.

A REGION OF NOTHINGNESS.
In the office of the Works at Sardis, side by side at the table on which stood the telegraph instrument, Margaret Raleigh and Roland Clewe, receiving the daily reports from the Dipsey, had found themselves in such sympathy and harmony with the party they had sent out on this expedition that they too, in fancy, had slowly groped their way under the grim overhanging ice out into the open polar sea.

They too had stood on the deck of the vessel which had risen like a spectre out of the waters, and in the cold, clear atmosphere had gazed about them at this hitherto unknown part of the world.

They had thrilled with enthusiastic excitement when the ring on the deck of the Dipsey was placed over the actual location of the pole; they had been filled with anger when they heard of the conduct of Rovinski; and their souls had swelled with a noble love of country and pride in their own achievements when they heard that they, by their representative, had made the north pole a part of their native land.

They had listened, scarcely breathing, to the stirring account of the anchoring of the great buoy to one end of the earth's axis, and they had exclaimed in amazement at the announcement that in the lonely waters of the pole whales were still to be found, when they were totally unknown in every other portion of the earth.
But now the stirring events in the arctic regions which had so held and enthralled them day by day had, after a time, ceased.