"A deuced queer sort of thing this, too," said he, "this manuscript. I can't quite make it out. Who ever dreamed of people living at the South Pole—and in a warm climate, too? Then it seems deuced odd, too, that we should pick up this copper cylinder with the manuscript. I hardly know what to think about it."
Melick smiled. "Why, it isn't much to see through," said he.
"See through what?" said the doctor, hastily, pricking up his ears at this, and peering keenly at Melick through his spectacles.
"Why, the manuscript, of course."
"Well," said the doctor, "what is it that you see? What do you make out of it?"
"Why, anyone can see," said Melick, "that it's a transparent hoax, that's all. You don't mean to say, I hope, that you really regard it in any other light?"
"A transparent hoax!" repeated the doctor. "Will you please state why you regard it in that light?"
"Certainly," said Melick. "Some fellow wanted to get up a sensation novel and introduce it to the world with a great flourish of trumpets, and so he has taken this way of going about it. You see, he has counted on its being picked up, and perhaps published. After this he would come forward and own the authorship."
"And what good would that do?" asked the doctor, mildly. "He couldn't prove the authorship, and he couldn't get the copyright."
"Oh, of course not; but he would gain notoriety, and that would give him a great sale for his next effort."