Then, having lost none of his coolness, as beseemed the ancient pointer of the Columbiad, he put his room in order, picked up his easel, hoisted up his blackboard, gathered up the fragments of chalk scattered on the carpet, and resumed his work, which had been so rudely interrupted. But he noticed that by the fall of the blackboard the figures he had written on the right-hand top corner, which represented in meters the approximate equatorial circumference of the earth, had been partially erased. He stretched his hook up to re-write them when the bell sounded with a feverish tinkle. “Again!” exclaimed J. T. Maston. And he went to the telephone. “Who is there?” he asked. “Mrs. Scorbitt.” “And what does Mrs. Scorbitt want?” “Did that horrible flash of lightning strike Ballistic Cottage?” “I have every reason to believe so.” “Good Heavens! The lightning—” “Do not be uneasy, Mrs. Scorbitt.” “You are not hurt, dear Mr. Maston?” “Not at all.” “You are sure you have not been touched?” “I am only touched by your thoughtfulness for me,” said the philosopher gallantly. “Good evening, dear Mr. Maston.” “Good evening, dear Mrs. Scorbitt.” And he returned to his blackboard. “Confound that excellent woman,” he said; “if she hadn’t called me to the telephone I should not have run the chance of being struck by lightning.” And to insure being left in quiet, he judiciously put the telephone out of action. Then he resumed his work. From the number on the board he gradually built up a definitive formula, and then noting it on the left, he cleared away the working by which he had arrived at it, and launched forth into an appalling series of figures and signs. Eight days later the wonderful calculation was finished, and the secretary of the Gun Club triumphantly bore off to his colleagues the solution of the problem which they had awaited with a very natural impatience. The practical means of arriving at the North Pole to work its coal-mines were mathematically established. Then the company was formed under the title of The North Polar Practical Association. Then the Arctic regions were purchased under the auctioneer’s hammer. And then the shares were offered to the world. CHAPTER VII. BARBICANE MAKES A SPEECH. On the 22nd of December a general meeting was called of the shareholders of the North Polar Practical Association, to take place at the rooms of the Gun Club in Union Square. And the square itself was hardly large enough to hold the crowd. Usually the large hall of the club was decorated with weapons of all sorts appropriate to the noble profession of its members. It was quite an artillery museum. Even the furniture itself, the chairs and tables, and couches, was of the pattern of the murderous engines which had sent to a better world so many worthy people whose secret desire had been to die of old age.