of landscape in water color, was shown. I had no great technical
knowledge of art, but I could see at a glance that Miss Gale’s work was
of unusual quality. The admiration, at first expressed in words, soon
became the silence of unquestioned tribute. Yet I was not surprised that
Edith Gale should do this masterly work. What did surprise me was the
genuine appreciation of her father, as shown by his occasional comment.
Evidently the daughter’s ability had not been wholly due to the dead
mother. At the end of the portfolio there was a series of illustrations
for an old Yorkshire ballad.
“Daddy and I always sing this when folks will let us,” announced Miss
Gale, with an affected diffidence that made her all the more beautiful,
I thought.
“You can’t get away now till after lunch, Chase,” said Gale; “you’ve got
to stand it.”
Edith Gale had set the first of the series up before us, and sang the
opening lines of the ballad in a voice that might have come from the
middle strings of a harp. Then, at the refrain, there joined in a deep,
rich resonance that I could hardly realize proceeded from her father. I
came in at the end of the second stanza—feebly at first, but gaining in
courage until I sang with volume enough to have spoiled everything had I
not been more fortunate than usual and kept to the right key.
“Well,” said Gale, “what do you think? Do you think those pictures and
that singing of hers will convert the heathen?”
I looked at the wonderful girl, who was laughing and closing the
portfolio.
“They would convert me,” I said fervently, “to anything.”
Gale seemed to enjoy this enthusiasm.
“People mostly like us when they know us, eh, Johnnie?”
But Miss Gale was retiring with the portfolio. He turned to me.
“That’s a great girl,” he said. “The only piece of property but one that
I never wanted to part with. The other one was her mother. Johnnie came
just in time to take her place, and I don’t know what I’d’ a’ done if
she hadn’t. Being a mother to her kept me busy, and she’s been mother
and father and whole family to me. She’s kept me going straight for
about twenty-five years now, and is about the finest south-slope
blue-grass addition that the Lord ever helped lay out. And she cares
more for her old daddy than for anybody else in the world. Her old daddy
and her pictures. She never saw a young man that she cared to look at
twice, unless he could do something, and then it was for his talents,
and not for him. When they fall in love with her she generally gets
tired of their paintings, or their music, or whatever it is, and they go
away. They all seem to do it, though. You’d be in love with her yourself
in a week, if you lingered about this ship. It’s in the air, and
everybody gets it. I wouldn’t say much about it, though, if it was me.
If we should go to the South Pole, you’d want to stay with the
expedition, and after we got out to sea you’d have some trouble getting
ashore again in case you didn’t find the ship comfortable. There’s
another young man that comes here. He’s got a scheme for——”
But Miss Gale re-entered at that moment. She had made some slight
changes in her toilet, and was more entrancing than ever. Her father had
been right, I thought, only he had named too long a period. He had said
“in a week.” His prophecy was already fulfilled.
“I say, Johnnie,” greeted Gale, “why wouldn’t our wireless telegraphy
scheme go well with this expedition, especially with the balloon part?
How about that, Chase? Would it fit in?”
“Perfectly, but Marconi seems to have it all in his own hands, as yet.”
“Not by a jug-full! Johnnie’s got a young man, I was just going to
mention him when she came in, a sort of portigee——”
“_Protégé Papa!_ Though he’s not that, either. He’s——”
“Oh, well, _protyshay_, then. Anyway, he’s got a system that beats
Macarony’s to death. I call this chap Macarony, too, because he’s
Italian, and his name is a good deal the same.”
“His name is Ferratoni, Papa, and the other isn’t Macaroni, either, but
Marconi. Papa never calls anything by its right name, if he can help
it,” she apologized. “He gets into dreadful trouble sometimes, too, and
I’m glad of it. He should be more particular.”
“All right, then, it’s Ferry—Ferry what? How is it again, Johnnie?”
“Fer-ra-toni.”
“Now we’ve got it. Oh, well, let’s compromise and call him Tony, for
short. Well, Tony’s got a system that does all that Macarony’s does, and
goes it one better. Obstructions in the way don’t seem to make much
difference, and you can use it with a telephone attachment instead of
a—a what do you call it—a knocker?”
“A sounder, Daddy.”
“A sounder, that’s it, instead of a sounder. We tried it here the other
day, and could talk to him over in the Tract building as well as if we’d
been connected with the central office. He’s perfecting it now for long
distance, and we might take him right along with us, and let him
experiment between the balloon and the ship. How’s that?”
“It would complete our plans perfectly,” I agreed, “if his system of
communication prove successful. But do you think he would care to go on
such a voyage?”
Gale looked at his daughter.
“Do you think he would go, Johnnie?” he asked, and I thought there was a
suggestion of teasing in his voice. Also, it seemed to me that there was
a little wave of confusion in Miss Gale’s face, though the slight added
color there may have been due to other causes.
“I—why, I think he might——” she began hesitatingly. “I think he would
consider it an opportunity. He is deeply interested in what he calls
chorded vibrations. Wireless telegraphy, or telephoning, is like that,
you know, but Mr. Ferratoni goes much farther. He attributes everything
to vibrations. He analyzes my poor little hobby until there’s nothing
left of it. He may be here to luncheon to-day, and you can talk with
him,” she added, and I thought the blush deepened.
Assuredly he would come to luncheon, and of a certainty he would go to
the South Pole, or anywhere that Edith Gale went, and would let him go.
It was too late now, however, for me to raise objections. My only
comfort lay in the memory of her father’s assurance that it was in their
talents, and not in her protégés themselves, that his daughter was
interested.
Still, I argued miserably, there must some day come a time—I was sure
she had blushed——
A cabin boy entered bearing a tray on which there was a card. He
presented it to Miss Gale.
“Mr. Ferratoni,” she said, glancing at it, and an instant later I saw in
the doorway a slender figure, surmounted by a beautiful beardless
face—the face of southern Italy—of a poet.
My heart sank, but I greeted him cordially, for I could not withstand
the beauty of his face and the magnetism of his glance. It seemed to me
that it was a foregone conclusion, so far as Miss Gale was concerned,
and then I suddenly realized that the South Pole without Edith Gale
would not be worth looking for. Even a whole warm Antarctic continent
would be a desolation more bleak than people had ever believed it. Yet I
would find it for her if I could—and then my reward—she had said I
should name it—it had been but a jest, of course——
I realized that Miss Gale was speaking.
“We were just talking of you, Mr. Ferratoni. We have a plan which we
think will interest you. Mr. Chase will talk to us about it during
luncheon.”
VI.
WHERE ALL THINGS BECOME POSSIBLE.
We passed out into the dining saloon—a counterpart, I learned later, of
the dining-room in Mr. Gale’s former cottage at Hillcrest. We were
presently joined by a stout and grizzled man of perhaps sixty, with a
slight sinister obliquity in one eye. He was arrayed in a handsome blue
uniform, and was presented to me as Mr. Joseph Biffer, captain of the
Billowcrest. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. Sturritt was
also to be with us. The customs on the Billowcrest, as I presently
learned, were quite democratic, and William Sturritt, though nominally
steward, remained the trusted friend and companion of Chauncey Gale, as
he had been for many years. It is true there was an officers’ mess, at
which both Mr. Sturritt and Captain Biffer usually preferred to dine,
but at the Admiral’s table (they had conferred the title of Admiral on
Gale) there was always a welcome for his officers, while on occasions
such as this they were often present by request. Gale and his daughter
were seated at opposite ends of the table, Ferratoni and myself next
Miss Gale, while Captain Biffer and Mr. Sturritt occupied the same
relative position to the Admiral.
The Admiral wasted no time in coming to the fun.
“Captain Biffer,” he said, “we want you to take us to the South Pole.”
Mr. Biffer continued the grim process of seasoning his soup for several
seconds without replying. Perhaps some rumor of the expedition had
already come to him. Then he fixed his sound eye severely on Gale, while
he withered the rest of us, and particularly myself, with the other.
“When do you want to start?” he asked.
There was that about Mr. Biffer’s tone and attitude which indicated, so
far as he was concerned, an entire lack of humor in the proposition.
Even Gale, I thought, seemed a trifle subdued as he answered:
“Oh, I don’t know; we’ll consider that after Mr. Chase has told us what
we are going to need to be ready. In three or four months, perhaps.”
Once more the deflected vision of Captain Biffer laid its scorn heavily
upon us.
“And get down there and stuck in the ice below Cape Horn about the
middle of March, just when their winter and six months’ night begins.”
It was a clean hit for the Captain, and I gave him credit. Gale was
clearly out of it for the time being, and looked at me helplessly. His
very dismay, however, encouraged me. A man must be in earnest, I
thought, to look like that. I hastened to his rescue.
“I have naturally considered the Antarctic solar conditions,” I said,
with some dignity, though I confess that with the Captain’s piercing
searchlight upon me, the latter was not easy to maintain. “I am aware
that their seasons are opposed to ours, and that the year at the poles
is divided into a day and a night of six months each.”
Gale, who had been regarding me anxiously, at this point relieved
himself in an undertone.
“Six months,” he murmured. “Think of going out to make a night of it in
a country like that! Oh, Lord, what is life without a latch-key?”
“I have considered these facts,” I repeated, “and while a period of
several months of semi-darkness and cold is not a cheering anticipation
to those accustomed to the more frequent recurrence of sunlight, I am
convinced that, under favorable conditions, it is not altogether a
hardship; also, that in the pleasant climate which I believe exists
about the earth’s axis, the extended interval of darkness and
semi-twilight would be still less disturbing, and may have been overcome
in a measure, or altogether, by the inhabitants there, through
artificial means.”
I could see that Chauncey Gale was reviving somewhat as I proceeded, and
this gave me courage to continue, in spite of the fact that the
Captain’s contempt was only too manifest. As for Mr. Sturritt, he was
non-committal, while Ferratoni appeared to have drifted off into a dream
of his own. But Edith Gale sustained me with the unshaken confidence in
her eyes, and my strength became as the strength of ten.
“As for the time of starting,” I continued——
“Wait,” interrupted Gale, “go over the whole scheme again for the
benefit of those who didn’t hear it before. Then we can consider ways
and means afterwards.”
Accordingly, and for the third time that day, I carefully reviewed my
theories and plans for the expedition. As I proceeded I observed that
Captain Biffer’s contempt softened into something akin to pity, while,
on the other hand, Chauncey Gale rapidly regained his buoyant
confidence.
“That’s where you come in, Bill,” he laughed, as I spoke of the balloon
car and its condensed stores.
Mr. Sturritt nodded eagerly.
“And you, Johnnie,” as I referred again to the possible inhabitants in
the undiscovered world.
“And Mr. Ferratoni is not to be left out,” answered Miss Gale. “Mr.
Chase says that a wireless telephone is the one thing needed to make his
plan perfect.”
“To keep the balloon in communication with the ship, in event of our
making the voyage overland would be of the greatest advantage,” I
admitted, “if it can be done.”
Ferratoni’s face flushed.
“Yes, oh, yes,” he said anxiously, “it can be done. It is the chance.”
“And would you be willing to go on a voyage like that, and leave behind
your opportunities of recognition and fortune?” I asked.
Ferratoni’s face grew even more beautiful.
“Fortune? Recognition?” He spoke musically, and his English was almost
perfect. “It is not those that I would care for. It is the pursuing of
the truth, the great Truth! Electricity—it is but one vibration. There
are yet many others—thought, life, soul! Wireless communication—the
answering of electric chords—it’s but a step toward the fact, the
proving of the Whole Fact. To-day we speak without wires across the
city. Later, we shall speak across the world. Still later, between the
worlds—perhaps even—yes, yes, I will go! I have but shown the little
step. I would have the time and place to continue. And then the new
world too—yes, oh, yes, I will go, of a certainty!”
A respectful silence had fallen upon the table. Chauncey Gale’s face
showed thoughtful interest. Mr. Biffer was evidently impressed. Me he
had regarded as a crazy land-lubber with fool notions of navigation. In
Ferratoni he acknowledged a man of science—a science he did not
understand and therefore regarded with reverence and awe. Edith Gale’s
face wore the exalted expression which always gave it its greatest
beauty. For myself, I had been far from unmoved by Ferratoni’s words. I
felt that it would be hard to feel jealousy for a man like that, and
still harder not to do so. Gale recovered first, and turned to me.
“What about the superintending of the balloon?” he asked. “Who have you
got for that?”
I knew as little of practical ballooning as of navigation, but as a boy
I had experimented in chemistry, and the manufacture of gases. More
lately I had done some reading, and I had ideas on the subject. I said
therefore, with becoming modesty, that I had made some study of
aeronautics and that, as the science had not yet progressed much beyond
the first principles of filling a bag with gas and waiting until the
wind was in the right quarter, I believed I might safely undertake to
oversee this feature of the enterprise, including the construction of
the boat-sledge-car combination.
“And I can take a hand in that, too,” said Gale.
“I’ve got a pretty good mechanical head myself; I’ve planned and built
about a million houses, first and last. Commuters say I can get more
closets and cubbyholes into a six-room cottage than anybody else could
set on the bare lot. I’ll take care of that boat. Now, how about the
time, Chase? When do we start?”
“I had thought,” I answered, “that it might require a year for
preparation. If we started a year from now, or a little later, we would
reach the Antarctics easily by the beginning of the day or summer
season, and might, I believe, hope to reach a desirable position at or
near the ice-barrier by the beginning of the winter night. During this
we would make every added preparation for the inland excursion to be
undertaken on the following summer——”
“Say, we’d be apt to get some frost on our pumpkins laying up against an
ice-wall through a six months’ night, wouldn’t we?” interrupted Gale.
I called attention to the comfort with which Nansen and his associates
had passed through an Arctic night with far fewer resources than we
should have on a vessel like the Billowcrest.
“Look here,” said Gale, “what’s the use of waiting a year? Why not go
_this_ year?”
“Why,” I suggested, “we could hardly get ready. There will be food
supplies to get together, instruments, implements, the balloon, and then
the engaging of such scientists as you might wish to take along——”
“Scientists,” interrupted Gale, “what kind?”
“Well, perhaps a meteorologist, a geologist, an ornithologist——”
“See here, what are all those things? What are they for?”
“To observe and record conditions,” I said. “An ornithologist, for
instance, would classify and name any new birds that we might find in
the Southern Hemisphere, and an——”
“Hold on,” interrupted Gale, “we don’t want any of that yet. We’ll
discover the country first. We’ve got science enough right here to do
that, I guess, if anybody has. Besides I’m a pretty good hand at naming
things myself, and if we find any strange animals or birds wandering
about down there without titles, I’ll just give ’em some.”
“Oh, Papa,” laughed Miss Gale.
“Why, yes, of course; and now as to those other things. Mr. Sturritt
here can give an order in five minutes for enough provision to last ten
years, and have it on board in twenty-four hours. Whatever instruments
and material you need for your balloon and telephone machine can be had
about as quick, I’m thinking, and if we need any mechanics of any kind I
can put my finger on a hundred of them to-morrow. If we’ve got to lay up
six months against an ice-wall we’ll want something to do, and will have
time enough to build things to fit the case in hand. What I want to know
is, if we can be ready to start from here in a week, so’s we’ll miss
this winter up here and get safe in the arms of that ice-wall before
winter sets in down there! I’m simply pining to get up against that two
thousand foot ice-bluff, and I don’t want to wait a year to do it. What
do _you_ say, Bill, can we be ready to start from here in a week?”
My heart sank. It was but a huge joke then, after all, and this was his
way out of it. But Sturritt, who knew him, was taking it seriously.
“Yes—that is—why certainly, in—er—three days!” he said with nervous
haste.
“I can be ready to-morrow,” said Ferratoni, quietly.
“I am ready to start to-night,” said Edith Gale.
I hastened to add that the materials needed for the balloon could
doubtless be procured without delay.
“And you, Biffer?” Gale turned to the Captain who had been a silent
unprotesting martyr during this proceeding. “Are you ready to start in a
week for the South Pole?”
“Admiral,” said the Captain solemnly, and making a sincere effort to fix
him with both eyes at once, “you own this boat and I’m hired to sail it.
I don’t believe in no South Pole, but if there _is_ one, I don’t know of
a better place for a crowd like this. And if you give the order to go to
the South Pole, I’ll _take_ you to the South Pole, and sail off into
space when we get there, if you say so!”
Mr. Biffer’s remarks were greeted with applause and a round of merriment
in which the Captain paid himself the tribute of joining.
“We’ll have the balloon for navigating space, Captain Biffer,” said
Edith Gale.
“And my opinion is that we’ll need it, ma’am, if we ever get back.”
But amid the now general enthusiasm Chauncey Gale had sprung to his
feet. There was a flush of excitement on his full handsome face, and
when he spoke there was a ring of decision in his voice.
“Everybody in favor of starting a week from to-day, for the South Pole,
stand up!” he said.
There was a universal scramble. Captain Biffer was first on his feet.
Gale seized a glass of wine and holding it high above his head,
continued:
“To the Great Billowcrest Expedition! Missionary work for Johnnie;
electricity for Ferratoni; balloons for Chase; tablets for Bill; the
ship for the Captain; homes and firesides for me, and _the South Pole
for us all_!”
VII.
I LEARN THE WAY OF THE SEA, AND ENTER MORE FULLY INTO MY HERITAGE.
The sun lifting higher above Long Island touched the spray under the bow
and turned it into a little rainbow that traveled on ahead. I leaned far
out to watch this pleasant omen of fortune, endeavoring meanwhile to
realize something of the situation, now that we were finally under way
and the years of youth and waiting, of empty dreams and disappointments,
lay all behind.
It had been a week to be remembered. A whirl of racing from ship to
shop, and from shop to factory—of urging and beseeching on my part, of
excuses and protestations on the part of tradesmen and manufacturers. I
had been almost despairing at last in the matter of material for the
balloon bag, when one morning—it was the fourth day—I heard of a very
large completed balloon, made to order for an aeronaut whose old one had
missed connection with it by one day. When they had come to deliver it,
the undertaker was just driving off, and the aeronaut had made his
farewell ascension.
I found it to be of really enormous proportions—one of the largest ever
manufactured, I was told—so large, in fact, that the maker was as glad
to part with it as I was to secure it.
My associates also had been somewhat occupied. Mr. Sturritt’s delivery
teams had been lined up on the Billowcrest dock from morning till night,
unloading provisions in various forms, enough it would seem for an army.
Ferratoni had laid in his cells, coils, transmitters, detectors and
heaven only knows what besides, while Miss Gale had undertaken to
supply, in addition to her own requirements, the warm clothing and
bedding likely to be needed for an Antarctic winter.
As for Chauncey Gale, he had sat all day at a little table on the
afterdeck and signed checks; checks, many of them, that would have
wrecked my former commercial venture at any time during the ten years of
its existence; and he whistled as he did it, and called out words of
comfort to Captain Biffer, who, with a fierce eye on each end of the
vessel, strode up and down where boxes, barrels, rolls, rope, chains,
etc., were piled or still coming over the side—rending the Second
Commandment into orders and admonitions that would have turned a
clergyman gray in a night.
Now it was all over. The weird maelstrom of whirling days and nights
that had added unreality to what was already dreamlike and impossible,
had subsided. We were going down the harbor under full sail. Leaving the
others still at breakfast, I had come out here alone to find myself.
I could not grasp it at all. The little farm boy who in the night had
wakened and cried for the sea, going back to it, at last. The youth who
had carried into manhood the fancy of a fair unknown land, and of one
day sailing away to the South to find it, entering suddenly into an
Aladdin-like realization of his dreams. It seemed to me that every
vessel in the harbor ought to be decorated and firing salutes—that every
soul of the vast city ought to be waving us adieu.
To be sure, we hadn’t told anybody. Gale was rather down on the papers,
and we had left so suddenly that they had little chance to find out what
we were doing. One of them—that of the millionaire editor—got an inkling
of it in some way, and in its Sunday Magazine of two days before had
filled a page with strange vagaries purporting to be our plans, and
disturbing pictures of the lands and people we expected to discover. But
as no one ever believes anything printed in a Sunday newspaper, even
when backed up by sworn statements, these things appeared to have passed
unnoticed. There had been one exception, however; my scientist of the
snark and flipper, who had appeared on Monday morning to enter his
promised protest.
He came at a busy time. About a hundred teams were backing into each
other on the dock, whence arose a medley of unjoyous execration, and a
line of men were waiting at Gale’s little table for checks. It was this
auspicious moment that my scientist selected for his mission. Captain
Biffer, to whom he first appealed, acknowledged him with an observation
which no magazine would print, and waved him toward Gale.
“There’s the man _you_ want,” he snorted, “that man over there giving
his money away.”
Chauncey Gale was at that moment engaged in constructing a check that
ran well into four figures. He paused, however, with his hand on the way
to the ink-bottle and listened for a moment with proper respect. Then he
said, quite serenely:
“I wonder if you couldn’t conveniently go to hell for about three years.
Perhaps by then I’ll have time to listen to you. You notice we’re pretty
busy, this morning.”