“Good evening, dear Mr. Maston.”
“Good evening, dear Mrs. Scorbitt.”
And he returned to his blackboard.
“Confound that excellent woman,” he said; “if she hadn’t called me to the telephone I should not have run the chance of being struck by lightning.”
And to insure being left in quiet, he judiciously put the telephone out of action.
Then he resumed his work. From the number on the board he gradually built up a definitive formula, and then noting it on the left, he cleared away the working by which he had arrived at it, and launched forth into an appalling series of figures and signs.
Eight days later the wonderful calculation was finished, and the secretary of the Gun Club triumphantly bore off to his colleagues the solution of the problem which they had awaited with a very natural impatience.
The practical means of arriving at the North Pole to work its coal-mines were mathematically established. Then the company was formed under the title of The North Polar Practical Association. Then the Arctic regions were purchased under the auctioneer’s hammer. And then the shares were offered to the world.
CHAPTER VII.
BARBICANE MAKES A SPEECH.
On the 22nd of December a general meeting was called of the shareholders of the North Polar Practical Association, to take place at the rooms of the Gun Club in Union Square. And the square itself was hardly large enough to hold the crowd.