It was an exciting occasion this first meal at the Pole! What neither ancients nor moderns, neither Europeans, nor Americans, nor Asiatics had been able to accomplish was now achieved, and all past sufferings and perils were forgotten in the glow of success.
"But, after all," said Johnson, after toasts to Hatteras and the North Pole had been enthusiastically drunk, "what is there so very special about the North Pole? Will you tell me, Mr. Clawbonny?"
"Just this, my good Johnson. It is the only point of the globe that is motionless; all the other points are revolving with extreme rapidity."
"But I don't see that we are any more motionless here than at Liverpool."
"Because in both cases you are a party concerned, both in the motion and the rest; but the fact is certain."
Clawbonny then went on to describe the diurnal and annual motions of the earth-the one round its own axis, the extremities of which are the poles, which is accomplished in twenty-four hours, and the other round the sun, which takes a whole year.
Bell and Johnson listened half incredulously, and
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couldn't see why the earth could not have been allowed to keep still, till Altamont informed them that they would then have had neither day nor night, nor spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
"Ay, and worse still," said Clawbonny, "if the motion chanced to be interrupted, we should fall right into the sun in sixty-four and a half days."