Silver Cloud was lowered as they neared the mount. They were just over the summit at but fifty feet from the surface. The signal was given, the anchors dropped. At first they dragged upon the frozen snow, but soon the flukes caught in the crevices of the icy masses, and the great globe was securely anchored at the North Pole!
They instantly prepared to descend in the cage. The cold was terrible, so much so that they could not have endured it at all but for provisions that Dr. Jones had made for this very event. Besides their splendid silk-lined and padded sealskin suits, he had brought a large number of Japanese fireboxes. The punks in these were lighted, and when all were very hot they were wrapped in flannels and distributed about their persons inside their sealskins. With this arrangement, Jack Frost's chances of nipping their persons were very slim indeed.
The thermometer registered seventy degrees below zero. Having taken every possible precaution, the Doctor and Professor descended. Their feelings cannot be described as they stepped upon the solidly frozen surface, and realized that they were the first human beings who had thus stood upon the summit of the earth! After looking about a few moments, Professor Gray said:
"We must settle the globe to the earth, and from the observatory I can make observations that will locate the Pole exactly."
This was accordingly done. From the observatory with a sextant he made an observation every six hours, making allowance for the declination of the sun, meantime. This was an exceedingly delicate problem, but the Professor was fully equal to it. At the end of twenty-four hours he and the Doctor again donned their furs, stepped over the railing of the balcony and walked out upon the snow. The rest of the party had amused themselves while awaiting the Professor's observations by setting up little mounds of ice, upon what they guessed to be the spot where the learned Professor would declare the geographical pole to be. His mind, meantime, was too engrossed with the momentous business in hand to pay the least attention to their frivolities; and, utterly unmindful of the fur-clad figures that stood scattered about, each by its respective ice mound, he measured a certain number of lengths of a sharp pointed steel rod which he carried in his hand, directly to Mrs. Jones, and with a side swipe of his foot he swept aside her pile of ice lumps, raised the steel rod in both hands and drove it down with all his force just where the ice mound had stood, and cried with all his power in a fur-muffled voice, "The North Pole!" And Mrs. Jones jumped up and down as nimbly as her load of furs and fireboxes would permit, banged her great sealskin mittens together, and cried, "Goody! Goody! I guessed it! I am the discoverer of the North Pole! I always knew that a woman would be the first one there!"
CHAPTER XIX.
The Planting of the Flagstaff.
The whole of the party now shouted—Sing always excepted. That individual was strictly attending to his business in the kitchen during the excitement. They ran—or waddled, for they moved with difficulty, loaded as they were—to the spot where the two men and Mrs. Jones were standing. They gathered in a circle about the steel rod that marked the exact spot for which the boldest navigators and explorers have longed, and striven, and died by thousands during many decades of the past.
The Doctor broke out in his sonorous voice, the rest immediately joining him in the familiar doxology, "Old Hundred,"