and he said, eagerly--

"We'll winter at the North Pole, father, eh?"

This was greeted with a general laugh.

"But seriously, uncle, what do you mean to do?" asked Leonard
Vandervell, who, with his brother, was not unhopeful that the Captain
meditated something desperate.

"Benjy is not far off the mark. I intend to winter at the Pole, or as
near to it as I can manage to get."

"My dear Captain Vane," said the doctor, with an anxious look, "you
cannot really mean what you say. You must be jesting, or mad."

"Well, as to madness," returned the Captain with a peculiar smile, "you
ought to know best, for it's a perquisite of your cloth to pronounce
people mad or sane, though some of yourselves are as mad as the worst of
us; but in regard to jesting, nothing, I assure you, is further from my
mind. Listen!"

He rose from the box which had formed his seat, and looked earnestly
round on his men. As he stood there, erect, tall, square, powerful,
with legs firmly planted, and apart, as if to guard against a lurch of
his ship, with his bronzed face flushed, and his dark eye flashing, they
all understood that their leader's mind was made up, and that what he
had resolved upon, he would certainly attempt to carry out.

"Listen," he repeated; "it was my purpose on leaving England, as you all
know, to sail north as far as the ice would let me; to winter where we
should stick fast, and organise an over-ice, or overland journey to the
Pole with all the appliances of recent scientific discovery, and all the
advantages of knowledge acquired by former explorers. It has pleased
God to destroy my ship, but my life and my hopes are spared. So are my
stores and scientific instruments. I intend, therefore, to carry out my
original purpose. I believe that former explorers have erred in some
points of their procedure. These errors I shall steer clear of. Former
travellers have ignored some facts, and despised some appliances. These
facts I will recognise; these appliances I will utilise. With a steam
yacht, you, my friends, who have shown so much enthusiasm and courage up
to this point, would have been of the utmost service to me. As a party
in boats, or on foot, you would only hamper my movements. I mean to
prosecute this enterprise almost alone. I shall join myself to the
Eskimos."

He paused at this point as if in meditation. Benjy, whose eyes and
mouth had been gradually opening to their widest, almost gasped with