Here Barbicane, accompanied by J. T. Maston—a very good portrait—and Captain Nicholl, descended in a balloon on the point in question, and, after unheard-of dangers, succeeded in capturing a lump of coal weighing half a pound, which was all the circumpolar deposit contained. Here J. T. Maston, who was as popular as Barbicane with the caricaturists, had been seized by the magnetic attraction of the Pole, and was fast held to the ground by his metal hook. And it may be remarked here that the celebrated calculator was of too touchy a temperament to laugh at any jest at his personal peculiarities. He was very much annoyed at it, and it will be easily imagined that Mrs. Scorbitt was not the last to share in his just indignation. Another sketch, in the Brussels _Magic Lantern_, represented Impey Barbicane and his co-directors working in the midst of flames, like so many incombustible salamanders. To melt the ice of the Palæocrystic Sea, they had poured out over it a sea of alcohol, and then lighted the spirit, so as to convert the polar basin into a bowl of punch. And, playing on the word punch, the Belgian designer had had the irreverence to represent the president of the Gun Club as a ridiculous punchinello. But of all the caricatures, that which obtained the most success was published by the Parisian _Charivari_ under the signature of “Stop.” In the stomach of a whale, comfortably furnished and padded, Impey Barbicane and J. T. Maston sat smoking and playing chess, waiting their arrival at their destination. The new Jonahs had not hesitated to avail themselves of an enormous marine mammifer, and by this new mode of locomotion had passed under the ice-floes to reach the inaccessible Pole. The phlegmatic president was not in the least incommoded by this intemperance of pen and pencil. He let the world talk, and sing, and parody, and caricature; and he quietly went on with his work. As soon as he had obtained the concession, he had issued an appeal to the public for the subscription of fifteen millions of dollars in hundred-dollar shares. Such was the credit of Barbicane & Co., that applications flowed in wholesale. But it is as well to say that nearly all the applications came from the United States. “So much the better!” said the supporters of the North Polar Practical Association. “The work will be entirely American.” The prospectus was so plausible, the speculators believed so tenaciously in the realization of its promises, and admitted so imperturbably the existence of the Polar coal-mines, that the capital was subscribed three times over. Two-thirds of the applications were declined with regret, and on the 16th of December the capital of fifteen millions of dollars was fully paid up. It was about thrice as much as the amount subscribed for the Gun Club when they made their great experiment of sending a projectile from the Earth to the Moon.