I did not allow myself to consider Mr. Gale’s manner or remarks as in the slightest degree encouraging to my plans. The fact that he had cut short my attempted explanation rather indicated, I thought, that this part of our interview was closed.
“I built her myself,” he proceeded, “after my own ideas. She’s a good deal on the plan of a house we used to live in and liked, at Hillcrest. My daughter grew up in it. Hillcrest was my first addition, and the Billowcrest is my last. I’m a real-estate man, and all the money I ever made, or lost, came and went in laying out additions. I’ve laid out and sold fifty-three, altogether. Hillcrest, Stonycrest, Mudcrest, Dingleside, Tangleside, Jungleside, Edgewater, Bilgewater, Jerkwater and all the other Crests and Sides and Hursts and Waters and Manors you’ve heard of for the past twenty years. I was the first man that ever used the line, ‘Quit Paying Rent and Buy a Home,’ and more people have quit paying rent and bought homes from me than from any man that ever took space in a Sunday paper. My daughter is a sort of missionary. She makes people good and I sell ’em homes and firesides. Or maybe I sell ’em homes first and she makes ’em good afterwards, so they’ll keep up their payments. Whichever way it is, we’ve been pretty good partners for about twenty-five years, and when the land and spiritual improvement business got overdone around here I built this boat so we could take comfort in her together, and maybe find some place in the world where people still needed homes and firesides, and missionary work. She’s two hundred and sixty feet long and fifty feet in the beam, twin screw and carries sixteen thousand square feet of calico besides. She’s wide, so she’ll be safe and comfortable, and I built her flat so’s we could take her into shallow water if we wanted to. She’s as stout as a battle-ship and she’s took us around the world twice, as I said. We’ve had a bully time in her, too, but so far we’ve found no place in this old world where they’re suffering for homes and firesides or where they ain’t missionaried to death. Now, what’s your scheme?”
It seemed the opportune moment. My pulse quickened and stopped as I leaned forward and said:
“It’s to find a new world!”
“At the South Pole?”
“At the South Pole.”
“What’s the matter with the North?”
“The North Pole is a frozen sea—a desolation of ice. At the South Pole there is a continent—I believe a warm one.”
“What warmed it?”
“The oblation of the earth, which brings the surface there sufficiently near the great central heat to counteract the otherwise low temperature resulting from the oblique angle of the direct solar rays.”