said Leo, in his old drawling manner; then,
correcting himself, he added: "If it suits your convenience, I shall be
very happy to take a look."

"That is all it will be, I promise you," said Paz; "the heat is awful."

Leo thought as much when Knops, having tied a respirator over his mouth,
opened another door. Such a cloud of vapor puffed out that he could but
dimly discern what seemed to be a tank of boiling, bubbling water,
resting on a bed of soft coal, about which stark little forms were
dancing and poking with long steel bars until flames leaped out like
tongues of fire.

"Oh," said Leo, as he quickly turned from his place, "how do they endure
it? It is dreadful!"

"They are used to it; they all came from Terra del Fuego," replied
Knops, calmly. "And now, as a contrast to them, look in here."

A hut of solid ice presented itself. Long pendants of ice hung from the
ceiling, snow in masse