but if he's goin' to be a fool, I am goin' to be a fool. And as
for my bein' in the way, you needn't think of that, Mr. Clewe. I
can cook for the livin', I can take care of the sick, and I can
sew up the dead in shrouds."

"All right, Mrs. Block," said Clewe. "If you insist on it, and
Sammy is willing, you may go; but I will beg of you not to say
anything about the third class of good offices which you propose
to perform for the party, for it might cast a gloom over some of
the weaker-minded."

"Cast a gloom!" said Mrs. Block. "If all I hear is true, there
will be a general gloom over everything that will be like havin'
a black pocket-handkercher tied over your head, and I don't know
that anything I could say would make that gloom more gloomier."

When Margaret Raleigh parted with Clewe on the deck of the Go
Lightly, the large electric vessel which was to tow the Dipsey up
to the limits of navigable Northern waters, she knew he must make a
long journey, nearly twice as far as the voyage to England, before
she could hear from him; but when he arrived at Cape Tariff, a
point far up on the northwestern coast of Greenland, she would hear
from him; for from this point there was telegraphic communication
with the rest of the world. There was a little station there,
established by some commercial companies, and their agent was a
telegraph-operator.

The passage from New York to Cape Tariff was an uneventful one,
and when Clewe disembarked at the lonely Greenland station he was
greeted by a long message from Mrs. Raleigh, the principal import