Then came a great cheer, and Mrs. Block--who, having been assured that the whale had entirely disappeared, had come on deck--turned to her husband and remarked: “Now, Sammy, is there any earthly reason why we should not turn right around and go straight home? The pole's found, and the place is marked, and what more is there for us to do?” But before her husband could answer her, Captain Hubbell lifted up his voice, which was full of spirit and enthusiasm. “Messmates!” he cried, “we have touched at the pole, and we have anchored the buoy, and now let us go whalin'. It's thirty years since I saw one of them fish, and I never expected in all my born days I'd go a-whalin'.” The rest of the company on the Dipsey took no very great interest in the whaling cruise, but, on consultation with Mr. Clewe and Mrs. Raleigh at Sardis, it was decided that they ought by no means to leave the polar sea until they had explored it as thoroughly as circumstances would allow. Consequently the next day the Dipsey sailed away from the pole, leaving the buoy brightly floating on a gently rolling sea, its high-uplifted weather-vane glittering in the sun, with each of its ends always pointing bravely to the south. CHAPTER XIV. A REGION OF NOTHINGNESS In the office of the Works at Sardis, side by side at the table on which stood the telegraph instrument, Margaret Raleigh and Roland Clewe, receiving the daily reports from the Dipsey, had found themselves in such sympathy and harmony with the party they had sent out on this expedition that they too, in fancy, had slowly groped their way under the grim overhanging ice out into the open polar sea. They too had stood on the deck of the vessel which had risen like a spectre out of the waters, and in the cold, clear atmosphere had gazed about them at this hitherto unknown part of the world. They had thrilled with enthusiastic excitement when the ring on the deck of the Dipsey was placed over the actual location of the pole; they had been filled with anger when they heard of the conduct of Rovinski; and their souls had swelled with a noble love of country and pride in their own achievements when they heard that they, by their representative, had made the north pole a part of their native land. They had listened, scarcely breathing, to the stirring account of the anchoring of the great buoy to one end of the earth's axis, and they had exclaimed in amazement at the announcement that in the lonely waters of the pole whales were still to be found, when they were totally unknown in every other portion of the earth.