CHAPTER VII

GOOD NEWS GOES FROM SARDIS


When Roland Clewe, after a voyage from Cape Tariff which would
have been tedious to him no matter how short it had been, arrived
at Sardis, his mind was mainly occupied with the people he had
left behind him engulfed in the arctic seas, but this important
subject did not prevent him from also giving attention to the
other great object upon which his soul was bent. At St. John's,
and at various points on his journey from there, he had received
messages from the Dipsey, so that he knew that so far all was
well, and when he met Mrs. Raleigh she had much to tell him of
what might have been called the domestic affairs of the little
vessel.

But while keeping himself in touch, as it were, with the polar
regions, Roland Clewe longed to use the means he believed he
possessed of peering into the subterranean mysteries of the earth
beneath him. Work on the great machine by which he would
generate his Artesian ray had been going on very satisfactorily,
and there was every reason to believe that he would soon be able
to put it into operation.

He had found Margaret Raleigh a different woman from what she had
been when he left her.