for three weeks the billowcrest lay a prisoner off the south shetlands—just which of these islands, i do not consider it proper at this time to say. assisted by chauncey and edith gale, my uncle and i put the treasure into bags and had it conveyed to the vessel as “mineral specimens,” for we felt that we could not wholly trust our crew. then at length a wind from the northwest set the currents a new pace and altered the sand drift. we found ourselves afloat one morning, and crowding on sail and steam made all speed northward, arriving safely in new york harbor on the evening of february second, after an absence of nearly eighteen months.
as we came in through the dusk, the splendid cities and the bridge between to us seemed gloriously illuminated; but if so, it was not in our honor. nobody knew that we had returned, or even that we had gone.
we steamed up north river to our old dock, and chauncey gale set forth at once to catch a broadway 323car for a certain down-town theater, which he greatly feared had been discontinued during our absence. next morning i went with my uncle to establish some desirable banking connections, through which his treasure might be properly transferred, and converted into funds.
as to when and in what manner we should make our adventures, and the results of the expedition, public property, we were at first undecided. newspaper notoriety was not a pleasant prospect, particularly as we were already contemplating a second voyage to the south. we therefore concluded to say nothing immediately, and meanwhile to have the old billowcrest thoroughly overhauled and outfitted for the voyage to be undertaken in the late summer—not to the south pole this time, but to the south shetlands, to develop in the spot of his exile the mines which my uncle believes to be almost inexhaustible.
and so—to use the so-called irish form—we have “continued to say nothing” through the spring and summer, during which period i have prepared the matter already in the proper hands for publication.
we are about to sail again now, and by the time my report is given to the reader i shall be beyond the reach of either approval or condemnation—far on my way to our new “treasure island” of the south, where the rarest treasure will be one who 324joins in this, our unique honeymoon—she who was edith gale.
for i claimed my reward this morning—two years from the day when she jestingly agreed that i should name my price for a new world—and in the little forward cabin of the billowcrest where the agreement was made.
“it was hardly fair,” she whispered, just before the ceremony. “i am paying to the full, while you, though you found the world, could not deliver it into my hands.”
325“it is the old story,” i said. “the man always gets more than he bargained for, and the woman less.”
and chauncey gale, when he took our hands in congratulation, repeated the first comment that was made when my uncle showed us his store of gold.
“well, nick,” he said, “as i remarked once before, i’m something of a speculator, myself, but i give you credit for making the smallest investments and raking off the biggest returns on record.”
he accompanies us on our expedition. he hesitated somewhat at first, but a few months of new york and a warm northern summer have brought back the memory and nameless fascination of the glacial atmosphere and trackless seas of the far south.
“besides,” he said, “i’m not going to become a vagrant in my old age. think of me being homeless in the streets of new york, with no place to hang up in, except the police station of the waldoria. oh, lord, what’s a hat without a hall-tree!”
mr. sturritt, too, remains “with the admiral, as usual.” he has prepared lozenges in new and improved combinations, and especially adapted to the exertions of a miner’s life. even zar is not going to desert us. our former voyage, with mr. sturritt in charge of the commissary, was not without its attractions for her, and she now declares that “if 326we jus’ give up huntin’ foh poles, an’ stick to lookin’ up our los’ relation, she has no rejections to he’pin’ us all she can. besides,” she says, “my miss edith ain’ gwine off down dere widout her ole mammy to sing ‘brown cows’ when that po’ li’l’ gal cain’t sleep.”
my uncle nicholas, who has spent much of the summer with relatives, will naturally be in charge of the expedition, though captain biffer will continue in command of the billowcrest, with officers larkins and emory as heretofore.
“thim’s the bake-apple,” said the former, when i first showed him a handful of the nuggets. “the little yellow berries that grow one on a shtalk—i felt in me bones that they grew there. i’ll be helpin’ ye hunt fer thim.”
and so it is, that of those who sailed with us before, only ferratoni is missing. he has become to us as a sweet memory, but far to the south, where lies my long-ago fancy, he has found that of which he also, dreamed. the long, polar night now lingers there, but i recall that enchanted land only as bathed in the light of an eternal afternoon, wherein, after our weary struggle, we found for a time the anodyne of forgetfulness and rest. perhaps ere this he has learned a way to lighten the burden of their long dark, and however this may be, we are happy in knowing that he, too, walks in the light of 327love, and that his gentle soul is chorded at last with the perfect ideal.
but i am writing—writing. already both chauncey gale and my uncle nicholas have looked in to say that captain biffer is ready to cast off, while edith, who sits by to read as i finish these last lines, whispers that the messenger boy is eagerly afraid we are going to carry him away with us.
there came to me last night, once more, the old childhood dream of blue water and white sails.
and the tide still calls, and the wind is fair, and i am going back to the sea.
