"Certainly," replied Hardress. "If the Powers have accepted King Edward's arbitration we can do nothing else; and, besides, if our not entirely unexpected visitors allow themselves to be tempted to commit any hostile act after that they will place themselves outside the law of nations, and we shall be at liberty to deal with them as we please." "That's so," replied the president, looking lazily across the table at Sophie and Adelaide. "Austin, you can go and telegraph to St John's that we put ourselves entirely in King Edward's hands, and that the engines have stopped. They'll have a few thunderstorms most likely, but in twenty-four hours everything will be as it was before. You might also mention that the French and Russian expeditions are here, and that to-night we hope to have the leaders to dinner." The dinner-party in the board-room of the works to which the guests sat down at 8 P.M. was quite the strangest that had ever been given in the Northern Hemisphere. It was a dinner given by the holders of a citadel which had been proved to be the veritable throne of the world-empire to four men who had come to the wilderness of Boothia Land with the now practically avowed object of taking it from them by force of arms. For no other possible reason could these two peaceful expeditions have sailed from Riga and le Havre to go to the North Pole, or as near to it as might be, and arrive at the Magnetic Pole, bristling with weapons, and obviously prepared to attack the works, situated as they were on the territory of a friendly nation, as though they were a fortress on hostile soil. Yet Vice-Admiral Alexis Nazanoff, in command of the Russian expedition, came with Professor Josef Karnina in just such friendly style as did Vice-Admiral Dumont and ex-Captain Victor Fargeau, late of the German staff-corps. They were all far too well versed in the ways of war or diplomacy not to be considerably surprised at the nature of their reception, even as they were at the colossal dimensions of the buildings which at the bidding of the magic of millions had arisen in the midst of this inhospitable wilderness. They had expected a fleet of guardships protecting the entrance to the harbour, and they would not have been surprised if their passage through the narrow Lankester Sound had been prevented by torpedos, or opposed by privateers equipped by the Trust; and for that reason they had mounted their guns and felt their way for days at the rate of two or three knots an hour through the narrow passages which led southward to Port Adelaide, but all they had seen was the fleeting shape of a white-painted yacht, the now world-famous _Nadine_, scouting on the horizon and then vanishing into the grey twilight of the long northern day.