“I think I know where he will get this new gas. I saw it demonstrated in the Secretary’s office last September.”
“And I am to go with him, you understand?” anxiously asked Hugh.
“Well, as to that, if he has found a method of manufacturing the gas as it is needed, I see not the slightest objection, for you know that has been the only difficulty, heretofore, in making the voyage. Yes, my son, go, and let another laurel be added to the family name.”
When Cobb read the “Daily American” the next morning he was surprised to come across a notice to the world of his proposed voyage. He had said nothing to anyone, and could only account for the item by reasoning that the order to the Secretary, and which Hugh had shown him, had read:
“ * * * These changes must be completed by the 12th instant, at 12 dial, as Colonel Cobb and Captains Craft and Hathaway will start for the north pole at that hour. * * * ”
The paper gave the news, and commented upon the proposed undertaking as follows:
“Washington, 10, 18 D.—Orders have been received at the War Department to have the aërial ship Orion put into shape for a long and extended voyage. It is currently reported at the Capitol that Lieutenant-Colonel Junius Cobb, Second Cavalry, the man of ’87, as he has become known, intends to make the attempt of reaching the pole in an air-ship. His companions will be Captains Craft and Hathaway, of the army; the former officer a son of the President of the United States. This will be the seventh trial to reach the pole since the invention of the air-ship. The first four who competed for the honor returned in disgrace, their vessels failing to reach the sixty-ninth parallel of north latitude ere they were compelled to turn back on account of loss of gas. The other two adventurers, Pope, in the Star, in 1985, and Capron, in the Highflyer, in 1993, have never been heard from. The problem is one utterly without solution; the air-ship is not destined to ever reach the pole.
“The foolhardy attempt now about to be made will not only end in disaster to the gentlemen engaged in it, but will bring sorrow to the nation by the loss to the President of his only son.”
“Rather discouraging, that,” said Cobb to himself, as he laid the paper aside. “Strange how much these newspaper men know! They haven’t changed a particle since the days of old.”