his ambition might point out which would induce him
to endeavor to climb higher in the field of human achievement than
the spot on which he stood. From this great elevation he was perfectly
willing to look down and kindly consider the heroic performances of
those who had reached the pole, and who had anchored a buoy on the
extreme northern point of the earth's axis.

Mr. Gibbs's reports, and those of his assistants, were well worked out,
and of the greatest value to the scientific world, and every one who had
made that memorable voyage on the Dipsey had stories to tell for which
editors in every civilized land would have paid gold beyond all former
precedent.

But Roland Clewe did not care to say anything to the world until he
could say everything that he wished to say. It had been known that
he had sent an expedition into Northern waters, but exactly what he
intended to do had not been known, and what he had done had not been
communicated even to the telegraph-operators at Cape Tariff. These had
received despatches in cipher from points far away to the north,
but while they transmitted them to Sardis they had no idea of their
signification. When everything should be ready to satisfy the learned
world, as well as the popular mind, the great discovery of the pole
would be announced.

In the meantime there was a suspicion in the journalistic world that the
man of inventions who lived at Sardis, New Jersey, had done something
out of the common in the North. A party of people, one of them a woman,
had been taken up there and left there, and they had recently been
brought back. The general opinion was that Clewe had endeavored to found
a settlement at some point north of Cape Tariff, probably for purposes
of scientific observation, and that he had failed. The stories of these
people, however, would be interesting, and several reporters made visits
to Sardis. But they all saw Sammy, and not one of them considered his
communications worth more than a brief paragraph.

In a week Mr. Gibbs would have finished his charts, his meteorological,
his geological, and geographical reports, and a clear, succinct account
of the expedition, written by Clewe himself from the statements of the
party, would be ready for publication; and in the brilliantly lighted
sky of discovery which now rested, one edge upon Sardis and the other
upon the pole, there was but one single cloud, and this was Rovinski.

The ambitious and unscrupulous Pole