hich you are thinking,
it would bring poverty, not wealth, to the world, and not a diamond on
earth would be worth more than a common pebble. Everywhere, in civilized
countries and in barbaric palaces, people would see their riches
vanish before them as if it had been blighted by the touch of an evil
magician."

She trembled. "And these--are they to be valued as common pebbles?"

"Oh no," said he; "so long as that great shaft is mine, these broken
fragments are to us riches far ahead of our wildest imaginations."

"Roland," she cried, "are you going down into that shaft for more of
them?"

"Never, never, never again," he said. "What we have here is enough for
us, and if I were offered all the good that there is in this world,
which money cannot buy, I would never go down into that cleft again.
There was one moment when I stood in that cave in which an awful terror
shot into my soul which I shall never be able to forget. In the light
of my electric lamps, sent through a vast transparent mass, I could see
nothing, but I could feel. I put out my foot and I found it was upon a
sloping surface. In another instant I might have slid--where? I cannot
bear to think of it!"

She threw her arms around him and held him tightly.

CHAPTER XXIII. THE LAST DIVE OF THE DIPSEY

When the engines of the Dipsey had stopped, and she was quietly floating
upon the smooth surface of Lake Shiver, Mr. Gibbs greatly desired to
make a connection with the telegraphic cable which was stretched at the
bottom of the ocean, beneath him, and to thus communicate with Sardis,
But when this matter was discussed in council, several objections were
brought against it, the principal one being that the cable could not
be connected with the Dipsey without destroying its connection with the
little station near the pole; and although this means of telegraphic
communication with regions which might never be visited again might well
be considered as possessing no particular value, still it was such a
wonderful thing to lay a telegraph line to the pole that it seemed the
greatest pity in the world to afterwards destroy it.

The friends of this exploring party had not heard from it since it left
the polar sea, but there could be no harm in making them wait a little
longer. If the return voyage under the ice should be as successfully
accomplished as the first submarine cruise, it would not be very many
days before the Dipsey should arrive at Cape Tarif