The Great Stone of Sardis

by Frank R. Stockton

Whether the voyagers on the Dipsey were more excited when the probable condition of their situation became known to them, or whether Roland Clewe and Margaret Raleigh in the office of the Works at Sardis were the more greatly moved when they received that day's report from the arctic regions, it would be hard to say. If there should be room enough for the little submarine vessel to safely navigate beneath the ice which there was such good reason to believe was floating on the edge of the body of water they had come in search of, and on whose surface they might freely sail, what then was likely to hinder them from reaching the pole? The presence of ice in the vicinity of that extreme northern point was feared by no one concerned in the expedition, for it was believed that the rotary motion of the earth would have a tendency to drive it away from the pole by centrifugal force.

The little thermometer-boat which during the submarine voyage of the Dipsey had constantly preceded her to give warning of the sunken base of some great iceberg, was now drawn in close to the bow; there was so much ice so near that its warnings were constant, and therefore unneeded.

The electric lead-line was shortened to the length of a few fathoms, and even then it sometimes suddenly rang out its alarm. After a time the bottom of the sea became visible through the stout glass of a protected window near the bow, and a man was placed there to report what he could see below them.

It had now become so light that in some parts of the vessel the electric lamps were turned out. Fissures of considerable size appeared in the ice above, and then, to the great excitement of every one, the vessel slowly moved under a wide space of open water; but the ice could be seen ahead, and she did not rise. The bottom came no nearer, and the Dipsey moved cautiously on. Nobody thought of eating; they did not talk much, but at every one of the outlooks there were eager faces.

At last they saw nothing above them but floating fragments of ice. Still they kept on, until they were plainly moving below the surface of open water. Then Mr. Gibbs looked at Sammy.

“I think it is time to rise,” said he; and Sammy passed the word that the Dipsey was going up into the upper air.

When the little craft, so long submerged in the quiet depths of the Arctic Sea, had risen until she rested on the surface of the water, there was no general desire, as there had been when she emerged into Lake Shiver, to rush upon the upper deck. Instead of that, the occupants gathered together and looked at each other in a hesitating way, as if they were afraid to go out and see whether they were really in an open sea, or lying in some small ice-locked body of water.

Mr. Gibbs was very pale.

“My friends,” said he, “we are going on deck to find out whether or not we have reached the open polar sea, but we must not be excited, and we must not jump to hurried conclusions; we may have found what we are in search of, and we may not have found it yet. But we will go up and look out upon the polar world as far as we can see it, and we shall not decide upon this thing or that until we have thoroughly studied the whole situation. The engines are stopped, and every one may go up, but I advise you all to put on your warmest clothes. We should remember our experience at Lake Shiver.”

“It wouldn't be a bad idea,” said Sammy Block, “to throw out a lot of tarpaulins to stand on, so that none of us will get frozen to the wet deck, as happened before.”