For answer the Doctor read aloud the account of Dr. Nansen's failure to reach the North Pole, and then said: "I do not wonder that he failed. No one will succeed upon any such lines or plans." "Well, Doctor, you don't suppose that anyone will ever get there and back alive, do you?" "Whether they will or not, I do not know; but that it is a perfectly feasible and rational undertaking, under proper conditions, I as firmly believe as I do that I am alive," and he brought his fist down upon the desk by way of emphasis with a whack that made the various loose articles in the little office rattle. Even the bust upon the bracket moved about uneasily, whether by way of approbation or not, this truthful chronicle ventures no opinion. Denison looked at the flushed face and glittering eyes of the Doctor, moved uneasily in his chair, and said: "What's up, Doctor? I never knew you to drink. Getting off?" tapping his _os frontis_ with his forefinger significantly. "Denison," replied the Doctor, unheeding the innuendoes of his friend, "I tell you that I have a plan for going to, and returning from, the North Pole with perfect safety, absolute certainty, and a degree of comfort that will reduce the whole expedition to the level of a glorious picnic." Denison indulged in a long, low whistle. "Draw it a little milder, Doctor. Go to and return from the North Pole with perfect safety, certainty, comfort, and pleasure! What do you mean? I never heard of anything so preposterous in my life!" "Hitch up to the desk here, and I will soon tell you what I mean," cried the Doctor. Denison complied, and the Doctor, seizing a pencil, drew upon a leaf of the scratch book, with a few vigorous strokes, a sketch of a globe, thus: [Illustration] "There," said he, as he gave a few finishing touches. "There you have the idea." "Well, go on." "This sketch represents a mammoth globe of aluminum, two hundred feet in diameter, as you will notice. "I see," assented Denison. "We have, then, a great hollow globe, consisting, as I said before, of aluminum. I have chosen that material for two obvious reasons; lightness and strength. The globe is simply to be floated by heating the atmosphere within it." "What will you heat it with, and how long do you suppose it will be before your globe returns to the earth?" asked Denison.