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Within a fortnight I was permitted to go about and take my place as one of the seamen. A little later the captain asked me for an explanation. I told him that my experience had been so horrible that I was fearful of my memory, and begged him to permit me to leave the question unanswered until some time in the future. “I think you are recovering considerably,” he said, “but you are not sane yet by a good deal.” “Permit me to do such work as you may assign,” I replied, “and if it does not compensate you sufficiently, I will pay you immediately after I reach Stockholm–to the last penny.” Thus the matter rested.

On finally reaching Stockholm, as I have already related, I found that my good mother had gone to her reward more than a year before. I have also told how, later, the treachery of a relative landed me in a madhouse, where I remained for twenty-eight years–seemingly unending years–and, still later, after my release, how I returned to the life of a fisherman, following it sedulously for twenty-seven years, then how I came to America, and finally to Los Angeles, California. But all this can be of little interest to the reader. Indeed, it seems to me the climax of my wonderful travels and strange adventures was reached when the Scotch sailing-vessel took me from an iceberg on the Antarctic Ocean.

PART SIX. CONCLUSION

IN concluding this history of my adventures, I wish to state that I firmly believe science is yet in its infancy concerning the cosmology of the earth. There is so much that is unaccounted for by the world’s accepted knowledge of to-day, and will ever remain so until the land of “The Smoky God” is known and recognized by our geographers.

It is the land from whence came the great logs of cedar that have been found by explorers in open waters far over the northern edge of the earth’s crust, and also the bodies of mammoths whose bones are found in vast beds on the Siberian coast.

Northern explorers have done much. Sir John Franklin, De Haven Grinnell, Sir John Murray, Kane, Melville, Hall, Nansen, Schwatka, Greely, Peary, Ross, Gerlache, Bernacchi, Andree, Amsden, Amundson and others have all been striving to storm the frozen citadel of mystery.

I firmly believe that Andree and his two brave companions, Strindberg and Fraenckell, who sailed away in the balloon “Oreon” from the northwest coast of Spitzbergen on that Sunday afternoon of July 11, 1897, are now in the “within” world, and doubtless are being entertained, as my father and myself were entertained by the kind-hearted giant race inhabiting the inner Atlantic Continent.

Having, in my humble way, devoted years to these problems, I am well acquainted with the accepted definitions of gravity, as well as the cause of the magnetic needle’s attraction, and I am prepared to say that it is my firm belief that the magnetic needle is influenced solely by electric currents which completely envelop the earth like a garment, and that these electric currents in an endless circuit pass out of the southern end of the earth’s cylindrical opening, diffusing and spreading themselves over all the “outside” surface, and rushing madly on in their course toward the North Pole. And while these currents seemingly dash off into space at the earth’s curve or edge, yet they drop again to the “inside” surface and continue their way southward along the inside of the earth’s crust, toward the opening of the so-called South Pole.(24)

(24 “Mr. Lemstrom concluded that an electric discharge which could only be seen by means of the spectroscope was taking place on the surface of the ground all around him, and that from a distance it would appear as a faint display of Aurora, the phenomena of pale and flaming light which is some times seen on the top of the Spitzbergen Mountains.”–The Arctic Manual, page 739.)