Bob knew nothing of Ikenstein or the methods by which the pile had been wrested from him and his companions, but he did know the sensations which Conroy described. He, himself, arrived at them by hanging on to a sea anchor in a gale of wind off the Galway coast, or pushing a vicious horse at a nasty jump. Nervous sweat, stretched nerves and complete uncertainty about the immediate future afford the same delight however you get at them. He sympathized with Conroy. "You might fit out a ship or two and try exploring round the South Pole," Bob said. "They've got the thing itself of course, but there must be lots of places still undiscovered in the neighbourhood. I should think that hummocking along over the ice floes in a dog sledge must be pretty thrilling." Conroy sighed. "I'm too fat," he said, "and I'm too darned soft. The kind of life I've led for the last four years isn't good training for camping out on icebergs and feeding on whale's blubber." Bob smiled. Conroy was a very fat man. A camping party on an iceberg would be likely to end in some whale eating his blubber. "I didn't mean you to go yourself," said Bob. "Oh! I see. I'm to fit out the expedition and you are to go in command. I don't quite see where the fun would come in for me. It wouldn't excite me any to hear of your shooting Esquimaux and penguins. I shouldn't care enough whether you lived or were froze to get any excitement out of a show of that kind." "We'd call it 'The Joseph P. Conroy Expedition,'" said Bob; "and the newspapers--" "Thanks. But I'm pretty well fed up with newspaper tosh. The press has boosted me ever since I landed in this country, and I'd just as soon they stopped now as started fresh." Bob relinquished the idea of a Polar expedition with a sigh. It was Conroy himself who made the next suggestion. "If politics weren't such a rotten game--" Bob did not feel attracted to political life; but he was loyal to his patron. "Clithering," he said, "was talking to me to-night. You know the man I mean, Sir Samuel Clithering. He's not in the Cabinet, but he's what I'd call a pretty intimate hanger on; does odd jobs for the Prime Minister. He said the interest of political life was absorbing." "I shouldn't care for it," said Conroy. "After all, what would it be worth to me? There's nothing for me to gain, and I don't see how I could lose anything. It would be like playing bridge for counters. They might make me a lord, of course. A title is about the only thing I haven't got, but then I don't want it." "I quite agree with you," said Bob. "I merely mentioned politics because Clithering said--" "Besides," said Conroy, "it wouldn't be my politics. England isn't my country." "It would be rather exciting," said Bob, "to run a revolution somewhere. There are lots of small states, in the Balkans, you know, which could be turned inside out and upside down by a man with the amount of money you have."