Dr. Jones laid the paper down with a groan. "Will they never learn?" he apostrophizingly cried to a bust of Hahnemann that rested upon a bracket in a corner of the room. "They can never get there on any such lines. I believe it to be a perfectly feasible scheme, if worked out on simple scientific principles. If I had capital, I would try it."
He sat with the points of his extended fingers touching each its mate of the opposite hand, and mused for several moments. Suddenly he seized a pencil, and rapidly jotted down figures, lines, and characters that meant nothing to any mortal but himself.
"Figures don't lie!" he shouted to aforesaid bust. "That depends, Doctor, on whether they are legitimately used or not. Sometimes they are made to represent the vilest untruth," said a voice behind him. The Doctor wheeled about and encountered the genial countenance of Mr. A.L. Denison.
"Hullo! Denison. Just the man I wanted to see. Sit down."
"What's up now, Doctor? Anyone hurt or seriously sick?" inquired Denison, as he occupied a chair.
For answer the Doctor read aloud the account of Dr. Nansen's failure to reach the North Pole, and then said: "I do not wonder that he failed. No one will succeed upon any such lines or plans."
"Well, Doctor, you don't suppose that anyone will ever get there and back alive, do you?"
"Whether they will or not, I do not know; but that it is a perfectly feasible and rational undertaking, under proper conditions, I as firmly believe as I do that I am alive," and he brought his fist down upon the desk by way of emphasis with a whack that made the various loose articles in the little office rattle. Even the bust upon the bracket moved about uneasily, whether by way of approbation or not, this truthful chronicle ventures no opinion. Denison looked at the flushed face and glittering eyes of the Doctor, moved uneasily in his chair, and said: "What's up, Doctor? I never knew you to drink. Getting off?" tapping his os frontis with his forefinger significantly.
"Denison," replied the Doctor, unheeding the innuendoes of his friend, "I tell you that I have a plan for going to, and returning from, the North Pole with perfect safety, absolute certainty, and a degree of comfort that will reduce the whole expedition to the level of a glorious picnic." Denison indulged in a long, low whistle.
"Draw it a little milder, Doctor. Go to and return from the North Pole with perfect safety, certainty, comfort, and pleasure! What do you mean? I never heard of anything so preposterous in my life!"