it makes its way toward the south,"
spoke Mr. Parker with an air as if he almost wished such a thing to
happen, that he might be vindicated.

"Oh, we'll take good care that the RED CLOUD isn't nipped between
two bergs," Tom declared.

But he little knew of the dire fate that was to overtake the RED
CLOUD, and how close a call they were to have for their very lives.

"No matter what care you exercise, you cannot overcome the awful
power of the grinding ice," declared the gloomy scientist. "I
predict that we will see most wonderful and terrifying sights."

"Bless my hatband!" cried Mr. Damon, "don't say such dreadful
things, Parker my dear man! Be more cheerful; can't you?"

"Science cannot be cheerful when foretelling events of a dire
nature," was the response. "I would not do my duty if I did not hold
to my theories."

"Well, just hold to them a little more closely," suggested Mr.
Damon. "Don't tell them to us so often, and have them get on our
nerves, Parker, my dear man. Bless my nail-file! be more cheerful.
And that reminds me, when are we going to have dinner, Tom?"

"Whenever you want it, Mr. Damon. Are you going to act as cook
again?"

"I think I will, and I'll just go to the galley now, and see about
getting a meal. It will take my mind off the dreadful things Mr.
Parker says."

But if the gloomy scientific man heard this little "dig" he did not
respond to it. He was busy jotting down figures on a piece of paper,
multiplying and dividing them to get at some result in a complicated
problem he was working on, regarding the power of an iceberg in
proportion to its size, to exert a lateral pressure when sliding
down a grade of fifteen per cent.

Mr. Damon got an early dinner, as they had breakfasted almost at
dawn that morning, in order to get a good start. The meal was much
enjoyed, and to Abe Abercrombie was quite a novelty, for he had
never before partaken of food so high up in the air, the barograph
of the RED CLOUD showing an elevation of a little over twelve
thousand feet.

"It's certainly great," the old miner observed, as he looked down
toward the earth below them, stretched out like some great relief
map. "It sure is wonderful an' some scrumptious! I never thought I'd
be ridin' one of these critters. But they're th' only thing t' git
t' this hidden valley with. We might prospect around for a year, and
be driven back by the Indians and Eskimos a dozen times. But with
this we can go over their