The greatest adventure
Dr. Lane agreed with his daughter's estimate.
"For all its strangeness," he said, "I am inclined to take a chance.
Captain Anderson, I will back your oil stock to the extent of ten
thousand dollars, on one condition. You must take me to the exact spot
where you picked up this wonderful creature. Mind, I am not swallowing
your yarn whole. It is just possible that in your excitement you saw
things that weren't there. The light, according to your own statement,
was about gone."
"But the mate?" Captain Anderson protested. "Was he crazy too?"
"Possibly. Any psychologist will tell you that such things do happen
frequently. Collective hallucination is the scientific name for such
a state of affairs. Both you and he, I suppose, have seen pictures,
or restorations, of extinct animals like the ones you thought you saw
boiling up through the oil--dinosaurs, huge lizards three hundred feet
long, the ceratops, and the like? You, Captain, must have seen such
things when you were studying mining engineering."
"I know I have," the Captain admitted. "And the mate is such a
hobby-ridden fool, always messing about libraries and reading rooms
when he is ashore, that doubtless he's in the same fix. For all that
you can't convince me that the whole thing was a nightmare. I saw it."
"Did any of the men see it too?" Edith asked. "Next morning, I mean."
"Not the main part of the show. All the heavy brutes had sunk. Nothing
but the scum of broken insects floated through the night."
"It sounds queer," was Edith's frank comment.
"Indeed it does, Captain," her father agreed. "Now this is my guess.
You found this bird-reptile right enough, for here it is. I don't
think," he said with a smile, "that even I can explain it away to your
satisfaction. What you took for thick warm blood oozing from the slash
in its neck was nothing but brown tar."
"Well, suppose it was," the Captain retorted. "What does that prove?"
"Everything. And in a perfectly reasonable way. I accept the eruption
of oil from beneath the sea floor as real. Your crew saw that?"
The Captain nodded.
"Very well, then, it's all clear. First let me tell you about a
somewhat similar state of affairs less than two hundred miles from here
in Southern California. It is at the famous asphalt and oil-hole on the
Rancho La Brea. Some years ago the geologists from the University of
California began digging out of the oily ooze all manner of bones and
other remains of extinct animals--skulls of sabre tooth tigers that
haven't lived in this part of the world for the past hundred thousand
years, and many others equally interesting.
"The explanation of these remains is quite simple. Ages ago drinking
pools of rainwater collected on the sticky surface of the oily ooze.
The prehistoric beasts, not knowing the danger, picked their way out
to drink. On trying to return to solid ground they quickly mired
themselves like flies on tanglefoot. Now is it likely that in an entire
continent of tar holes this one at La Brea should be unique as an
animal trap?"
"So you believe my reptile or whatever he is was thrown up from some
prehistoric asphalt hole buried under the floor of the Antarctic Ocean?"
"Undoubtedly, Captain."
The Captain grinned behind his gray beard. "A thoroughly scientific
theory no doubt, Doctor. As such it does you credit. According to you
my reptile should be full of brown tar, not dried blood and other
stuff. Suppose you cut him open and see."
"That's a practical test," the Doctor assented, rising to get his
implements. "If he has anything inside him besides pitch, like a badly
cured mummy, I'll double my offer."
"Then you might as well hand me your check for twenty thousand now.
I'll equal your offer. If you find nothing but mummy pudding inside
I'll let you have my yarn for the stuffing."
The Doctor did not reply immediately. He was too busy making his
incision where it would do the least damage to the appearance of the
specimen. Presently he drew up with a gasp of astonishment.
"Why," he exclaimed, "it's as fresh as a newly pickled salmon."
"Of course it is. I packed it in salt the minute the mate had finished
washing it off with rum and turpentine."
"Great Scott what a find! Edith, bring me the largest of those jars
about a third full of alcohol. This beats me. The thing must have been
miraculously preserved for ages. My offer stands, Captain. Take me to
the place where you found this and the twenty thousand is yours the day
we start."
"You will raise that to fifty thousand when I tell you the rest," the
Captain prophesied confidently. "I asked you not to call me a liar
until I had finished. As a matter of fact I am only half-way through."
"Have you more specimens?"
"No, but I have a round gross of first-class photographs."
"But you said the mate's pictures were a failure."
"So they were that time. He had better luck the next when I could boss
him properly."
"Prehistoric animals?"
"Something much better, unless I'm badly off."
"Do go on," Edith begged, "and tell us what else you found."
"In a moment. Shall I telephone the mate to bring up his pictures?"
"Yes, do!" they exclaimed together, and Edith handed him the desk
telephone.
Having got his number Anderson asked if Ole Hansen were still about.
The answer apparently was satisfactory, for Ole was asked to step to
the telephone.
"It's all right, Ole," the Captain shouted, as if his faithful mate
were still in the vicinity of the South Pole. "The Doctor has swallowed
it all so far, bait, hook and sinker. Bring the rest of the junk up
here to his house. Get Christensen to show you the way. Jump on a
street car and shake a leg."
3
A PUZZLE FOR DRAKE
"While we are waiting for Hansen," the Captain resumed, "I may as well
tell you how he collected his photographs. As the blundering idiot will
probably manage to lose himself between the gate and the back door, I
have plenty of time."
"Is your mate Hansen so stupid as you make out?" Edith asked with
genuine interest. "If so he must be worth studying."
"Stupider, Miss Lane. You never met his equal for cracked theorizing.
Well, let us leave him to find his way here and get on with our
business. I'll tell you what I want from you, doctor, when I reach the
end of my story."
"Although you may not be aware of the fact," Dr. Lane replied shrewdly,
"you have already told me. You want me to foot the bill for an
expedition to track down those new oil fields in your name. Well, it's
all right with me. I'll take the fossils and anything else in that line
and you can have the oil. Convince me that I should go in heavily and
you need have no worry about finances."
"Hansen's pictures will put the finishing touches to what I begin.
Well, except for one thing, the morning after the shakeup was just like
any other perfectly clear South Polar calm. The sea was still covered
with heavy black oil to a depth of several feet. Only a long, even
swell heaved it gently up and down in billows a mile long.
"During the night I had ordered the fires drawn. We dared take no
chances with the oil-soaked decks and rigging. With the first light
the mate and I got the men out to clean up the mess. We drove them
like niggers to keep their minds off the oil. It wouldn't do when we
reached port to have them blabbing to the first shark they met. Later
we decided to take the whole crew in on the scheme. They are to get a
third share of all profits if they keep their mouths shut. That seems
to be the only safe way. They're as mum as clams.
"All that day we sweated to get the worst of the oil off or covered up
so it wouldn't be noticed when we reached civilization. By nightfall
we had done a pretty thorough job. I decided to explain the oil-soaked
hull by saying it was an idea of Hansen's to use crude oil instead of
paint as a weather defier. It sounds just like one of his theories.
"The next question was how to swim out of the soup. With steam up
of course it would have been easy. But the mate and I agreed--for
once--that it would be a fool's trick to start any kind of a fire. The
air reeked of natural gas and oil fumes. A spark, and the whole sea
would be hell. There was nothing for it but to trust to the sails. By
dark we were fully rigged and whistling for the breeze.
"It came like a thunderclap from seven directions at once. All in all
that was the worst blow I have weathered through in twenty years of
dirty squalls from the equator to Cape Horn. The mate of course had a
theory to account for the suddenness of the hurricane. Like most of his
efforts it came five minutes late. I'll tell you of it presently.
"For the moment I didn't give a damn for theories, being more
interested in trying to save our masts. Except for a few whistling
ribbons like rags on a clothesline the sails were gone. The filthy
black oil broke over the decks in buckets and hogsheads, smothering us
whenever we attempted to make a line fast. All our deck tackle went by
the board, knocked clean off the plates by the sledge-hammer kicks of
the heavy pitch.
"After the first mad wrench the hurricane settled down to a steady,
snoring gale from the north. The ship drove dead ahead for the ice
barrier a hundred and twenty miles south of us. Nothing was to be done.
We could only sit tight for the smash. Unless the wind fell we should
ram the ice cliffs full tilt some time between midnight and dawn. The
wind held.
"Tired of holding his breath, Hansen suggested that all hands join in
prayer. He is always at it, before meals, at meals and after meals. I
told him to go to hell and took the wheel out of his lily white hands.
In the howling uproar he misunderstood the order. Evidently he thought
I wished him to hold chapel in the forecastle. Anyway there is where I
found him at daybreak with half the crew bellowing Norwegian hymns to
beat the devil.
"Toward midnight I first noticed a cherry colored glow coming and going
in the sky ahead of the ship. If I thought at all in the mad rush to
the final smash I put the flickering down to an aurora, and tried to
steer a course that would graze the ice when we struck. By my reckoning
we should have been smashed about three o'clock in the morning. Four
o'clock passed and still the ship staggered on through the oil under
the terrific gale. I began to think I must have misjudged our speed.
Five o'clock came, and with the first light the wind began to drop. In
half an hour it was broad daylight over a sea with only a film of oil
coating the waves, and not a sign of the ice barrier ahead. I left the
wheel to hammer some sense into those hymn singing idiots of Hansen's.
"When they shot up on deck the wind was no longer a gale and the ship
was manageable. Hansen said we had been saved by his bawling in the
forecastle. About an hour later he sighted the volcano. Then he gave it
the honor and glory for everything, including the wind.
"For a stretch of at least twenty miles the great ice barrier had been
wiped out. Whether it had sunk, or whether it had been lifted up bodily
by the eruption and tossed back on the continent I don't know. Hansen
says the rock and ice just cracked apart that far in the earthquake.
Anyhow the twenty miles of solid ice and rock was gone. In its place
stretched a long broad inlet as straight as a street running clear out
of sight into the continent.
"The wind dropped abruptly to a mere breeze, and the last of the oil
film fell away in our wake. All about us the water was as white as
milk, thick and soupy.
"When we came fully to our senses we noticed the unusual warmth. The
air was as balmy as a spring day in California. It occurred to me to
test the temperature of the water. One of the men drew up a bucketful