The greatest adventure
of the milky soup. It was lukewarm.
"A yell from that excitable idiot Hansen made me drop the bucket. He
was pointing up the inlet to a huge pillar of ink billowing up like
the smoke from a burning oil well. I judged it must have been at least
fifty miles from where we were. But I had no means then of making more
than a crude guess.
"As we stood gaping at it the whole mass of ink was suddenly sucked
down out of the sky. Only a dirty brown mist marked the place where it
had been.
"'It's an eruption,' Hansen was good enough to explain. He meant well,
but who ever saw an eruption acting down instead of up? There was no
time to argue it out with him, for while we were looking the show began
in earnest.
"First an enormous black smoke ring teetered crazily up and mushroomed
out over the sky line like an umbrella. Then a solid pillar of red
flames gushed up after the smoke. My common sense was working in spite
of me, for I found myself counting off the seconds. When I got to
fifty-eight, the fist of the explosion struck us with all its force.
Being ready for it I was braced against the funnel with my hands over
my ears. Hansen, theorizing as usual, wasn't prepared. Nor were the
men. For an hour after they had picked themselves up they went about
staring like owls.
"If my count was right the volcano must be two hundred fifty to three
hundred miles inland. At that distance I had no fears for the ship.
"The next thing to do was to get out before something started under our
keel. Before doing so I could not resist the temptation of lowering
a boat to see what had happened ashore--if anything was to be seen
without dangerous delay. I decided to take Hansen and two men to pull
the oars. When he understood what was doing--he was still deaf, like
the rest of the theorizers--he made a dive below to bring up his
everlasting camera and a bale of films.
"The pull through that beastly warm milk to the shore was both pleasant
and disgusting. How these society women can bathe in hot milk--as I
understand from the Sunday newspapers they do--beats me! That by the
way, however. I see Miss Lane is blushing. Our landing was as easy as a
picnic on a river. We at once tramped inland over the level snowfields
to see what was to be seen.
"Hansen saw it first. About a mile ahead of us he made out a black dot
on the snow. We made for it as fast as the loosely crystallized surface
would let us. Coming up to it we found a chunk of black rock the size
of a cow. At least that was all of it above the ice and snow. The rest
lay buried in the star-shaped pit which its fall had dented through to
the ice and underlying rock.
"One side of the rock was smooth. The rest was just a jagged nothing.
Hansen took a photograph of the smooth side.
"I don't blame him for wanting to find another of the black chunks. Nor
do I criticize him for stopping to take its picture. If the camera had
been mine I should have been just as unreasonable. He dragged us over
that forsaken wilderness of snow and ice for ten mortal hours hunting
black rocks. There was no returning to the ship until he had shot his
last roll of films. In all he got twelve dozen first-class negatives.
"Once I got him aboard our normal relations were resumed. He recovered
his mind and obeyed orders. We steamed out of that photographer's
heaven without another picture."
"Are you sure, Captain Anderson," Edith smiled, "that your mate's craze
for photography isn't by your orders too?"
"Oh, quite. Still, I admit that Hansen is the keeper of my artistic
temperament. Otherwise I should be mincing about Rio de Janeiro in pale
lavender kid gloves instead of boiling blubber on Kerguelen like a
Christian."
"What was Hansen's explanation of the storm?" Dr. Lane asked.
"The common-sense one, for a wonder. The sudden rise in temperature
over the land caused the cold air from the sea to rush in toward the
volcano and take us with it."
"In Hansen I recognize a brother," the Doctor laughed.
"You won't when you see him," the Captain prophesied grimly. "He looks
like a fat barrel that has been well hammered down. Hullo, here's one
of your mandarins."
The diplomatic Wong announced in faultless English that a gentleman by
the name of Ole Hansen awaited the Doctor's pleasure.
"Show him up, Wong."
Hansen entered, as red as a lobster and shaped like a brandy keg.
"I've brought the photographs," he announced after the introductions.
"Dump them on the table and let the Doctor see for himself. They need
no explanation--"
"But," Hansen expostulated, unburdening himself of his twelve dozen
masterpieces, "I have a theory. If you will let me--"
"I won't, so don't try."
Giving his Captain a red explosive look, Hansen sat on the safety
valve and obeyed orders. Heaven only knows what clouds of theories he
generated under the suppression of all that superheated steam. A man
of less robust build must have burst into a thousand hypotheses. The
barrel-shaped Hansen merely swelled and held his peace.
Meanwhile Dr. Lane was devouring the photographs of the black rocks
with feverish interest. Occasionally he passed one to Edith with a
terse suggestion to "take a look at that." Each picture was that of a
smooth black surface, in many cases badly fissured by the violence of
the explosion which had disrupted the mass from its matrix, densely
incised with pictograms.
"Call up Drake," the Doctor ordered before he had worked half through
the pile, "and tell him we have a puzzle here that makes the Bolivian
inscriptions look like A. B. C."
Edith reported that Drake would join them as fast as his legs would let
him.
"Captain Anderson," the Doctor said, rising, "I'm in with you on this
to the limit of my means. You can have the oil, I'll take the rest.
It's worth more."
4
THE RIDDLE OF THE ROCKS
Lean, lanky, hatless, Drake arrived at the conference breathless and
disheveled. Edith greeted him with applause and a peal of laughter.
Drake shot one agonized glance at his long legs. Reassured that the
worst had not happened, he drew himself up with the dignity of a stork
and replied in frigid tones,
"I am perfectly dressed."
"Where did you leave your tie and socks, John?"
Drake groaned. The telephone message had interrupted the stream of
his Mexican musings and here he was, just as he had flung himself
together. Striking negligées in public were his specialty. Given
ten years more of bachelor freedom and he would evolve into the
ideal absent-minded professor who moons through the movies and the
comic supplements, but scarcely at all through the business-like
atmosphere of a living university. Drake was one of the extremely rare
exceptions. Like many other mortals afflicted with the same failing,
Drake always indignantly repudiated the insinuation that he was not as
other men. Only repeated ocular proof, which he promptly forgot after
each application, convinced him when he was a walking comic. Edith's
attitude toward this embryo delight was a little philistine. She should
have encouraged him for the sake of art. It surely would be a great
pity to thwart his almost unique proclivities to play the idiotic part
demanded of him by the practical man. And what would be the net gain of
her motherly efforts? Drake at thirty-five would be outwardly like any
ordinary scholar--except of course the professional quacks--and quite
indistinguishable from any floor walker or bank cashier.
"Never mind, Drake," the Doctor consoled him. "I'll lend you things
before dinner. In the meantime, here is something more important."
He handed the ruffled young archaeologist a pocket lens and one of
Hansen's photographs. With a nod of acknowledgment to Captain Anderson
and the mate whom the Doctor introduced, Drake seated himself near the
open window and peered through the lens at the photograph.
The fifteen minute silence lengthened to twenty and the atmosphere of
the study grew unpleasantly tense. Half an hour passed without a sound.
At last Drake rose and handed back the picture to Dr. Lane.
"Well, what do you make of it?" the Doctor demanded.
"Do you want the truth?"
"Of course."
"Very well. I do not wish to insult either of your guests," Drake began
with anxious diffidence. "Especially as I have just been introduced,"
he added with an apprehensive glance at the compressed, husky Hansen.
"However, you asked for the truth. I may as well let you have it before
I know what parts precisely Mr. Hansen and Captain Anderson play in
this affair. That photograph, in my opinion, is a clever fake."
"What!" the Captain exploded, bounding out of his chair. "You're crazy.
Tell him about it, Ole."
But the outraged Hansen was beyond coherent speech. One of his round
gross of masterpieces, and therefore the whole twelve dozen, had been
pronounced fraudulent by this herring-gutted young dude without a shirt
to his back or a collar to his neck.
"You'll eat those words," he spluttered in a turkey-cock fury.
Drake, with roseate visions of an early martyrdom in the cause of
Truth, stood his ground before the advancing barrel of high explosives.
"Gentlemen!" the Doctor intervened sharply. "This isn't the forecastle.
Be seated, Mr. Hansen. Drake, remember where you are. I won't have you
making a prize ring out of my study. Sit down and explain yourself."
The bewildered Drake, by nature a pacifist to the marrow of his bones,
subsided into a chair. Hansen, with a few choice compliments in
Norwegian, also sat. Captain Anderson opened the attack.
"You're dead wrong, Mr. Drake. As a man of common-sense, would you
suppose it likely that any fakir has money enough to manufacture a
hundred and forty-four frauds weighing fifty to five hundred tons
apiece? You wouldn't, eh? Well, neither would I. You've only seen the
picture of one. Show him the rest, Dr. Lane."
Retiring once more with his glass to the window, Drake made a rapid
inspection of the entire series of photographs. After the first few
his frankly skeptical expression changed rapidly to bewilderment and
finally to intense interest. Beginning again with the first he ran
more slowly through the series, selecting fourteen of the pictures for
further consideration.
"Well," said the Captain, "what do you make of them now?"
Like most specialists Drake saw his beloved hobby in everything.
"Pictograms," he announced incisively.
"Real or fake?" Hansen demanded with a red scowl.
"Real, I should say."
"What significance, if any, have they?" the Doctor inquired.
"That I don't know. In fact this is a problem that may well take fifty
years or a century to solve."
"I have a theory--" Hansen began, but the rude Captain nipped it
cruelly in the bud.
"Bother your theory!" he snapped. "Let us hear what Mr. Drake has to
say."
"Perhaps," Drake hesitated, "if you told me where these pictures were
taken I might be able to form a more intelligent opinion."
"No," the Doctor objected, "we want an expert's unbiased estimate. Mr.
Drake," he continued, "is probably the best man in the world for our
purpose. Whatever he decides will be worth learning and absolutely
without prejudice. Go ahead, Drake. Take your time."
Drake picked up the fourteen pictures which he had selected from the
pile.
"These," he said, "seem to go together. They are parts, I judge, of
some much larger inscription. The rest of the pictures seem to be
dislocated, but a close examination would be necessary before reaching
a definite conclusion. I feel certain, however, of one very curious
fact. Two widely separated ages of art are represented in these entire
series. This feature is extremely puzzling for one peculiarity. Any