“...Doctor Erclair, it turned out, was a great traveler, who, of his own free will, accompanied one of the greatest modern explorers in his wanderings and voyages. More than once he died with him: from the sun - in the tropics, from frost - at the poles, from hunger - everywhere! But, nevertheless, he recalled with delight his winterings in Greenland and Novaya Zemlya or the Australian deserts, where he had breakfast with kangaroo soup and dined on fried fillets of two-wombs or giraffes; and a little further on he almost died of thirst, during a forty-hour trek across the waterless steppe, under 60 degrees of sunshine. “Yes,” he said, “all sorts of things have happened to me!” happened!.. If, however, we do not consider as such the extraordinary meeting that I will now tell you about, and... indeed, its somewhat strange, even, I can say, inexplicable consequences...”