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My especial friends in the Expedition were the lieutenants, Campbell, Pennell, Rennick, Bowers, and Bruce, and of the scientists I was most fond of Nelson. The concluding part of this narrative is concerned with our little ship, for which we had such affection.
These included the burning of the Rennick house or barn, or both; the shooting of Rennick from among the hillside boulders as the artist sketched; of waylaying him on his walk to the post-office, by night, and crippling him for life; and other suggestions equally dear to the hearts of rural malefactors. But one plan after another was vetoed.
The Siberian ponies were not shod, and this rough, volcanic rock would have shaken them considerably. A great deal of the bay ice had broken away and drifted out of the Sound, so that by the 20th the ship was only a few hundred yards from Hurrah Beach. This day Rennick, smiling from ear to ear, came across the ice with the pianola in bits conveyed on a couple of sledges.
In the angle at the corner near the cliffs Rennick got a sounding of 140 fathoms and Nelson some temperatures and samples. When lowering the water bottle on one occasion the line suddenly became slack at 100 metres, then after a moment's pause began to run out again. We are curious to know the cause, and imagine the bottle struck a seal or whale.
We can push back again, I think, but meanwhile we have taken advantage of the conditions to water ship. These big floes are very handy for that purpose at any rate. Rennick got a sounding 2124 fathoms, similar bottom including volcanic lava. A little inspection showed that the big floes were tending to close.
They seemed to hesitate a moment, and then the prow of every vessel was directed towards the swiftly moving Astronef. "Well, gentlemen," said Redgrave, "you evidently don't know anything about Professor Rennick and the R. Force; and yet you ought to know that we couldn't have come through Space without being able to get beyond this little atmosphere of yours. Now let us see how fast you can fly."
They had solved the problem of the Resolution of Forces, as Professor Rennick had done, and, as they were shown pictorially, a vessel had been made which embodied the principles of attraction and repulsion. It had risen from the surface of Ganymede, and then, possibly because its engines could not develop sufficient repulsive force, the tremendous pull of the giant planet had dragged it away.
Professor Rennick, although a man of peace, had little sympathy with the laws of "civilised" warfare which permit men to be blown into rags of flesh and splinters of bone by explosive shells of a pound weight and upward, and only allow projectiles of less weight to be used against "savages." There was no humbug about him.
Claude Rennick, a New York artist of considerable means, had rented for the summer an ancient Colonial farmhouse high among the Ramapo hills; some six miles north of the Place, There, he and his pretty young wife and their six-months-old baby had been living for several weeks; when, angered at a sharp rebuke for some dereliction in his work, Schwartz, their gardener, spoke insultingly to Mrs.
Rennick has just obtained a sounding of 187 fathoms; taken in conjunction with yesterday's 1111 fathoms and Ross's sounding of 180, this is interesting, showing the rapid gradient of the continental shelf. Nelson is going to put over the 8 feet Agassiz trawl. Unfortunately we could not clear the line for the trawl it is stowed under the fodder.
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