The greatest adventure
their guess. Below them they saw a broad trough running north and south
as far as vision carried, filled almost to the brim with tumbling white
mist. Some thirty miles distant the farther side of the trough towered
high above the rolling mists in an unbroken barrier of jagged black
peaks.
Although it looked hopeless they decided after a brief consultation to
continue on their course. Should the black barrier prove as forbidding
as it looked from thirty miles away they must turn back. They were
not going to be balked, however, by the mere aspect of difficulties.
Without further debate they descended the long ice slope into the
heaving pall of white fog.
The descent was made without accident. Arrived on the floor of the
trough Anderson produced his compass and led off through the swirling
mist. Lane assumed command of one sledge with Drake as helper. A few
yards behind the leader Ole and Edith managed the second. So thick was
the fog that Anderson's figure only some forty feet ahead was invisible
to the tenders of the second sledge. Nevertheless the Captain set a
stiff pace over the blue ice and hard packed snow crystals.
They had now but four and a half days left in which to make their
objective and return to the ship. The Captain was determined to find
out the nature of that black barrier before Bronson could overtake him
with an unwelcome relief party. The stiff pace, almost a run, suited
the others, for the clutching cold of the fog sought out and gripped
the marrows of their bones.
For perhaps three-quarters of an hour all went well. Then a horrified
shout from Anderson brought the party to a palpitating halt.
"Don't come here," the Captain called back. "Wait till I fetch you."
One by one he led the others to the brink of the death which he had
escaped by half a second. There it gaped, a sheer well in the blue ice
thirty feet across and of depth unknown. The lip of the circular hole
lay flush with the surrounding ice. Its sides dropped straight down as
if carved out with a huge knife. It was a perfect circular well, over
a hundred feet in circumference and of a depth which they could only
guess, for it was full to the brim with white fog.
Edith had an inspiration. She returned to the first sledge.
"Here," she said, handing the Captain a pound tin of soup, "throw that
down and listen for the echo. Then we can figure out how deep it is."
Anderson tossed the can into the centre of the hole. Only the breathing
of the dogs broke the intense stillness. Not the ghost of an echo rose
from the well.
"Probably there is soft snow at the bottom," the Captain remarked.
"Well, I'm glad I'm above instead of below."
Not suspecting what lay before them, the party proceeded through the
fog at a brisk trot. An astonished shout again brought them instantly
to a halt.
"Here's another of the damned things," the Captain announced. "Ole,
fetch a rope. There's one on the second sledge."
"You're not going down it, are you?" Drake asked nervously.
"Not if I can help it, nor the next one either." He tied one end of the
rope securely about his middle and passed the other end to Lane. "Make
that fast to both sledges. When they begin to shoot ahead, pull back
hard. All right, come on. These may be oil wells for all we know."
He marched rapidly forward through the blinding mist. "Follow me
exactly," he called back. "I've just gone two yards south of another."
From that time on they passed at least two of the wells every five
minutes, occasionally cutting across the narrow strip which separated
three or four in a cluster. Prudence urged them to return, but the
determination to see the thing through held them to their course.
They had neither time nor inclination to speculate on the significance
of those sheer pits in the ice and rock. All their will was
concentrated on their feet. One slip and they might learn more of the
mystery than they cared to know.
Anderson forged steadily ahead without speaking. He was bent on
reaching the barrier before turning back, holes or no holes.
At five o'clock they had been marching almost continuously for twelve
hours. The constant strain on their nerves no less than the pull on
their muscles was beginning to tell. Anderson suggested a brief halt
and a warm drink. It would take half an hour to prepare the chocolate.
That would leave them about an hour of such daylight as there was in
the cheesy fog.
They were just about to enjoy the steaming drink when, with a rapid
up and down vibration, the ice beneath them began to shake violently.
The dogs howled dismally and tried to bolt. Suddenly a terrific jar
directly under them sent the party rolling. Staggering to their feet
they succeeded in cowing the dogs. The jarring ceased. In dead silence
the last tremor died.
White and still, they stood staring at each other's scared eyes in the
ghostly mist. Few things so terrify even the most courageous human
being as a violent earthquake. There is about the terrific jarring
an impression of uncontrollable and insane force that temporarily
upsets the balance of the reason, and the helpless victim, powerless
to escape, can only wonder when the torment will cease. Lane had
experienced earthquakes in central China. This, however, was a
different order. To the other members of the party it was a new test of
courage. Drake's knees turned to water. He almost went down when Edith,
suffering from the same malady, clung to him for support. Ole said
nothing. He was too scared to pray. Anderson stood it best.
"That's nothing," he said. "It will save my blasting powder."
The words were hardly off his tongue before it began again, worse than
ever. In ten seconds it was over.
"That's the queerest shake I ever felt," said the Doctor, wiping the
perspiration from his face. "The motion was entirely vertical. It felt
exactly as if someone miles below us was hitting the roof over him with
a heavy iron bar. Listen!"
Miles under their feet they heard a muffled crashing like the slamming
of thousands of doors along a hundred mile corridor. With a last
crescendo of slams the noise ceased, to be followed immediately by a
hollow rumble as of water bursting underground from the sea through
labyrinths of rock. Rising to a sudden, deafening thunder directly
beneath them the shattering noise passed, to mutter itself out in the
bowels of the earth leagues to the south. Then the mist all about them
took sudden life. A great wind, eddying like a maelstrom, spun them
helplessly on the ice.
By instinct rather than reason Anderson got his claspknife open and
cut the rope which bound him to the sledges. At the same instant Drake
and Ole each clutched one of Edith's arms, Lane seized Anderson by his
collar and with the other hand grasped Ole's coat, and all five huddled
together, flattened themselves on the ice. Not one of them afterward
recalled any thought in all of this. It had been purely the instinct of
self-preservation acting automatically.
Spinning like straws in a whirlwind, now this way, now that, they were
too dazed to comprehend what was happening. Only a dim consciousness
that the air was being swept clean of fog penetrated their numbed
consciousness.
The vortex motion of the atmosphere ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
Staggering to their feet in an air as clear and hard as glass they
found themselves less than two feet from the brink of a well fifty
yards across. The last vestige of the fog had been sucked down the
innumerable blowholes. These they now saw thickly pitted over the
desolate ice in all directions to the range of vision.
It was some seconds before they realized the full horror of their
plight. Drake was the first to come out of the stupor.
"The sledges?" he muttered, staring about him in a daze.
They were gone. Anderson took in the situation at a glance. He kept his
nerve.
"Out of this as fast as we can," he said quietly.
He still clutched his compass. They followed him at a run. There was no
time to speculate down which of the wells the sledges had been sucked.
Every nerve strained to get out of that ghastly maze of death traps.
"It's beginning again," Lane said presently. "I felt a slight jar. Down
on your stomachs and all hang together. Hansen, you're heaviest. Get in
the middle."
They cowered on the ice, their hands joined round Ole's stout figure,
waiting for they knew not what.
10
UNDAUNTED
Huddled on the trembling ice they set their teeth and prayed inwardly,
expecting to be hurled skyward. A rushing roar, like the tumbling
of flames in a furnace when the door is suddenly opened, rose with
incredible speed to a high, singing pitch of shattering intensity.
Just when the shrill whistling grew unendurable there shot from the
innumerable wells dotted over the ice hard white pillars of compressed
mist. With explosive violence the fog which the wind had sucked down
into the bowels of the rocks was being expelled.
Straight up shot the thousands upon thousands of dense white columns to
fray themselves out in a whirling tracery on the roof of the sky like
the groining of a vast cathedral.
Then the bottoms of the rushing fog pillars soared free of the wells.
The shortening columns, sucked up into the newly formed clouds
flattened themselves upon the misty roof in thousands of rings that
vibrated, clashed into one another, rebounded, clashed again, and
finally rolled along the underside of the cloudy dome in a mazy tangle
of spinning filaments.
The pitch of the singing note from the blowholes heightened. Air or
gas was being forced up under tremendous pressure from the interior of
the earth. Speechless with awe, the huddled watchers beheld the tops
of the invisible columns burst into pale blue conical flames. Almost
immediately after they heard the thudding of the ignition.
For perhaps ten seconds the whole cloud roof over the vast ice trough
was hung with the thousands of these pendant cones of blue flame. As
the sustaining pressure now rapidly dropped the shrillness of the
whistling diminished, and by great trembling bounds the blue cones
descended toward the wells, reddening as they fell.
Half-way between the blood-red ice and the crimsoned cloud roof the
downward-rushing cones of red flame halted, suspended in mid-air,
roaring like ten thousand blast furnaces. Then with a tumbling
reverberation the innumerable tongues of crimson lengthened, swooped
upon the wells, and with a last earth-shaking thunder disappeared.
Although daylight still lingered beneath the high gray pall of fog,
the party, blinded by that last downward rush of fire, saw nothing.
Dazed and trembling, they got to their feet. Gradually vision returned.
Without a word Anderson peered at his compass and led off. They were
too stunned by the mere magnitude of what they had seen to attempt as
yet to comprehend it. Only the instinct of self-preservation urged them
to immediate flight.
They had made a little less than a mile when again the subterranean
thunder shook the ice under their feet. Then they remembered for the
first time their night vigil on the deck of the _Edith_. That periodic
glow on the distant clouds had recurred every thirteen and a half
minutes.
For safety they again huddled together on the ice. Again the surface
air was sucked down the wells, but with considerably less violence.
Apparently the initial disturbance had stored up fuel for the
succeeding flames. Once more the shrill whistle from innumerable vents
announced the coming of the fires, and again the blue cones hung from
the massive cloud roof, to hover down presently in crimson fire before
the final swift plunge to the darkness of the wells.