A respectful silence had fallen upon the table. Chauncey Gale’s face showed thoughtful interest. Mr. Biffer was evidently impressed. Me he had regarded as a crazy land-lubber with fool notions of navigation. In Ferratoni he acknowledged a man of science—a science he did not understand and therefore regarded with reverence and awe. Edith Gale’s face wore the exalted expression which always gave it its greatest beauty. For myself, I had been far from unmoved by Ferratoni’s words. I felt that it would be hard to feel jealousy for a man like that, and still harder not to do so. Gale recovered first, and turned to me. “What about the superintending of the balloon?” he asked. “Who have you got for that?” I knew as little of practical ballooning as of navigation, but as a boy I had experimented in chemistry, and the manufacture of gases. More lately I had done some reading, and I had ideas on the subject. I said therefore, with becoming modesty, that I had made some study of aeronautics and that, as the science had not yet progressed much beyond the first principles of filling a bag with gas and waiting until the wind was in the right quarter, I believed I might safely undertake to oversee this feature of the enterprise, including the construction of the boat-sledge-car combination. “And I can take a hand in that, too,” said Gale. “I’ve got a pretty good mechanical head myself; I’ve planned and built about a million houses, first and last. Commuters say I can get more closets and cubbyholes into a six-room cottage than anybody else could set on the bare lot. I’ll take care of that boat. Now, how about the time, Chase? When do we start?” “I had thought,” I answered, “that it might require a year for preparation. If we started a year from now, or a little later, we would reach the Antarctics easily by the beginning of the day or summer season, and might, I believe, hope to reach a desirable position at or near the ice-barrier by the beginning of the winter night. During this we would make every added preparation for the inland excursion to be undertaken on the following summer——” “Say, we’d be apt to get some frost on our pumpkins laying up against an ice-wall through a six months’ night, wouldn’t we?” interrupted Gale. I called attention to the comfort with which Nansen and his associates had passed through an Arctic night with far fewer resources than we should have on a vessel like the Billowcrest. “Look here,” said Gale, “what’s the use of waiting a year? Why not go _this_ year?” “Why,” I suggested, “we could hardly get ready. There will be food supplies to get together, instruments, implements, the balloon, and then the engaging of such scientists as you might wish to take along——” “Scientists,” interrupted Gale, “what kind?” “Well, perhaps a meteorologist, a geologist, an ornithologist——” “See here, what are all those things? What are they for?”