“But are there any coal-fields at the Pole?” Such was the first question that presented itself.

“Why should there be coal at the Pole?” said some.

“Why should there not be?” said others.

Coal-beds are found in many parts of the world. There is coal in Europe; there is coal in America; and in Africa; and in Asia; and in Oceania. As the globe is more and more explored, beds of fossil fuel are revealed in strata of all ages. There is true coal in the primary rocks, and there is lignite in the secondaries and tertiaries.

England alone produces a hundred and sixty millions of tons a year; the world consumes four hundred million tons, and with the requirements of industry there is no decrease but an increase in the consumption. The substitution of electricity for steam as a motive power means the expenditure of coal just the same. The industrial stomach cannot live without coal: industry is a carbonivorous animal, and must have its proper food.

Carbon is something else than a combustible. It is the telluric substance from which science draws the major part of the products and sub-products used in the arts. With the transformations to which it is subject in the crucibles of the laboratory you can dye, sweeten, perfume, vaporize, purify, heat, light, and you can produce the diamond.

But the coal-beds from which our carbon at present chiefly comes are not inexhaustible. And the well-informed people who are in fear for the future are looking about for new supplies wherever there is a probability of their existence.

“But why should there be coal at the Pole?”

“Why?” replied the supporters of President Barbicane. “Because in the carboniferous period, according to a well-known theory, the volume of the Sun was such that the difference in temperature between the Equator and the Poles was inappreciable. Immense forests covered the northern regions long before the appearance of man, when our planet was subject to the prolonged influence of heat and humidity.”

And this the journals, reviews, and magazines that supported the North Polar Practical Association insisted on in a thousand articles, popular and scientific. If these forests existed, what more reasonable to suppose than that the weather, the water, and the warmth had converted them into coal-beds?

But in addition to this there were certain facts which were undeniable. And these were important enough to suggest that a search might be made for the mineral in the regions indicated.

So thought Donellan and Todrin as they sat together in a corner of the “Two Friends.”

“Well,” said Todrin, “can Barbicane be right?”

“It is very likely,” said the Major.

“But then there are fortunes to be made in opening up the Polar regions!”

“Assuredly,” said the Major. “North America has immense deposits of coal; new discoveries are often being announced, and there are doubtless more to follow. The Arctic regions seem to be a part of the American continent geologically. They are similar in formation and physiography. Greenland is a prolongation of the new world, and certainly Greenland belongs to America—”

“As the horse’s head, which it looks like, belongs to the animal’s body,” said Todrin.

“Nordenskiold,” said Donellan, “when he explored Greenland, found among the sandstones and schists intercalations of lignite with many forest plants. Even in the Disko district, Steenstrup discovered eleven localities with abundant vestiges of the luxuriant vegetation which formerly encircled the Pole.”

“But higher up?” asked Todrin.

“Higher up, or farther up to the northward,” said the Major, “the presence of coal is extremely probable, and it only has to be looked for. And if there is coal on the surface, is it not reasonable to suppose that there is coal underneath?”

The Major was right. He was thoroughly posted up in all that concerned the geology of the Arctic regions, and he would have held on for some time if he had not noticed that the people in the “Two Friends” were listening to him.

“Are you not surprised at one thing, Major?”

“What is that?”

“That in this affair, in which you would expect to meet with engineers and navigators, you have only to deal with artillerists. What have they to do with the coal-mines of the North Pole?”

“That is rather surprising,” said the Major.

And every morning the newspapers returned to this matter of the coal-mines.

“Coal-beds!” said one, “what coal-beds?”

“What coal-beds?” replied another; “why, those that Nares found in 1875 and 1876 on the eighty-second parallel, when his people found the miocene flora rich in poplars, beeches, viburnums, hazels, and conifers.”

“And in 1881–1884,” added the scientific chronicler of the New York Witness, “during the Greely expedition to Lady Franklin Bay, a bed of coal was discovered by our men at Watercourse Creek, close to Fort Conger. Did not Dr. Pavy rightly consider that these carboniferous deposits were apparently destined to be used some day for contending with the cold of that desolate region?”

When these facts were brought forward, it will be easily understood that Impey Barbicane’s adversaries were hard up for a reply. The partisans of the “Why should there be coal?” had to lower their flag to the partisans of “Why should there not be?” Yes, there was coal! And probably a considerable amount of it. The circumpolar area contained large deposits of the precious combustible on the site of the formerly luxuriant vegetation.

But if the ground were cut from under their feet regarding the existence of the coal, the detractors took their revenge in attacking the question from another point.

“Be it so!” said the Major one day in the rooms of the Gun Club itself, when he discussed the matter with Barbicane. “Be it so! I admit there is coal there; I am convinced there is coal there. But work it!”

“That we are going to do,” said Barbicane tranquilly.

“Get within the eighty-fourth parallel, beyond which no explorer has yet gone!”

“We will get beyond it!”

“Go to the Pole itself!”

“We are going there!”

And in listening to the president of the Gun Club making these cool answers, talking with such assurance, expressing his opinion so haughtily and unmistakably, the most obstinate began to hesitate. They felt they were in the presence of a man who had lost nothing of his former qualities; calm, cool, with a mind eminently serious and concentrated, exact as a chronometer, adventurous, and bringing the most practical ideas to bear on the most daring undertakings. Solid, morally and physically, he was “deep in the water,” to employ a metaphor of Napoleon’s, and could hold his own against wind or tide. His enemies and rivals knew that only too well.

He had stated that he would reach the North Pole! He would set foot where no human foot had been set before! He would hoist the Stars and Stripes on one of the two spots of earth which remained immovable while all the rest spun round in diurnal rotation!

Here was a chance for the caricaturists! In the windows of the shops and kiosks of the great cities of Europe and America there appeared thousands of sketches and prints displaying Impey Barbicane seeking the most extravagant means of attaining his object.

Here the daring American, assisted by all the members of the Gun Club, pickaxe in hand, was driving a submarine tunnel through masses of ice, which was to emerge at the very point of the axis.

Here Barbicane, accompanied by J. T. Maston—a very good portrait—and Captain Nicholl, descended in a balloon on the point in question, and, after unheard-of dangers, succeeded in capturing a lump of coal weighing half a pound, which was all the circumpolar deposit contained.

Here J. T. Maston, who was as popular as Barbicane with the caricaturists, had been seized by the magnetic attraction of the Pole, and was fast held to the ground by his metal hook.

And it may be remarked here that the celebrated calculator was of too touchy a temperament to laugh at any jest at his personal peculiarities. He was very much annoyed at it, and it will be easily imagined that Mrs. Scorbitt was not the last to share in his just indignation.

Another sketch, in the Brussels Magic Lantern, represented Impey Barbicane and his co-directors working in the midst of flames, like so many incombustible salamanders. To melt the ice of the PalÆocrystic Sea, they had poured out over it a sea of alcohol, and then lighted the spirit, so as to convert the polar basin into a bowl of punch. And, playing on the word punch, the Belgian designer had had the irreverence to represent the president of the Gun Club as a ridiculous punchinello.

But of all the caricatures, that which obtained the most success was published by the Parisian Charivari under the signature of “Stop.” In the stomach of a whale, comfortably furnished and padded, Impey Barbicane and J. T. Maston sat smoking and playing chess, waiting their arrival at their destination. The new Jonahs had not hesitated to avail themselves of an enormous marine mammifer, and by this new mode of locomotion had passed under the ice-floes to reach the inaccessible Pole.

The phlegmatic president was not in the least incommoded by this intemperance of pen and pencil. He let the world talk, and sing, and parody, and caricature; and he quietly went on with his work.

As soon as he had obtained the concession, he had issued an appeal to the public for the subscription of fifteen millions of dollars in hundred-dollar shares. Such was the credit of Barbicane & Co., that applications flowed in wholesale. But it is as well to say that nearly all the applications came from the United States.

“So much the better!” said the supporters of the North Polar Practical Association. “The work will be entirely American.”

The prospectus was so plausible, the speculators believed so tenaciously in the realization of its promises, and admitted so imperturbably the existence of the Polar coal-mines, that the capital was subscribed three times over.

Two-thirds of the applications were declined with regret, and on the 16th of December the capital of fifteen millions of dollars was fully paid up. It was about thrice as much as the amount subscribed for the Gun Club when they made their great experiment of sending a projectile from the Earth to the Moon.