Part 6

I did not reply for a moment, but stood looking out over the black tossing waters that lie below Cape Horn. Somewhere it was, in this cold expanse, that my uncle’s vessel was believed to have gone down. Here, amid the crash of storm and surge, she had been last seen, more than twenty years before, and here must have perished: I swept the sea in every direction, as if seeking to locate the very spot.

“They used to come to the Shetlands after seal,” continued the Captain, “and they say there’s gold and precious stones on some of ’em. I never saw anybody that got any, though. Too cold, I guess, to look and dig for ’em.”

“Colder than the Klondike?”

“Klondike! Well, I should say so. There’s a warm current runs up that way. I never heard of any warm currents down here except the one you’re going to find. Just take a glance at that for a cold-looking country.”

I leveled the glass and scrutinized the blue outline ahead. It was a flat-topped, square formation, and there was a peculiar prismatic glow about it that suggested ice. I hesitated for some moments, however, before risking a reply. At last I was convinced.

“Yes, Captain Biffer,” I said, lowering the glass, “it _is_ pretty cold—it’s an iceberg!”

Edith and Chauncey Gale, followed by Ferratoni, came up the stairs just in time to hear the Captain’s reply.

“An iceberg!” he jeered. “Well, I’ve seen a good many icebergs up north, but I never saw one like that. You mean an ice-box.”

I was quite calm. I could afford to be, for I felt that a moment of triumph was at hand.

“Yes, Captain,” I admitted, “you might liken it to that, I suppose, but it is an iceberg, nevertheless. The Arctic bergs which you have seen were split from glaciers and topped by tall pinnacles and turrets. They were more like castles or cathedrals. The Antarctic berg is usually a section of that great ice wall or barrier which we hope some day to reach. It is nearly always of this general character, and is frequently crossed by blue horizontal lines, showing its stratified formation from year to year.”

Before I had finished speaking the Captain was again studying the object ahead. A light mist had drifted across our bows, but it lifted now, and the square fortress-like walls in the distance shone clearly in the morning sun. Captain Biffer waited a moment longer. Then he came down handsomely.

“You’re right!” he said heartily, “I can see those lines from here. I know the Arctics,” he added, “but I guess I’m all at sea in these God-forsaken waters!”

It was a slight incident—an opportune display of a bit of knowledge which any boy familiar with Antarctic literature might have possessed—but my command of the expedition may be said to have dated from that moment. The next day fairly completed my triumph. Some large fragments of surface ice had come drifting to the ship and we were looking at them, over the side.

“Pancake ice,” commented the Captain. “We’ll get all we want of that, pretty soon.”

“Not exactly pancake ice, Captain,” I observed respectfully. “A combination of salt-water pancake with splinters of fresh-water, barrier ice. Those clear spots are the fresh-water formation.”

Captain Biffer regarded me a moment doubtfully. Then he gave an order to some sailors.

“Get up a piece of that ice!” he growled, “I want to look at it.”

A man was lowered over the side, and hacked off a fragment which was hauled on board. The Captain chipped out pieces of the white and the clear ice and tasted of them. Then he flung them overboard.

“You win!” he laughed, “I’m out of it, down here.”

“What’s that brown color on it?” asked Edith Gale.

“Dirt,” said the Captain. “Comes from the shore.”

“Captain,” I objected, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to differ with you again.”

“What is it, then, if it ain’t dirt?” he grumbled.

“A growth,” I replied, “a plant—at least, I think it is. I can’t be sure, for I have never seen it before, but former explorers have reported an algæ as giving such an appearance to old ice, and I think I can show that this is what they found.”

I ran down to my stateroom, and presently returned with a powerful microscope—a treasure from boyhood. I placed it upon a small table and putting a bit of the brown color on a slide adjusted the lenses. Then I beckoned to the Captain. He came and squinted into the glass steadily for a moment.

“Humph! seaweed!” he commented. “Well, I’ll be —— Say, look here, this is your ocean, and your expedition—you can have ’em!”

You see, it was my innings. Theoretically I knew more of this part of the world than any one on board, and theory was about all we had now to go on. I could see that Chauncey Gale was pleased. I suppose it had not always been easy to stand for me against the Captain’s poor opinion, and he felt that in some measure now he had been justified. Edith Gale, too, was not made less happy by these incidents, and the sailors, taking their cue from their chief officer, paid me an added and daily increasing respect. True, the Captain continued to navigate the ship, but in a general way I directed our course and experiments, and was regarded more and more as authority in matters of discussion and dispute.

High up on the mainmast I had constructed for me a crow’s nest, or lookout, from which to make observations. Chauncey Gale attended to this, and did it well, as he did everything he undertook. It was a stout, comfortable barrel arrangement, capable of holding three persons if necessary.

When it was done I viewed it from below with interest and misgivings. I had never been aloft, and I felt that an error in reaching my perch might conclude the expedition. The eyes of the ship were upon me, however, and it would not do to hesitate.

With a faint but resolute heart, I began the ascent. I did not dare to look back, and when at last I found myself safely inside the snug box, I was a bit weak and trembly, but swelling with triumph.

“Let me in, too, please!”

I looked down at my feet. It was Edith Gale, who had run lightly up behind me. I concealed any pride I may have had in my own accomplishment and drew her up.

“How pale you are,” she said, “are you ill?”

“No, oh no, it’s the—the excitement, I think.”

We leaned over and waved to those below. They waved back at us and cheered.

“How’s the weather up there?” called Gale.

“Cold,” I said. “Feels like the North Pole!” (It was, in fact, about zero at the time, but we did not mind it in the least.)

“What’s the matter with the South Pole?” This from Captain Biffer.

“Hot, there!” I yelled.

The Captain laughed.

“Well,” he shouted, “you’re right about some things, but you’ll find that barrel a parlor stove compared with the South Pole.”

Edith Gale leveled a glass toward the southern horizon. We were well down in the sixties, now. Icebergs and floating pack-ice had become common. To the southward lay mystery that in some weird form might at any moment rise above the somber waters. Presently she handed me the glass.

“See if you make out anything,” she said.

I looked steadily, and at first saw nothing. Then, low down, and stretching from rim to rim across our watery world, far-off and faint, rising, falling, lifting and disappearing. I saw a thin, uncertain, glittering edge—the ice-pack!

It was our turn, now, to cheer. Captain Biffer ran up to see and verify. By nightfall (the radiant dusk fell late now, for it was November, and the sun shone till ten o’clock) we were in the midst of loose, grinding ice—the edge of the pack.

The second stage of the Great Billowcrest Expedition had begun.

XIII. IN THE “FIGHTING-TOP.”

Our crow’s nest became at once the nucleus of the expedition. Edith Gale named it our “fighting-top” because of the fierce discussions that took place there.

This warfare concerning the new objects that appeared daily on our horizon was almost continual, and when not actively engaged in the combats, I was supposed to adjust them. They occurred most frequently between Edith Gale and her father, both of whom delighted in our lookout, and remained with me there a greater part of the time, in spite of bitter cold, and even the wet freezing discomfort that often swept in about us.

A paragraph of Borchgrevink’s came back to me now—the fulness of which I had not before realized. “Only from the crow’s nest,” he says, “can one fully appreciate the supernatural charm of Antarctic scenery. Up there you seem lifted above the pettiness and troubles of everyday life. Your horizon is wide, and from your high position you rule the little world below you. Onward, onward stretch the ice-fields, the narrow channels about the ship are opened and closed again by the current and wind, and as you strain your sight to the utmost to find the best places for the vessel to penetrate, your eyes wander from the ship’s bow out toward the horizon, where floes and channels seem to form one dense vast ice-field. Ice and snow cover spars and ropes, and everywhere are perfect peace and silence.”

I have quoted this because we felt it all, and he has given it to us so much better than I could say it. No ordinary attempt of the elements could dismay us, or chill the exalted joy of our high, swinging perch. From our fighting-top we looked away to the south, across leagues of lifting, shifting, grinding ice—split here and there by long, black waterways—studded by iridescent island bergs—garish with every splendor of the spectrum, and blending at last into that overwhelming fathomless hue of the South, Antarctic Violet.

New wonders were constantly appearing before and below us. From our lofty vantage we discussed them fully, and photographed them when they came within range. With the luminous icy mist about us, there was still a gratification and a rapture, and when it passed and the sun returned, a new blazing enchantment lay all below us, even to the northward, where, beyond the dazzle of drifting ice-pans, rolled the black, uplifting sea.

We observed and studied the haze or “blink” in the sky that always indicates the presence of ice, and the black, or “water” sky that tells of an open way—keeping well in among the floes, that we might not miss any lead or northward drift that would reveal our current from the South.

I did not expect it for a long distance yet, but it was our plan to leave no step of the way unexamined, and certainly there was plenty beside to repay us. Edith Gale seemed fairly lost in the color glories of this supernatural, elemental world. Chauncey Gale declared it was like the Chicago Fair, where one could have spent a lifetime and still not have seen it all. He made his initial attempt at naming birds one morning when a penguin, the first we had seen, came by on a small pan of ice. The bird regarded us solemnly, and in return we laughed at him. Edith Gale was overjoyed at his arrival.

“Now, Daddy, what’s that? You were going to name things, you know.”

“That,” replied Gale gravely, “is a ‘Billy Watson.’ He looks exactly like a fellow I used to know by that name, when he had his dress suit on.”

We didn’t consider it much of a name, but it had a sticking quality, and all penguins became “Billy Watsons” to us thereafter. There were “Big Billy Watsons” and “Little Billy Watsons.” Also, some that had feathers in their hats, and these we called “Dandy Billy Watsons.” When we came to some sea-leopards and crab-eating seals he tried his hand again as a naturalist.

“Those,” he said, “are ‘Moon-faced Mollies.’”

But this was regarded as a failure. Anyhow, it was my turn. The Captain had referred to them indiscriminately as seals, whereupon I produced their true names and my authority for conferring them, thus adding another instalment to Mr. Biffer’s respect for my scientific attainments, which, though slight enough, were sufficient to impress him considerably.

During these days Ferratoni had almost nothing to say. He walked the deck for hours as we pushed through the drifting ice, listening to its crushing under the iron sheathing below and looking always to the south, as if something lay there from which, across that wireless, frozen waste, to him alone came tidings. Now and then he ascended to our fighting-top to peer still farther into those polar depths. We all felt very close to creation’s secrets here in this primeval world, but we realized that Ferratoni was nearer to the invisible than the others.

“I feel sometimes that he can read our very souls and all the mystery of the air,” Edith Gale said to me, after one of these visits. “When he looks at me I know that I may as well have put my thoughts into words. He believes, too, you know, that we shall be able to converse mentally, by and by, and at any distance. It would be simply the chording of the thought vibration, he says, and that there is really no need of words—that they are but a poor medium at best, and, as somebody has said, invented more to conceal thought than to convey it.”

“We shall have wordless telepathy, then, instead of wireless telegraphy,” I assented, “and I believe Ferratoni is nearer right than most people would admit. Why, when we are up here alone together, sometimes, it seems to me that we——” I hesitated, and she interrupted me rather hastily.

“Yes, when we are looking out at all this, we are so often silent because there are no words to convey it; but I know what you are thinking better than if you tried to tell it.”

I do not think this was quite what I had started to say, but I was grateful for the interruption. I should doubtless have got into deep water and difficulties.

Each day the sun rose earlier, shone warmer, and set later. What we referred to as night no longer bore even the semblance of a night, and its darkest hour was but a brief period of lambent twilight. The weather continued unusually good for the latitude, and Thanksgiving Day, on the edge of the Antarctic Zone, was a complete golden cycle. After a bounteous dinner planned by Mr. Sturritt, and joined in by all the officers of the Billowcrest, we ascended by turns to the fighting-top to look for the first time on the midnight sun. Captain Biffer came back to the deck rather solemnly.

“It’s more than likely we won’t see it again, right away,” he announced. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s a blow coming off there to the northeast.”

The Captain was _not_ mistaken, this time. Within an hour after midnight we were pitching in the midst of real darkness, fearsome and impenetrable. Icy waves were breaking over the decks of the Billowcrest, and the crash of ice under her hull was terrifying in its deafening fury.

There was no sail to take in, for we were running under steam only, now, but the sailors had enough to do at first to keep everything movable from washing overboard, and then, a little later, themselves. At each end of the vessel the officers were roaring out commands, and the men striving to obey.

There was no thought of sleep, of course, and everybody was on deck or in the cabins. Zar was praying swiftly and inclusively so as to have everybody in readiness at a moment’s notice, and nobody discouraged this undertaking. From stray bits that came to me now and then above the uproar I gathered that she believed our Thanksgiving services, as well as the expedition generally, had been of a character to provoke Divine wrath.

“Oh, Lawd,” she howled, “what can dese po’ sinful people expect, a-goin’ a hop-scotchin’ aroun’ on Thanksgivin’ Day, an’ a-huntin’ foh a fool pole in a lan’ wheah dey ain’ nuffin but ice, an’ wheah de sun shine at midnight? What can dey spect, Lawd? What can dey spect?”

As a matter of fact we were expecting almost anything at that moment, and we were not surprised, or more frightened than we had been, when Captain Biffer came in and roared at us that we were being driven into the pack!

“Let her go in!” yelled Gale.

“Be smashed, if we do. Go to hell in five minutes!”

“Don’t care! hell can’t be worse than this!”

In the electric blaze of the cabin I looked more closely at Gale. There was a green pallor over his features that was not due to fright. Even in that awful hour there came upon me a proper and malicious joy. He was seasick! I did not blame him. We were rolling fearfully and I felt some discomfort, myself. But the spirit of my ancestors had waxed strong now, and prevailed. The others, too, were getting pale, all except Zar, who turned a peculiar blue, and discontinued her prayer service. The brawny stewardess and myself assisted both her and her mistress to their staterooms, where I spoke a reassuring word to Edith Gale, and hastened back to the others. But Gale and Ferratoni had both disappeared, and I saw them no more during that fearful night.

Plunging and battering we jammed our way into that mass of thundering ice. Our search-lights, of which we had two, were kept going constantly, but even so, we were likely at any moment to collide with a berg in that surging blackness. The sight from the deck—the shouting sea, with the ice tossing and flashing as it was borne into the angle of our electric rays—was as the view of a riotous inferno that was making ready to crush us into its sombre depths.

But by morning we had penetrated the pack to a point where the violence beneath produced on the surface only a heaving, groaning protest at our presence. With the return of light, I went out to view our condition, and when I realized that our invincible Billowcrest had battled unhurt through it all, that noble vessel—whatever may have been her faults, and in spite of all disparagement—took a place in my affections that was only outranked by those of her builder and her mistress. The wind slackened in the afternoon, and with the calm there came clear, intense cold. By morning the great ice-floes about us were cemented together. We were frozen solidly in the pack.

XIV. AN EXCURSION AND AN EXPERIMENT.

“Well, here we are,” announced Captain Biffer, as we grouped together on the deck to survey the scene. “And here we’re likely to stay for one while, I’m thinking. This is your warm world—how do you like it?”

“Better than a cold sea,” I said, “when there’s a northeast gale blowing.”

“How long do we lay up here, Chase?” asked Chauncey Gale. “You’re running this excursion.”

I was secretly uneasy, but I made light of the situation.

“Oh, this is the usual thing. We’ll be here a day or two, perhaps, then the ice will separate again, or a lead form that will let us back to open water. We could hardly be shut in long at this season.”

“I’d invent something to beat this game if I was going to play it regular,” said Gale, then added, “Great place this to lay out an addition. ‘Frozenhurst,’ how’s that for a name?”

“Can we go out on the ice?” asked Edith Gale.

“Of course, if we are careful, and do not go far from the ship,” I said. “We can try our new snow-shoes.”

“I shall make the first Antarctic experiment in wireless communication,” observed Ferratoni.

“Good time to look for the bake-apple,” suggested Mr. Larkins.

But just here came a sharp protest from Zar.

“Yas, I sh’d say _baked apples_! Well, I reckon we jes’ ’bout as apt to fin’ baked apples as anything else in dis refrigidous country! Not much, my Miss Edith ain’ gwine out on dat ol’ humpety, bow-back ice-pon’! No, sah!”

Zar’s characterization of the sea’s aspect referred to the huge hummocks and heaved appearance of the ice in places. There were also many bergs, apparently at no great distance, and in spite of the old woman’s strenuous objections, Edith Gale and I planned to visit the nearest of these.

We did so in the afternoon. Numberless penguins, sea-leopards and other species of Antarctic life had gathered curiously about the Billowcrest during the day, and some of these waddled and floundered after us when we set out. We could not make very rapid progress with our new foot-gear, and for a little distance made an interesting spectacle, with our procession of followers trailing out behind. “All hands and the cook” gathered on the deck to enjoy it.

We carried one of Ferratoni’s telephones—a neat, compact little affair, with handles for convenience, and from nearly a mile distant communicated with the inventor, who had ascended to the crow’s-nest for the experiment. It was a successful trial, and we believed it would have been equally so had the distance been much greater.

Then we pushed in among the silent bergs, and ascending by a circuitous path to the battlements of a great ice fortress, tried it again.

“Hello,” I called, “can you hear a message from the South Pole?”

The answer that came back was as prompt as it was unexpected.

“There is a message in the air,” said the voice of Ferratoni. “It is very close—around and about us. Some day—perhaps soon—I shall hear it.”

I repeated this to Edith Gale, wonderingly.

“What do you suppose he means?” I whispered.

“You remember what I told you in the fighting-top,” she said. “I am sure of it now.”

I did not answer, but together our eyes followed the white way to the south.

A light snow had fallen during the forenoon, and dull clouds were banked heavily against the sky. From our high vantage we could command a vast circle of sunless, melancholy cold. Beyond this there lay another horizon, and beyond that still another, and yet another. In this deep solitude the distant black outline of the Billowcrest marked our only human tie.

A silence and an awe fell upon us—a mysterious fear of this pale land that was not a land, but a chill spectral semblance, with amazing forces and surprising shapes. We descended hastily and set out for the ship without speaking. From among the bergs the creeping gloom gathered and shut us in. Uncanny sea-leopards and mournful penguins regarded us as we hurried past.

We were clumsy on our snow-shoes, but we consumed no unnecessary time in reaching the vessel, and not until we were warmed and cheered by a good dinner were we altogether restored. But then came weariness, and with the Billowcrest now moveless and silent, we realized that night more fully than ever before the perfect blessing of dreamless, Antarctic sleep.

And now passed some days in which I grew ever more uneasy, but maintained as far as possible a cheerful outward calm. The cold lingered, and the way seaward did not open. Huge cracks split the pack here and there, but they did not reach the Billowcrest. Then came that terror of all polar expeditions—the ice pressure—the meeting and closing in of enormous ice-fields moving irresistibly in opposite directions.

We were awakened rather rudely by a sudden harsh grinding below, and felt the vessel heave, first to one side, then to the other. Then there was an ominous rumble, which became a deafening roar. I hurried on deck, to find that a strong pressure was taking place, and that we were directly in its midst. Our peril was great and imminent. I was turning hastily toward the cabin, when Captain Biffer ran down the deck yelling:

“Take to the ice! Take to the ice! She’s going down!”

At the same instant Chauncey Gale hurried out of the cabin, followed by Edith Gale and the others. The sailors were skurrying about helplessly.

“To the ice!” roared the Captain. “To the ice! She’s going down!”

Most of us scrambled for the rail. If I did not do so it was perhaps because there were others in my way. But Chauncey Gale, his hand on his daughter’s arm, stood firm.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Going down, _nothing_! She’s going up!”

And this was true. Everybody saw it, now it was pointed out to them. Thanks to the shape and strength of her hull, the sturdy Billowcrest was being squeezed and lifted bodily into the air, instead of being crushed like a peanut, as would have been the case with an ordinary vessel.