"Scarcely; the arguments were too strong in favor of the hollow globe for me to have any serious misgiving. But long before I spoke to you I was absolutely convinced. By the distance we had traveled. By the genial climate. By the strange light. By the crescent cloud. By the absence of recurring cold, and by the accumulated knowledge already mentioned. My dear boy, I fully appreciate what a shock this must be to you—even greater than it is to me, and for the reason that I have studied the question and believed in it half my life. For fifteen years I have been convinced that if I could ever find a way across the Palæocrystic Sea I should be able to sail without difficulty into the interior of the earth. There is really nothing more stupendous in this acquisition to our knowledge than was that of the spherical globe to the ancients. When a race of people has been bred for thousands of years to believe that the world they inhabit is flat, it must seem wildly absurd to be suddenly confronted with a theory which advances the possibility of their being able to walk upon the under side of it. Think of such a statement being made to sensible men!" "And how do you account for the fact that these people have never found their way into the outer world?" I asked. "For the same reason that we have never found our way into theirs," replied Torrence. "The difficulties of crossing the ice belt are very nearly insurmountable; and yet that they are not quite so we have seen in the case of Jan von Broekhuysen and his two companions. Neither is it by any means certain that dwellers of this inner region have never reached us. Remember the wild men discovered off Cape Tchelyieskin. Where did they come from? Beyond this there are isolated cases of communities that point to unknown regions in the far north, as well as the far south, as their hailing place. These have traditions of having once inhabited a land of more genial climate, and affording better conditions for the human race than ours, and moreover, a land where day was eternal! True, it may not be once in thousands of years that the ice barrier has been threaded, but what is more to the point, it is probable that those who have crossed it did not know it. The change is so gradual, the mind so fixed in its normal conception of the earth’s character, that only a few eccentric, or peculiarly educated persons, among the very few who may have accomplished the feat, ever suspected it. There was a time in the world’s history when one might have circumnavigated the earth without a suspicion that he had done so." We now took our meals invariably on deck, not wishing to miss any of the strange and beautiful scenery constantly passing. On one occasion, while preparing some food in the galley, I was struck by what appeared to be a secret panel in the wall. Asking Torrence about it, he said: "Push it up one inch, and then down two. Then if you press it gently inward it will slide open of itself."