oney could buy, and furnished her new house very handsomely. She
discarded her old silver andirons and fender, which required continual
cleaning, and which would not have been tolerated by her except that
they were made of a metal which was now so cheap as to be used for
household utensils, and she put in their place a beautiful set of
polished brass, such as people used in her mother's time. Whenever Sarah
found any one whom she considered worthy to listen, she gave a very
full account of her adventures, never omitting the loss of her warm and
comfortable shoes, which misfortune, together with the performances of
Rovinski, and all the dangers consequent, and the acquaintance of
the tame and lonely whale, she attributed to the fact that there were
thirteen people on board.

Sammy's accounts were in a more cheerful key, and his principles were
not affected by his success. He never had believed that there was any
good in finding the pole, and he did not believe it now. When they got
there, it was just like any other part of the ocean, and it required a
great deal of arithmetic and navigation to find out where it was,
even when they were looking at it; besides, as he had found out to his
disgust, even when they had discovered it, it was not the real pole to
which the needle of the compass points.

Moreover, if there had been any distinctive mark about it, except the
buoy which they had anchored there, and even if it really were the pole
to which needles should point, there was no particular good in finding
it, unless other people could get there. But in regard to any other
expedition reaching the open polar sea under the ice, Sammy had grave
doubts. If a whale could not get out of that sea there was every reason
why nobody else should try to get into it; the Dipsey's entrance was
the barest scratch, and he would not try it again if the north pole were
marked out by a solid mountain of gold.

Roland Clewe refused in all personal interviews to receive the
laudations offered him as the discoverer of the pole. It was true that
the expedition had been planned by him, and all the arrangements and
mechanisms which had insured its success were of his invention, but he
steadily insisted that Mr. Gibbs and Sammy, as representatives of the
party, should be awarded the glory of the great discovery.

The remarkable success of this most remarkable expedition aroused a
widespread spirit of arctic exploration. Not only were voyages und