been the extreme South Pacific. One of the ships returned laden with
ivory and gold, which latter may have been obtained from some mine
whose location has long since been lost, but the other never came
back. That missing ship was the ship of Olaf the Rover, and as her
consort said, she had last been seen in the South Pacific. The
manuscript said that the returned rovers stated that they had become
parted from the ship of Olaf in a terrific gale amid much ice and
great ice mountains. That must have meant the antarctic regions. This
much they do know, that Olaf's ship was stripped of her sails and
helpless when they were compelled by stress of weather to abandon her.
It is my theory and the theory of a man high in the government, who
has authorized me to make this search, that the ship of Olaf was
caught in a polar current and that the story heard so many years after
about the frozen ship in the ice is true."

"Then somewhere down there along the Great Barrier there is a Viking
ship full of ivory and gold, you believe?" asked Frank.

"I do," said the captain.

"And the ice has preserved it all intact?" shouted Billy.

"If the ship is there at all she is undoubtedly preserved exactly as
she entered the great ice," was the calm reply.

"Gosh!" was the only thing Billy could think of to say.

"Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it?" gasped Harry.

"Maybe some Viking fleas got frozen up, too," chirped the professor,