cruise. We've
never done the South Sea Islands."

The _Finola_ was the largest of Conroy's yachts, a handsome vessel of
something over a thousand tons.

"Cruising in the _Finola_," said Conroy, "is no earthly good to me.
What I want is something that will put me into a nervous sweat, the
same as I was when I was up against Ikenstein and the railway bosses.
My nerves were like damned fiddle strings for a fortnight when I
didn't know whether I was going to come out a pauper or the owner of
the biggest pile mortal man ever handled."

Bob knew nothing of Ikenstein or the methods by which the pile had
been wrested from him and his companions, but he did know the
sensations which Conroy described. He, himself, arrived at them by
hanging on to a sea anchor in a gale of wind off the Galway coast, or
pushing a vicious horse at a nasty jump. Nervous sweat, stretched
nerves and complete uncertainty about the immediate future afford the
same delight however you get at them. He sympathized with Conroy.

"You might fit out a ship or two and try exploring round the South
Pole," Bob said. "They've got the thing itself of course, but there
must be lots of places still undiscovered in the neighbourhood. I
should think that hummocking along over the ice floes in a dog sledge
must be pretty thrilling."

Conroy sighed.

"I'm too fat," he said, "and I'm too darned soft. The kind of life
I've led for the last four years isn't good training for camping out
on icebergs and feeding on whale's blubber."

Bob smiled. Conroy was a very fat man. A camping party on an iceberg
would be likely to end in some whale eating his blubber.

"I didn't mean you to go yourself," said Bob.

"Oh! I see. I'm to fit out the expedition and you are to go in
command. I don't quite see where the fun would come in for me. It
wouldn't excite me any to hear of your shooting Esquimaux and
penguins. I shouldn't care enough whether you lived or were froze to
get any excitement out of a show of that kind."

"We'd call it 'The Joseph P. Conroy Expedition,'" said Bob; "and the
newspapers--"

"Thanks. But I'm pretty well fed up with newspaper tosh. The press has
boosted me ever since I landed in this country, and I'd just as soon
they stopped now as started fresh."

Bob relinquished the idea of a Polar expedition with a sigh.

It was Conroy himself who made the next suggestion.

"If politics weren't such a rotten game--"

Bob did not feel attracted to politic