have
a far better chance of success."

"Shall I? I don't see why."

"You will, because you'll have a smaller crew, one that will not rise in
mutiny against you and want to go back."

"How do I know that?" said the doctor dryly.

"Because we promise you, to a man--and boy--eh, Chris--Ned?--that we'll
stick to you to the end."

"Of course," cried the boys together; while the others said, "Hear,
hear!"

"That's all very well," said the doctor dryly. "We're sitting here
comfortably at this table, and in this shanty, and rough as it is we
have found it a comfortable home. We've had our evening meal, and we're
going to lie down for a good night's rest. But wait till some day when
we're all worn out with hunger and fatigue--out, perhaps, in some
thirsty desert--without a roof to cover us, and surrounded by dangers
such as at the present time we cannot conceive. How will you feel
then--what will you say then?"

"Never say die, father," cried Chris.

"Britons never shall be slaves," cried Ned.

"Nor Yankee Doodles neither, doctor," cried Griggs, laughing.

"I say we'll all stick to our captain like men," said Wilton warmly.

"And I that I shall clap you on the shoulder, Lee, and say, Thank
goodness, we've fought through our troubles so far, and that, please
goodness, we'll go on bravely to the end."

"Hah!" exclaimed the doctor, uttering a long-drawn sigh. "Yes, I find I
shall be better off than Columbus, and I begin to feel that with such
help I shall have a much easier task. There: we'll go. Our friend
Griggs has put quite a different complexion on the expedition, and I
begin to think now that all we have to do is to keep on till we find the
ruined city."

"If it exists," said Bourne.

"If it exists? Oh, it must exist, if you can say that of a dead city,"
cried Wilton.

"The poor fellow we buried may have invented it all, being so bent upon
his search, and gone crazy at last and made up that chart out of his own
head."

"No," said the doctor thoughtfully. "I had the advantage of you others
in being with him during his last moments, and hearing him talk calmly
and sensibly to the end. He had suffered horribly from fever, and
doubtless had been delirious again and again, but that chart was the
work of no madman; half-an-hour's conversation with him satisfied me
that he knew perfectly well what he was talking about, and, after all
said and done, there is nothing preposterous in what he told me. W