The greatest adventure
Anderson nodded. They flew another three minutes before hearing in
rapid succession the four dull explosions which announced the release
of the oil flood.
Nearing the ship they saw Bronson and the men on the ice near the
petrol cache loafing about, exercising the dogs and the now sturdy
devil chick.
"Out of here at once," Anderson ordered. "Is steam up?"
"Yes sir."
"Send four of the men to the petrol cache to fill the tank of the plane
to capacity. Order the rest to get the sledges and their packs in shape
for an immediate march to the coast. Hell's going to break loose."
Bronson obeyed orders on the run.
"Now Edith," Anderson continued, "you and Hansen stand by ready to
follow the ship down the channel. If mud comes down and mires us fly
as fast as you can to the nearest whaling station and send help. Ole
will do the navigating. We shall pack to the coast and wait there for
relief."
"Can I take the devil chick?" she pleaded.
"That brute? It's as big as a cow."
"The plane can lift it easily."
"Nothing doing. But," he added, seeing the tears in her eyes, "we'll
herd the ugly beast along with us to the coast if we have to hike."
Bronson rejoined them to say that the plane was now ready for a
thousand mile flight.
"Very well. Get the ship out of here. Have the men ready to leave her
at the first sign of trouble."
The men were already stowing their effects, including the obstinate
devil chick, aboard the ship.
Bronson had gone but four steps when the ice leapt into a crimson glow.
"Get the men on the ice and run for the coast," Anderson shouted.
The men needed no orders. They were swarming out as fast as they could.
The appalling concussion swept over them just as they reached the ice.
Looking south they saw the roof of the continent hurtling skyward. A
vast gush of red flames surging up overtook the black mass, flattened
along its underside in curling billows of crimson, and for an instant
pressed the millions of tons of suspended rock and cement hard against
the sky. Then it fell.
The fliers were already headed for the coast. Edith's last vision of
the ship revealed one of the crew tugging desperately at the devil
chick's head in a final attempt to get it ashore again. Failing, the
man abandoned the wretched creature and jumped to save his own life.
The falling of the suspended rock had set up a choppy land tide of
waves twenty feet high. Like a thunderclap the walls of the inlet met,
parted, and met again. The ship was matches.
Explosion after explosion rolled the fleeing machine over and over in
the turbulent air like a feather. But it was a well built plane, and
nothing of consequence snapped.
The fliers, better than the men far behind reeling over the heaving
ice, knew what might come at any instant. The oil which had gushed
over the plain from the lake, to plunge down the flaming blowholes and
generate vast quantities of gas, must still be rushing in a river of
fire toward the subterranean reservoirs beneath the unruined paradise.
That the two chains of underground lakes were connected they had good
grounds for believing.
Their expectations were realized late that afternoon as they sped
northeast in their flight toward the nearest whaling station. Neither
has any memory of how they weathered the unimaginable tempest of
detonations which shook the upper air from the Antarctic to Rio. The
unruined paradise was ruined.
Four weeks later the whaling vessel _Orion_ of Boston rescued a party
of stunned and half-starved men shivering on the ice at the mouth of
what had been the inlet. They were unable to give any coherent account
of their experiences. Not a member of the crew had been lost. The
expedition had returned with its life.
* * * * *
THEY FOUND A LOST WORLD OF WEIRD MONSTERS
When a sea captain brought a baby dinosaur to the home of a wealthy,
brilliant scientist, it triggered off an expedition that well deserves
the title of THE GREATEST ADVENTURE. For the trail of that little
creature led straight into the unexplored, quake-shaken Antarctic to
a lost world overrun with the monsters of an evolution gone wild! In
every way a classic of science-fiction, it's breathtaking story-telling
by John Taine back in print at last!
ACE BOOKS