“My friends, it is with extreme regret that we learn of the deaths of our townsman, Dennis Oakland, and his two friends, Ross Ainley and Gilbert Eastern, all men of high standing and renown. It needs no proof to convince us that they have shared the fate of all the foolhardy people who previously have ventured too near this magnificent but fatal vessel, for they were seen to be working here yesterday and have not returned. The door was locked on the inside and you see there are no hiding-places, and they could not return except by means of the door which we have just broken down, so that the calamitous fate they have met is most deplorable.” Here the three listeners chuckled, unconscious of which the speaker continued,—“As soon as the news of a possible disaster reached me, I obtained the permission of the authorities to break open the place and blow up the vessel, as a danger and menace no longer to be tolerated.” “That has been tried many a time, and no explosive has ever been able to touch it,” objected some one in the crowd. “When I worked for Dennis Oakland, some five or six years ago, he himself tried to blow up the ship, but he only brought the shed down.” “What explosive did he use?” asked the first speaker. “We bored under the ship and he used rystosol, which blew the whole place down and the foundations also, but the vessel stayed where she was, hanging on air, and none of us would work at it again.” “That is strange; nothing has ever been known to withstand it. However, we will try a very heavy charge. All of you except three volunteers go outside to a safe distance.”