He set to work at once with telephone and telegraph and got information from everybody he could think of regarding Iceland and its chief seaport. He reached a representative of Icelandic commercial interests at his home in Boston and was told how to cable in the most direct way to Reykjavik. The Merchants’ Association there verified Olaf Karofsen’s statement of the wreck of his motor schooner in the ice and the loss of several passengers and their possessions. Before morning Tom had a pretty complete story of the disaster. It seemed that because of the lateness of the season no steamship would sail from Reykjavik at once, and Mr. Damon had engaged the motor schooner, _Kalrye_, to take his party over to a Greenland port from which a fishing steamer would sail south before winter really set in. In the night and fog the _Kalrye_ smashed into a shelf of ice just below the surface, which seemed to be part of a gigantic iceberg, the peaks of which stood up out of the sea several miles distant. Mr. Damon was known to carry with him a chest of treasure which he had come to Iceland to secure. With this chest Mr. Damon and his friend, with five sailors, had taken to one of the _Kalrye’s_ two boats. A heavy sea had smashed it against the ice and the skipper and his party had seen all in the wrecked boat get onto the ice with their luggage. Then the fog had shut down again and Captain Karofsen had been unable to find the castaways. He had returned to Reykjavik and was now ready, if furnished with necessary funds, to get up a searching party and start after the lost men. “It would be weeks before we could hear from such a searching party,” groaned Mr. Swift. “What will you tell Mary and her mother, Tom?” “Don’t tell ’em anything,” advised Ned. “Wait until we hear something for sure.” But this could not be. It was impossible to hide the facts from Mary Nestor. Before Tom had got out of bed, after spending most of the night at the telephone, Rad knocked on his door. “Miss Mary come, Mars’ Tom,” said the old darkey through the keyhole. “She done got a letter from her father.” “Great Scott!” exclaimed Tom, getting out of bed in a hurry. “He can’t have got off that iceberg and written her, all as quickly as this!” He did not stop to dress, but put on his blanket robe and went downstairs. Mary was talking with Mr. Swift and had already got an inkling of the trouble. She was very pale and her eyes glistened with tears. “Oh, Tom! what shall we do?” she cried, when the young inventor appeared. “We never should have let him go with Mr. Damon.” “Why not?” Tom demanded. “Isn’t your father better?”