Teddy went back to where the men had made ready. Four of the wicked little guns would fling their three-hundred-pound bombs into the center of the column of steam. If all went well, at least one charge of T.N.T. would explode far down the orifice. The propelling charges had been inserted, and now the slender rods were put into the muzzles of the short, squat weapons. The winged bombs were balanced on the muzzles like top-heavy oranges on as many sticks. At half-second intervals, the four guns went off one after the other. Before the last had exploded, or just as the flame leaped from its muzzle, the hillock of ice rose as in an eruption. Four cracking detonations blended into one colossal roar that half stunned the little fur-clad party. The rush of air threw them from their feet. When they rose again a huge hole showed in the center of the clearing, a gaping chasm that went down deep into the heart of the ice. A cloud of yellowish smoke floated above them. And the column of steam had ceased! Only a few stray wisps of white vapor floated up from the opening. "It's done!" Teddy gave orders for a quick return to the fort. The mortars could be returned for. At the moment the important thing was to send the news to England and Japan. The return trip was made quickly, and Teddy made hurried explanations to the commandant of the forts of what should be done. Men should bore deep holes twenty feet apart, the holes to be along the edges of clearly defined sections of the ice. Simultaneous blasts should be set off, and the sections would float free. The iceberg would not grow again. It was done for. Cablegrams were prepared and rushed through to Folkestone, Yokohama, and Gibraltar. If men took trench mortars and fired shells that would fall down the holes from which the steam issued, the cause of the ice cakes would be destroyed and the ice itself could be blasted off and towed out to sea to melt. Teddy rushed back to the professor's home to report to him the full verification of his theories, and it was there and then that the first authentic explanation of the ice floe was given to the world. Word of his effort and of the disappearance of the steam plume had preceded him, and as he sped uptown in the taxicab newsboys were already on the streets with their extras. Only the front pages--showing signs of having hastily been hacked to pieces to make room for the story--had anything about the latest development, and those extras are singularly perfect reflections of the public attitude at that time. CHAPTER IV. Teddy threw himself out of the machine and rushed up the steps. Evelyn opened the door before he could ring, and his beaming face told her the news he had to give even without his enthusiastic, "It worked!" "The steam plume has stopped?" asked the professor anxiously.