“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.