"Well," replied Denison slowly, as if carefully weighing his words, "I have known Dr. Jones more than twenty years very intimately, and I tell you candidly that you may rely implicitly upon his word. He is a physician of remarkable skill, and to my positive knowledge has cured several cases of cancer that had been, like your mother's, given up as incurable. So I should hope a great deal if he gives you encouragement."
"God is good, and has heard our prayers," said Sam.
While this party spent the day until the middle of the afternoon paddling from trap to trap, capturing three otters, and catching several dozen beautiful trout and black bass, the Doctor and the Professor ascended with Mr. Barton to the ship. As he passed through the elegant rooms of the cabin, and saw the wonderful degree of comfort, and even luxury, that our voyagers were enjoying, he cried out, like the Queen of Sheba, "The half was never told!" And the wonderful metal of which everything was composed where practicable—aluminum—excited his special interest.
"Without this metal you could never have made the trip," he declared. But when he had mounted the spiral stairway, and was standing in the observatory, for some time he was speechless. As his eye ran up the shining mast, then off over the glistening sides of the globe to the earth, three hundred feet below, then away over the trackless wastes of Labrador, he finally exclaimed, "This, gentlemen, is too wonderful for me. I cannot give expression to my feelings. If you had told me that you were visitors from Venus or Mars, I should be obliged to believe you."
And so they sat and discussed for an hour or more the object of the expedition, and the probability of success. All agreed that, so far as human thought and judgment could foresee, failure was hardly possible. They descended to the cabin. The aluminum mast especially attracted the attention of the old sailor.
"And you intend erecting this magnificent spar at the North Pole!" he exclaimed, all his sailor instincts thoroughly aroused. "How do you intend to manage that business, Doctor?"
"We shall be governed in that matter entirely by circumstances," replied Dr. Jones. "I do not know what we may find there, and so cannot say exactly what we may have to do. But I shall consider the trip a partial failure if I do not leave this stately shaft, exactly to the quarter of an inch, standing at the North Pole, with that aluminum flag flying at its peak, there to float till time shall be no more."
"Well, Doctor, I am a thoroughbred British subject, and can't help wishing that it was the Union Jack that you were going to leave there; but you deserve all the honor of the occasion, and I am glad to bid you Godspeed," said Barton heartily.
"Thank you," replied Dr. Jones, "now let us go down and see further about your wife's case. I must be off to-morrow morning, bright and early."
The Doctor and Barton repaired to the sick chamber. After nearly an hour they left the house, walked down to the river bank, and talked long and earnestly concerning the treatment of Mrs. Barton.