Such an explanation seemed utterly ridiculous to Captain Sproul, to his seamen, and even to Phineas Roebach. They were convinced that Professor Henderson was in his dotage. They would rather believe that the _Orion_, sailing on pretty nearly a straight course according to the compass, had traversed this enormous distance during the hurricane. The professor and his young friends, however, had studied too deeply the mystery of this astounding affair to be mistaken. All the phenomena of the experience had been noted by Professor Henderson. He had the material of a most remarkable work in his notebooks, and that volume will soon appear to delight the scientific world. Meanwhile the _Orion_ changed her course and ran for San Francisco to re-provision. She had a very valuable cargo of oil which she would later take around the Horn to her home port, New Bedford. At San Francisco, however, Professor Henderson, Jack and Mark, with Andy and Wash and Phineas Roebach, left the ship. Roebach was to report to his oil company and probably return to Alaska to continue his search for petroleum. Our friends started overland for home, stopping off at the city where Dr. Artemus Todd resided to explain to that savant the reason for their inability to secure a single specimen of the _Chrysothele-Byzantium_, which herb the doctor was so confident would be of incalculable value in treating patients suffering from aphasia, amnesia, and kindred troubles. Perhaps the disappointed doctor was not entirely sure that his friend, Professor Henderson, and his comrades, had gone through the strange experience which they recounted. But a few weeks later several vessels reported sighting a new island in the North Pacific, south of the Alaskan Peninsula. On this island men who landed discovered a colony of Kodiak bears, some Arctic foxes, and the remains of vegetation which had never before been found south of the Arctic Circle. This discovery created vast talk among the geographers and scientists. An exploring party was sent out by the Smithsonian Institution to examine the new island. It was pronounced of volcanic origin, yet the formation of it was not of recent time. There was on this island (which contained several square miles) the remains of a glacier, and in the ice the party discovered the wreck of a wonderful flying machine, which had evidently been built within a few months. Of course, this was the _Snowbird_, the aeroplane which our friends had been obliged to abandon. But by that time Jack and Mark had built another flying machine on the same lines as the one which they had lost in the crevasse of the glacier. The professor proceeded to explain and prove all this in his book; but there will always be certain doubters. Washington White, however, was more disturbed than any of the party over the fact that everybody would not accept as true the scientist's account of their wonderful voyage on a torn-away world.