were full of hearty congratulations
and friendly welcome, but they were not very long, and Sammy said to Mr.
Gibbs that he thought it likely that this was one of Mr. Clewe's busy
times. The latter telegraphed that he would send a vessel for them
immediately, and as she was now lying at St. John's they would not have
to wait very long.

The fact was that the news of the arrival of the Dipsey at Cape Tariff
had come to Sardis a week after Clewe's descent into the shaft, and he
was absorbed, body and soul, in his underground discoveries. He was
not wanting in sympathy, or even affection, for the people who had been
doing his work, and his interest in their welfare and their achievements
was as great as it ever had been, but the ideas and thoughts which now
occupied his mind were of a character which lessened and overshadowed
every other object of consideration. Most of the messages sent to Cape
Tariff had come from Margaret Raleigh.

CHAPTER XXIV. ROVINSKI COMES TO THE SURFACE

When Sammy Block and his companion explorers had journeyed from Cape
Tariff to Sardis, they found Roland Clewe ready to tender a most
grateful welcome, and to give full and most interested attention to the
stories of their adventures and to their scientific reports. For a time
he was willing to allow his own great discovery to lie fallow in his
mind, and to give his whole attention to the wonderful achievement which
had been made under his direction.

He had worked out his theory of the formation and present constitution
of the earth; had written a full and complete report of what he had seen
and done, and was ready, when he thought the proper time had arrived, to
announce to the world his theories and his facts. Moreover, he had sent
to several jewelers and mineralogists some of the smaller fragments
which he had picked up in the cave of light, and these specialists,
while reporting the material of the specimens purest diamond, expressed
the greatest surprise at their shape and brilliancy. They had evidently
not been ground or cut, and yet their sharp points and glittering
surfaces reflected light as if they had been in the hands of a
diamond-cutter. One of these experts wrote to Clewe asking him if he had
been digging diamonds with a machine which broke the gems to pieces.

So the soul of Roland Clewe was satisfied; it seemed to walk the air as
he himself once had trod what seemed to him a solid atmosphere. There
was now nothing that