The kingdom of Atvatabar lay before us like a continent drawn upon a map, or, rather, upon the interior surface of a sphere or globe, everywhere visible to the naked eye. Its green forests, its impressive mountains, its rushing rivers, its white and many-colored cities, its wide-stretching shores, fringed with the foam of an azure sea, lay before the astonished eyes of our visitors.
When within a few miles of the city, Governor Ladalmir, accompanied by Captains Pra and Nototherboc, advanced to meet us in a large magnetic yacht, bearing the flag of Lyone. The governor hastened to inform us that, in view of our victory, the city of Kioram had declared its allegiance to the cause of Lyone, and invited myself and officers of the fleet, as well as our distinguished allies from the outer world, to a banquet in the fortress of Kioram. This news gave me great satisfaction, as the city would be a splendid base of military operations. The officers and seamen of the _Mercury_ and _Aurora Borealis_ created quite as great a sensation in the streets of Kioram as did the victorious sailors of the _Polar King_.
Landing on _terra firma_, Governor Ladalmir took the opportunity of showing our guests the beauty of his bockhockids, who formed a guard of honor to the fortress, where we were all royally received.
The two captains, together with their officers and sailors, were astonished at the multitude of strange objects shown them. Captain Adams would not remain satisfied until he was accoutred with a dynamo and a pair of magnic wings, with which all the sailors and soldiers of Atvatabar were supplied as part of their uniform. He was shown how the battery of metals gave motion to the dynamo, which in turn acted on the steel levers connected with the ribs of the wings. Although the worthy captain was of considerable weight, yet his astonishment at being able to skim through the air like a swallow was great. No sooner did he touch the button than all his preconceived notions of locomotion were destroyed, and he gasped with fear at his own prodigious motion. The two facts of unfailing movement of wings and exceptional buoyancy of body soon made him a fearless rider of the wind. He alighted on the earth with the greatest enthusiasm over the success of his experiment.
The magnic spear was another surprise for our guests. Sir John Forbes was astonished at my being able to fight the fletyemings so long, armed as they were by so potent a weapon of death. He would certainly recommend its use in the British army and navy on his return to England. Our allies were surprised at everything they saw, particularly at the rapid movements of the fletyemings or wing-jackets of the royal navy. They thought it an extraordinary thing the sailors should fly by magnic wings.
After the banquet Captain Adams, who was a fine type of an American seaman, bold, alert and courageous, gave us an account of how both the United States and England came to send ships into the interior world.
It appeared that the story of Boatswain Dunbar first published in the New York papers, that the _Polar King_ had sailed down the Polar Gulf _en route_ to an interior world, had created a tremendous sensation on the outer sphere, and all civilized nations immediately fitted out vessels of discovery to follow up the _Polar King_ and make discoveries for the benefit of their respective governments. So far as any one knew, only two vessels had succeeded in entering the interior sphere.
The recital of Captain Adams was frequently interrupted by Sir John Forbes, the British captain, a courageous officer, who possessed all the stately dignity of his race. He stated that since the discovery of America by Columbus no other event had awakened such unbounded enthusiasm as the discovery of a polar gulf and an interior world.
"I am most of all interested at present," said I, "in the story of how Dunbar reached civilization again after parting with us. I forgive you, Dunbar," I continued, addressing him, "for your mutinous conduct, and now let us hear the story of your adventures in the Polar Sea."
"Admiral," said Dunbar, "had we known the terrible hardships we would have to endure in making our way home, chiefly on foot and at the same time burdened with the boat, we would never have left the ship. But you must thank me for the presence of the two ships that are here to-day and for the fame you already enjoy in the outer world."
"It's something tremendous," said Captain Adams.
"How did your geographers receive the news of the interior world?" I inquired of Sir John Forbes.
"I need not say that the English geographers, in common with the entire nation, were greatly excited at the news. The Royal Geographical Society have already made you an honorary member, and it was actually proposed at one of the meetings that the government should proclaim a special holiday as a day of rejoicing for so great a discovery. This would certainly have been done but for the fact that the story rested entirely on the testimony of two sailors, and that any public rejoicing should be postponed until the story of the sailors would be verified by a special expedition sent from England.
Of course, many people think that Dunbar's story is a fable or a hallucination that he himself believes in. On the other hand, hundreds of professional and amateur astronomers and geographers are proving by mathematics that the earth must be a hollow sphere, and the story of the open poles an entirely physical possibility."
"The people of the United States," said Captain Adams, "are almost unanimous in the belief that the interior world is a veritable reality, and it only requires a return of my ship to convince every one that Dunbar's story falls very short of the glorious reality."
"There is no man more famous to-day than Lexington White, Admiral of Atvatabar!" said Sir John Forbes.
"I thank you, gentlemen, for your kind words," said I; "and now for Dunbar's story."
"I think, admiral," said Captain Adams, "that if I were to read you the article containing Dunbar's story written by a special commissioner of the New York _Western Hemisphere_, who was the first to interview Dunbar at Sitka, on learning of his arrival there, it would be perhaps the best narration of his perilous adventures." As the captain spoke he drew a copy of the _Western Hemisphere_ from his pocket.
"By all means," I replied, "let us hear what the press said about Dunbar and his adventures."
Thereupon Captain Adams read the New York _Western Hemisphere's_ account of Dunbar's adventures, as follows:
"AN ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY!
"THE NORTH POLE FOUND TO BE AN ENORMOUS CAVERN, LEADING TO A SUBTERRANEAN WORLD!
"THE EARTH PROVES TO BE A HOLLOW SHELL ONE THOUSAND MILES IN THICKNESS, LIT BY AN INTERIOR SUN!
"OCEANS AND CONTINENTS, ISLANDS AND CITIES SPREAD UPON THE ROOF OF THE INTERIOR SPHERE!
"BOATSWAIN DUNBAR AND SEAMAN HENDERSON, OF THE 'POLAR KING,' HAVING DESERTED THE SHIP AS SHE WAS ENTERING PLUTUSIA, HAVE ARRIVED AT SITKA, ALASKA, IN A DESPERATE CONDITION, AND HAVE BEEN INTERVIEWED BY A 'WESTERN HEMISPHERE' COMMISSIONER.
"THEY SAY LEXINGTON WHITE, COMMANDER OF THE 'POLAR KING,' IS AT PRESENT SAILING UNDERNEATH CANADA ON AN INTERIOR SEA!
"TREMENDOUS POSSIBILITIES FOR SCIENCE AND COMMERCE!
"THE FABLED REALMS OF PLUTO NO LONGER A MYTH!
"GOLD! GOLD! BEYOND THE DREAMS OF MADNESS!
"The story of the discovery of Plutusia and the Polar Gulf, as told by the two shipwrecked survivors of the mutineers of the _Polar King_ now at Sitka, Alaska, to the _Western Hemisphere_, will form an epoch in the history of the world. The renown of Columbus and Magellan is overshadowed by the glory of Lexington White, a citizen of the United States, who fitted out a ship for polar discovery, and, taking the command himself, has unravelled the mystery of the North Pole, discovered the Polar Gulf and the interior world.
"Having penetrated the Polar Gulf about three hundred miles, and having discovered the interior sun, a fear seized on a number of the sailors, among whom were Boatswain Dunbar and his companion, Henderson, who are the only survivors of twelve men who left the _Polar King_ in an open boat to return home again, and to whose safe arrival in Sitka the world is indebted for news of the important discoveries that had been made.
"Dunbar and Henderson arrived in Sitka in a very forlorn condition, almost starved to death and utterly exhausted with their terrible journey homeward. They seem to forget largely the incidents of the journey outward in the _Polar King_, but have a very clear recollection of their own individual experiences in returning to civilization again. Dunbar, with his eleven associates and the Esquimaux dogs, were no sooner cut adrift from the _Polar King_ than they began to realize their terrible position. Borne on the breast of the immense tidal wave that vibrated up and down the polar cavern, they were tossed helplessly to and fro, now flung almost out of its mouth and again sucked back into its midnight recesses. They floated for days in the gigantic tunnel of water that threatened to collapse any moment and overwhelm them. They would fain have returned to the ship, but the breeze blowing out of the cavern wafted them far from their comrades, and they therefore bent all their energies to the task of getting home again. The light of the polar summer that lit the mouth of the gulf was their guide that led them back to the old familiar world.
"Happily for the adventurers, the direction of the wind continued favorable to their voyage. They made about a hundred miles a day, and in five days reached the edge of the outer ocean. Here again the grandeur of the scene appalled them. Let the reader imagine a little boat carrying twelve souls out of that monstrous cavern five hundred miles in diameter. Think of fifteen hundred miles of ocean forming the mouth of the world that shone in the Arctic sunlight like molten silver surrounding an abyss of darkness.
"Dunbar and his companions had no sooner emerged from the gulf and seen once more the light of the sun--our own sun--than they wept for joy. But again, when they thought of the terrible barrier of ice they had to cross again they began to wish they had remained with the _Polar King_. Thus man fluctuates between this or that impulse, as he is moved.
"'I say, captain,' said Walker, one of the men, 'don't you think it about as safe to go back and find the ship as to run the chance of being frozen to death on the ice?'
"'Well,' said Dunbar, 'when we left the ship everybody knew it was for good. Our shipmates have chosen their course, as we chose ours, and it's too late to go back now. As likely as not she may have struck a rock and has gone to the bottom by this time.'
"As the boat cleared the cavern the sea fell down before them, until at noonday the sun itself was visible, a joyful proof that they had at last gained the normal surface of the earth again.
"When three days out of the gulf, the weather grew suddenly colder, and the sky became obscured with clouds, completely hiding the sun from sight. A furious snow-storm overtook the voyagers, who, benumbed with cold, wished they were only back again under the hurricane-deck of the _Polar King_. Fortunately, the wind blew steadily toward the Arctic Circle, bringing them nearer home, but such was the anxiety and suffering caused by insufficient protection from the inclement climate that they cared not whither they drifted, so long as they could keep alive.
"By the help of a little oil-stove they boiled their coffee under a sail, which, spread horizontally above them, in some measure kept the snow from burying them alive.
"The storm spent its fury in twenty-four hours, and when the air grew clear again they were saluted with the sight of that enormous ridge of ice through which the _Polar King_ found a passage a month before. The ice was heaped up with the purest snow in places twenty feet in depth.
Thousands of icy peaks and pinnacles, as far as the eye could reach, pierced the sky. Under other conditions the sight would have been sublime, but to men frozen and famished with insufficient food it was a scene of terror.
"The icy range was flanked by an ice-foot varying from thirty to sixty miles in width, and from four to fifty feet above the sea-level.
"Here was the problem that confronted Dunbar--he had to travel over at least thirty miles of icy splinters over an ice-foot whose surface was broken into every possible contortion of crystallization. There were mounds, hummocks, caverns, crevasses, ridges and gulfs of the hardest and oldest ice. Then when this barrier was crossed there was the icy backbone of the whole system, five hundred to a thousand feet in height, to be crossed, as there was no lane or opening to be discovered through so formidable a range of ice mountains. Even if he succeeded in crossing the same, there would certainly be an ice-foot of perhaps greater dimensions than the one before him to cross, and that might prove to be only a valley of ice leading to other and still more inaccessible cliffs to be surmounted.
[Illustration: WE SLOWLY DRAGGED OURSELVES ACROSS THE RANGE OF ICY PEAKS.]
"'This is no place to die in,' said Dunbar, 'and so, boys, we've got to hustle if we ever expect to get home.'
"'Ay, ay, sir,' said his companions, but when they reached the ice they found that having remained in a cramped position for a month in the boat had incapacitated them for walking.
"It was also found that Walker's feet and those of four other sailors had been frostbitten, and that they were totally unable to be of any service to themselves or the others.
"The outlook was mournful in the extreme. The only thing that cheered them was the constant sunlight, and even that consolation would depart in another month, and if in the mean time they did not get away from the ice, hunger and the awful desolation of a polar winter would terminate their existence.
"There was no chance of starting on their journey until they got accustomed to the use of their limbs, and so they built a hut of blocks of ice, which were solidly frozen together by a few buckets full of sea water thrown over them.
"The dogs were glad to get on the ice again, and scampered about totally oblivious of the fact that the supply of pork was getting very low, and unless they got some fresh meat very soon they would be obliged to feed on each other.
"They remained a fortnight in their Arctic abode exercising themselves by cutting a passage in the ice. During this time four of the sailors died. Finally the remainder, packing everything into the boat, yoked the dogs thereto, and started in anything but hopeful spirits on their arduous journey.