"North!" shouted the stranger, wildly. little ship, Duncan McDonald'; of the bravest, noblest commander, and the sweet- "Three years in that hell of ice. Three est angel of a woman that ever breathed and years! My God! North! North!" lived and loved. I'll tell you of my escape and the hell I've been through. To-mor He dozed off for a few moments again. "But I've got enough in this pack to turn the world inside out with wonder--ah, what a sensation it will be, what an educational feature! It will send out a hundred harumscarum expeditions to find Polaria-but there are few commanders like Captain Burrows; he could do it, the rest of 'em will die in the ice. But when I get to San Fran- - Say, Captain, how long will it take to get there, and how long before you start?" Enoch and I exchanged glances, and Enoch answered: "We wa'n't goin' to 'Frisco." "Around the Horn, then?" inquired the stranger, sitting up. "But you will land me in 'Frisco, won't you? I can't wait, I must "We're goin' in," said Enoch; "goin' north, for a three-years' cruise." He was dancing around the deck like a maniac, trying to put his pack-loop over his head. Enoch went toward him, to tell him how he could go on the "Enchantress," but he looked wildly at him, ran forward and sprang out on the bowsprit, and from there to the jib. Enoch saw he was out of his mind, and ordered two sailors to bring him in. As they sprang on to the bow, he stood up and screamed: "No! No! No! Three years! Three lives! Three hells! I never One of the men reached for him here, but he kicked at the sailor viciously, and turning sidewise, sprang into the water below. A boat, already in the water, was manned instantly; but the worn-out body of another North Pole explorer had gone to the sands of the bottom where so many others have gone before; evidently his heavy pack had held him down, there to guard the story it could tell-in death as he had in life. EDITOR'S NOTE.-" The Polar Zone" is the first of a number of short stories written by Mr. John A. Hill that are to appear in MCCLURE'S MAGAZINE. This story is of the sea; but, as the story itself discloses, Mr. Hill is a railroad man, and the succeeding stories will treat of railroad life, which Mr. Hill has known in its most adventurous and romantic phases. The stories were published some years ago in a railroad journal; but they have perhaps more interest for the general public even than for railroad people, and their extraordinary quality fully warrants their republication. IN AN EARTHQUAKE OBSERVATORY.PLOTTING THE GREATER HOLLOWS OF THE SEA. T the very center of the Isle of Wight, in a little place called Shide, that most people in England never heard of, lives a scientist who probably knows more about earthquakes than any one else in the world-John Milne, member of learned societies, late professor of seismology at the University of Tokio, and a charming man into the bargain. His house looks down upon the roads where the Queen drives daily while at Osborne, and not far distant rise the towers of Carisbrooke Castle, where Charles I. was a prisoner. Here, on a quiet hill, grown over with old trees and banks of ivy, away from all rush and noise, Professor Milne may be found, as I found him, working among strange instruments of his own devising, operated by clockwork and electricity, and possessing such sensitiveness that an earth quake shock in Borneo will set them swinging for hours. With these wonderful pendulums, of which I shall speak presently, the Professor watches throbbings and quiverings of the earth that are unfelt by our unaided senses, and draws conclusions to serve the needs of men. It is Professor Milne to whom London editors despatch hurrying reporters when news comes from Japan of another earthquake calamity, and he usually corrects their information- as in June, 1896, when Shide was besieged by newspaper men. "This earthquake happened on the 17th," said they," and the whole eastern coast of Japan was overwhelmed with tidal waves, and 30,000 lives were lost." "That last is very probable," answered the Professor, "but the earthquake happened on the 15th, not on the 17th;" and then he gave them the exact hour and minute when the shocks began and ended. This and the pictures following on pages 19, 20, 21 are from Japanese photographs reproduced in "The Great Earthquake in Japan, 1891," by John Milne and W. K. Burton. "Your cables are mistaken." And, sure enough, later despatches came with information that the destructive earthquake had occurred on the 15th, within half a minute of the time Professor Milne had specified. There had been some error of transmission in the earlier despatches. Again, a few months later, the newspapers published cablegrams to the effect that there had been a severe earthquake at Kobe, with great injury to life and property. "That is not true," said Professor Milne. "There may have been a slight earthquake at Kobe, but nothing that need cause alarm." And the mail reports a few weeks later confirmed his reassuring statement, and showed that the previous sensational despatches had been grossly exaggerated. Professor Milne is also the man to whose words cable companies lend anxious ear; for what he says often means thousands of pounds to them. Early in January, 1898, it was officially reported that two West Indian cables had broken on December 31, 1897. that these cables may have broken at 11.30 A.M. on December 29, 1897." And then he located the break at so many miles off the coast of Haiti. This sort of thing, which is constantly happening, would look very much like magic if Professor Milne had kept his secrets to himself; but he has given them freely to all the world, and for a year or more has been making every effort, with the encouragement of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, to have earthquake observatories established at various points on the earth's surface, with instruments similar to his own, so that by comparison of records, fuller knowledge may be had of movements in the earth's crust and changes in the ocean's bed. And various governments, universities, and learned societies, quick to see the importance of such knowledge, have sent favorable replies, so that now Harvard University, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, has its own earthquake observatory; Yerkes Observatory "That is very unlikely," said Professor at Williams' Bay, Wisconsin, is expected to Milne; "but I have a seismogram showing have one shortly; New Zealand is putting up RAILROAD TRACK TWISTED BY THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE IN JAPAN IN 1891. two; South Africa has one, at Cape Town; Toronto, Canada, has one; India has three; Japan has one; Mauritius has one; South America has one, in Argentina; Beirout, in Syria, is in correspondence for one, and so also is Siberia. Twice, for instance, it has happened in Australia (in 1880 and 1888) that the whole island has been thrown into excitement and alarm, the reserves called out, and other measures taken, because the sudden breaking of cable connections with the outside world has led to the belief that military operations against the country were preparing by some foreign power. A Milne pendulum at Sydney or Adelaide would have made it plain in a moment that the whole trouble was due to a submarine earthquake occurring at such a time and such a place. As it was, Australia had to wait in a fever of suspense (in one case there was a delay of nineteen days) until steamers arriving brought assurances that neither Russia nor any other possibly unfriendly power had begun hostilities by tearing up the cables. In short, there seems to be little doubt that within a few months no fewer than twenty of these seismic stations will be in operation in different parts of the globe, all equipped with the Milne instruments, and all in regular communication with the head, or central, station at Shide. It is taken as certain that a comparison of records from all these earthquake observatories will make it impossible for an important seismic disturbance to occur anywhere, whether on land or under the sea, without its precise location being immediately known, as well as all essential facts regarding it. And when it is borne in mind that at present seventy-five PROFESSOR MILNE'S LIFE AND EXPERIMENTS per cent. of the whole number of earthquakes occur in the bed of the ocean, the value of such statistics to cable companies (and what country is not interested in the proper working of ocean cables?) is at once apparent. IN JAPAN. Before explaining the workings of these wonderful seismic instruments which are to do the world such famous service, I will tell how it happened that Professor Milne be THE WORK OF THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE OF 1891 IN NEO VALLEY, JAPAN. came a student of earthquakes; for, unlike poetry, seismology is not a career that men are born to. In the Professor's own words: "It was Japan that did it, and that famous cable-laying American, Cyrus Field." Mr. Field heard of Milne back in the seventies, when the young Lancashireman had just finished his studies at King's College, London, and the School of Mines, and was casting about him for such work as the world might have for him to do. He had no more idea then of becoming an earthquake specialist in Japan than he had of hunting pigs in Borneo. Yet he lived to do both. Mr. Field had inquired at the School of Mines for a bright, competent young man who could go out to Newfoundland in the service of the cable company and locate some coal fields for them. Milne was selected, and told to report at a certain office in the city. matter-of-fact tone and with scarcely any prelude. Milne was fairly at a loss for words; he was barely twenty-one, and had but small experience in business matters. Finally he managed to ask about compensation. "There will be no trouble on that point,' said Mr. Field; "you can leave a memorandum on Monday of what you want for your services; I dare say it will be satisfactory. The point is now, can you sail on Tuesday?" "I am glad to see you, sir," said the millionaire, when Milne was shown in. "We want to know if you can sail for Newfoundland on Tuesday next?" This in the most That was Friday, and Milne pointed out that the shops closed early on Saturdays, and on Sunday he could get nothing, so he was uncertain whether he could be ready in time. At this, Mr. Field leaned forward on his desk, and said, with a look half serious, half quizzical, that Milne never forgot: "My young friend, I suppose you have read that the world was made in six days. Now do you mean to tell me that, if this whole world was made in six days, you can't get together the few things you need in four?" |