“Everybody in favor of starting a week from to-day, for the South Pole, stand up!” he said. There was a universal scramble. Captain Biffer was first on his feet. Gale seized a glass of wine and holding it high above his head, continued: “To the Great Billowcrest Expedition! Missionary work for Johnnie; electricity for Ferratoni; balloons for Chase; tablets for Bill; the ship for the Captain; homes and firesides for me, and _the South Pole for us all_!” VII. I LEARN THE WAY OF THE SEA, AND ENTER MORE FULLY INTO MY HERITAGE. The sun lifting higher above Long Island touched the spray under the bow and turned it into a little rainbow that traveled on ahead. I leaned far out to watch this pleasant omen of fortune, endeavoring meanwhile to realize something of the situation, now that we were finally under way and the years of youth and waiting, of empty dreams and disappointments, lay all behind. It had been a week to be remembered. A whirl of racing from ship to shop, and from shop to factory—of urging and beseeching on my part, of excuses and protestations on the part of tradesmen and manufacturers. I had been almost despairing at last in the matter of material for the balloon bag, when one morning—it was the fourth day—I heard of a very large completed balloon, made to order for an aeronaut whose old one had missed connection with it by one day. When they had come to deliver it, the undertaker was just driving off, and the aeronaut had made his farewell ascension. I found it to be of really enormous proportions—one of the largest ever manufactured, I was told—so large, in fact, that the maker was as glad to part with it as I was to secure it. My associates also had been somewhat occupied. Mr. Sturritt’s delivery teams had been lined up on the Billowcrest dock from morning till night, unloading provisions in various forms, enough it would seem for an army. Ferratoni had laid in his cells, coils, transmitters, detectors and heaven only knows what besides, while Miss Gale had undertaken to supply, in addition to her own requirements, the warm clothing and bedding likely to be needed for an Antarctic winter. As for Chauncey Gale, he had sat all day at a little table on the afterdeck and signed checks; checks, many of them, that would have wrecked my former commercial venture at any time during the ten years of its existence; and he whistled as he did it, and called out words of comfort to Captain Biffer, who, with a fierce eye on each end of the vessel, strode up and down where boxes, barrels, rolls, rope, chains, etc., were piled or still coming over the side—rending the Second Commandment into orders and admonitions that would have turned a clergyman gray in a night.