Richard Burnham.
“‘Simply a check for your possible gains on the return voyage, captain. I want the use of your ship as far as San Francisco. Everything satisfactory, I suppose. Good-night.’ So saying, I strolled into my stateroom, leaving the worthy captain to deliberate upon my proposal.
“Next morning I purposely got up late; but by the earnest and many-voiced conversation which I could faintly hear, upon the deck above me, I knew that the seed I had sown was germinating, if not bearing fruit.
“Well, to cut a long story short, my proposal was accepted; the ice-block dug out and conveyed to the vessel with a good deal of trouble; my check certified and cashed in Victoria, where most of the crew were paid off, and——here we are. Now, suppose we adjourn to the laboratory and see if our guest has completely thawed out yet.”
The strong heat from the stove had, in truth, very nearly finished what the steam had begun. Though there was still a shell of ice surrounding the body, it was little more than a shell, and Dr. Dunne recommended that the next stage in the treatment should be approached with all expedition. Burnham, accordingly, went off to prepare a bath in the bath-room adjoining the studio, and when he hailed us, the doctor and myself carried in the zinc tray with the body and deposited the latter in the bath.
“We must proceed very slowly,” said the doctor, as he stood by, thermometer in hand; “I shall begin with a temperature of fifty and increase it very gradually—say, in half an hour or so—to blood heat. All the internal organs are, of course, frozen; the lungs, too, are doubtless full of ice, and the first thing to be done is to relieve them of the water. Not the least remarkable feature, gentlemen,” he continued, turning to us, “is that this body must have been frozen almost before—in my theory, certainly before—it was drowned. But how to account for this? That is the point. It is certainly beyond the range of our scientific experience, nor can we conceive of any natural or chemical force powerful enough to effect such a result. This man, too, is clad in the garb of a tropical, or sub-tropical, region. These are evidently his every-day clothes which he is wearing. He must have been both drowned and frozen almost simultaneously. The drowning and the freezing must have been nearly coincident events—at all events, within an hour or two of each other. I can not see into it. I give it up,” concluded the doctor, with a shake of the head.
“Still,” said Burnham, “have we not something of a parallel in the elephants which, some years ago, were found embedded in the ice to the north of Siberia, just as this man was? The elephant is a tropical animal, and can scarcely be credited with going to the North Pole on a pleasure trip. How do you account for that?”
“Perhaps,” suggested I, “it was a case of the mountain coming to Mahomet in both instances. Perhaps the pole came to them. Suppose that through some unknown natural cause, or some outside cosmical agency, the axis of the earth should change abruptly, as it is probable that it is now doing gradually, and that what were formerly the equatorial regions became the polar, and vice versâ, what would naturally follow? In the first place, the oceans and seas would be hurled over the continents in tidal waves miles high. Only mountaineers dwelling in the highest altitudes would escape. That would be the first result. The second would be that the waters upon what were formerly the tropical regions would be frozen. The third would be——what we see before us now in that bath.”
“Very ingenious, certainly,” remarked the doctor, dryly; “but we have got no time for speculation now. Let us attend to business. Our friend here should be pretty thoroughly warmed through by this time. Please lend a hand to get him on the operating-table.”
Accordingly, we removed the body from the bath to the mattress in the studio, the room having been meanwhile closed and its temperature raised to blood heat.