EDITORIAL NOTE
There are many things in the foregoing pages that perhaps awaken incredulity. There are some inconsistencies of statement. There seems to be discoverable a feeble effort at invention. The reader will almost instantly, upon reading the last word of it—and surely he can afford to skip none—feel that perhaps a little enlightened cross examination would have confused a veracious chronicler. I am inclined to suppose that almost mechanically he might murmur to himself, “Those balloons,dubious—those tubes,impossible—the Crocodilo-Python,preposterous—the little Hebrews,madness—the radium chasm,a nightmare—transmutation,poppy-cock—the Perpetual Nimbus,deliberate lie,” and so on, until affected by his own overheated thoughts and a partially justifiable resentment at having been made the victim of a fabrication, which has consumed some ten hours of his time, and would have, assuming its reality, supplied him with the most perdurable reasons for rejoicing that his lot was cast at the beginning of this twentieth century, he indulges in some specific appeals,more majorum, to the demon of darkness to make away with its editor.
Gentle—pardon the inappropriateness of the word, but to sayIratemight only increase my condemnation—Reader—wait.We shall all see.Vilhjalmar Stefansson and Donald McMillan are on the very verge of this new continent.
THEY WILL TELL US.
“Not so fast, Mr. Editor”—It is the voice of the wife of the Gentle Reader—“Not so fast! What connection had Spruce Hopkins with either Angelica or Diaz? You remember the flat silver medal that Hopkins flung into the air on Krocker Land Rim, and which was the last token Erickson received from the Yankee?”
Ah—Madame, that is another story.
Transcriber’s Notes:Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.Typographical errors were silently corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.