a really wonderful leap. What effect, then, did mental condition exert
on a man like Peters under the circumstances attending this unparalleled
leap? Think of the enormous muscular power developed by the message
received through the nerves from a mind thus affected! His own life, and
that of another, if not of two others, depended upon the success of his
effort. Under such circumstances muscular power would either be
paralyzed, or else intensified beyond our common conception of such
force. Peters positively asserts, that when a boy of sixteen he
frequently leaped from the flat upper deck of a boat--that is, from a
height of twenty feet--into the surrounding water, habitually covering a
distance of from forty to forty-five feet; whilst other boys, under the
same conditions, rarely covered twenty-five feet, and never thirty."

A moment later Bainbridge arose to depart; but he lingered for a moment,
standing, and with his left hand resting on the centre table, began to
speak in a general way of the great antarctic crater and its surrounding
wonders. It was my habit to make full notes of the actual facts stated
by him in the more formal parts of these evening recitals, and sometimes
even of his comments; and I regret that I did not do so at the
particular moment to which I am now alluding. It was not until the
following morning that I made a few memoranda of the closing incident of
the evening. With the help of these notes and a fairly good memory, I
hope to be able at this late day to describe for the reader an episode
that I should dislike entirely to omit from this narrative.

He spoke for several minutes of the wonderful power of nature to
accomplish certain ends--the force that accomplishes which, he termed a
_purpose_ in nature; and he made some remarks along the line of a
contention, that the development of all matter into higher forms was
what he called an unconscious intention, explaining that there was no