The greatest adventure
impressed him, and he knew from experience the powerful drive of
unbroken thought.
As the days flew over them like azure birds the breeze freshened and
knife-edged cold cut the unhardened members of the crew to the bones.
The oldtimers and the well-seasoned beginners merely quickened their
movements and went about their work with a new energy. The greenhorns
would soon get used to it. In the meantime they must stamp and swear
and get on with it as best they could.
The lightly ballasted _Edith_ beginning to pitch and roll like a
porpoise, the oysters, caviare and brown sugar of Drake's orgy had
their revenge. His abused stomach, protesting at the sound ship fare,
rejected honest salt horse with ineffable scorn. Edith forgot his
inconstancy, pardoning him all his theories, and ministered to him like
a white robed angel of forgiveness. His recovery was as sudden as his
collapse. And with the return of his vigor and his temper--he had been
as sweet as a consumptive curate during his prostration--he once more
jilted Edith for his houri.
"Let us go to the Captain's cabin and talk over what we are to do," he
suggested. "You bring your father and I'll rout out Ole. This is the
second mate's watch. They will be off duty."
Seated comfortably round the red baize of the Captain's table the five
discussed their plans. Anderson and Lane had decided to head directly
for the inlet which the Captain had discovered the morning after the
submarine eruption. They were then to steam up the inlet as far as
possible. Then they were to leave the ship in charge of Bronson, the
second mate and a capable seaman, and travel inland by dogteam and
sledges to the volcano whose smoke and flames Anderson and the mate
had seen from the inlet. If practicable to use the airplane two of the
party could return for it.
The men under Bronson's charge were to wait at the ship three months
for the party to return. If at the end of that time they had heard
nothing from the explorers they were to despatch a relief party to go
in search. The organization of the relief had been planned to its last
detail. Should circumstances so dictate Bronson would have only to
carry out his written instructions to the letter.
Anderson had made only a rough guess as to the probable location of
the oil which he expected to find. Although this first conjecture
was founded on a theory of Ole's the Captain refused to give him any
credit. With a rare flash of common sense Ole had observed that since
the heavy black smoke and ruddy pillar of flame which they had seen
from the inlet looked like burning oil, probably it was burning oil.
The one stumbling block which this sensible hypothesis had to surmount
was, as Lane pointed out, the Captain's estimate of two hundred fifty
to three hundred miles inland as the distance of the explosion which
they had heard. It hardly seemed probable that an outburst of burning
oil could make itself heard and seen at such a distance. A volcanic
eruption, on the other hand, easily might carry that far. Krakatoa,
Katmai, Pelée and many others among the more famous eruptions had
carried even farther.
The Captain, however, would have none of Lane's objections. To him the
mere vastness of an oilfield was no slur on its probability. The bigger
the likelier was his theory. And staring up at the swinging kerosene
lamp he beheld a beatific vision of stocks and shares floating like all
the leaves of Vallombrosa on an ocean of unlimited liability.
Lane was curiously reticent about what he expected to get out of
the expedition. Since that afternoon, now ten months ago, in his
San Francisco study, he had not once alluded to the Captain's tale
of dead prehistoric monsters boiling up as fresh as life through a
sea of pitch. If questioned he would have said that his judgment
was suspended, as undoubtedly it was. The indubitable bird-reptile
obstinately continued to exist as an awkward reality not yet
satisfactorily explained away.
On mature reflection he had abandoned his first theory that the
reptilian bird had been preserved for ages like a sardine in oil. But
he refrained from acquainting the Captain with his changed state of
mind lest that imaginative ex-mining engineer and inventive whaler
should be moved to show what he really could do in the way of a yarn
when put on his mettle. In the true scientific spirit the Doctor was
resolved to wait further facts before abandoning himself like Ole to
seductive theories.
One sore spot in his memories hardened him in this decision. He had
not yet forgiven the Captain for assuming that he was a gullible
enthusiast eager to swallow the first mermaid with a cocoanut head
dangled before his mouth. Above all, still holding the opinion that
Drake was the greatest decipherer of his time, he wished to hear what
the young archaeologist had to report as to the outcome of his intense
concentration on Hansen's photographs. Edith, with Drake's permission,
had revealed the secret of his vile temper in the Canadian Rockies.
"Well, oyster," said the Doctor, turning to Drake, "are you ready to
open up yet?"
"Have you a theory?" Ole blurted out.
"Two," Drake replied.
"Two theories!" Ole rhapsodized. "Young man, you are a scientist. What
are your theories?"
"The first, and the one which I favor, is that I'm crazy."
"So impossible as all that?" the Doctor asked, raising his brows.
"I told you in San Francisco it was impossible," the Captain asserted.
"Now Drake is going to prove what I said. Wait till you see it with
your own eyes."
"It is not that part of it which is impossible," Drake replied. "After
what I have guessed as the true meaning of the symbolism of the
inscriptions your stew of monsters sounds a little tame. I am willing
to accept your account as true to the facts, even if Dr. Lane is still
too cautious to commit himself. But the other thing, the real meaning
of that fragmentary history recorded in the inscriptions, is a subject
which I must decline to discuss until events have proved me either
crazy or right."
"I appreciate your stand, Drake," said the Doctor. "Under like
circumstances I should feel the same way. Still, you can tell us this
much without prejudicing your case. From what you have made out so far
do you believe that we shall find any tangible evidence of the true
struggle? I mean of course the one which the makers of the inscriptions
took such pains to disguise."
Drake gave him a shrewd look. "You have guessed the nature of that
conflict?"
"Perhaps, reasoning from other data, I have. In that case you can
understand why I prefer to wait before venturing my guesses. Shall we
find any traces of the real fight?"
"I don't know. To me it is incredible that we should."
"Some things are eternal," the Doctor remarked quietly. "For all we
know life may be indestructible."
"Have you ever whiffed a dead whale?" the Captain interposed. He was a
practical man.
"That isn't what the Doctor means," Ole expostulated, beginning to
redden.
"I know, Ole. I know what the doctor means. He's talking of the soul.
Now, did you ever see a whale with a soul?"
"Not after it was dead," the Doctor admitted with a smile. "However,
that was not what I had in mind. My idea was something much more
prosaic--question of energy and cells, and all that commonplace sort of
stuff."
"Cells?" the Captain snorted. "Rotten fish is rotten fish, cells or no
cells."
"That isn't--"
"Shut up, Ole. No, Doctor Lane, I'm not fool enough to argue with
you on your own deck. But when you show me a whale that I can't
set stinking ripe in three weeks I'll begin to believe in the
indestructibility of life."
"That--"
"Shut up, Ole. Well, Doctor, where's your immortal whale?"
"In Heaven," the Doctor replied without the flicker of an eyelash.
"Father," Edith protested, "you are irreverent."
"Not necessarily, Chick. Remember the prophet of Nineveh. Now Drake,
what is your second theory?"
"That the whole thing is literally true."
"And that is mine," said the Doctor.
"Mine too," Ole echoed before the Captain could squelch him.
"It can't be, Ole," the Doctor replied. "For, prolific as you may be,
you are constitutionally incapable of hatching such a nightmare."
Ole looked crestfallen. He was rebuked. Edith felt for him as she was
suffering acutely from repressed curiosity.
"I wish you two wouldn't talk as if I were a baby in long dresses. If
I'm old enough to be here I'm certainly old enough to be let in on
things."
"You might take the plane and fly back to Rio in the night," her father
laughed, "if we frightened you with all our half-baked theories. Better
wait and see--"
He was cut short by a jarring tremor that shook the stout ship from
stem to stern.
"My God!" the Captain shouted, bolting for the door, "we've struck! All
hands on deck!"
They reached the deck a second behind him. Instantly an overpowering
stench enveloped them body and soul, searching out the secret
convolutions of their brains with a sense-destroying, paralyzing
nausea. Hardened old whale pirates were leaning over the rail in a
paroxysm of the extremest misery.
On the less calloused members of the expedition the effect was
instantaneous and drastic. It was complete. No chemist in the distorted
ambition of his wildest nightmare ever dreamed of a smell such as that
which defiled the very soul of this night, otherwise so beautiful and
serene.
A full moon silvered the calm meadows of the sea. Nature, dead and
living, lay peacefully asleep. Athwart the silver road through the
ripples floated majestically the vast corpse through whose middle
rottenness the sturdy ship had churned her filthy way. Four pillars,
two at either end, towered up in the mystic light like the ruins of a
shattered temple on a hill in Greece. These were the creature's legs.
What else of it the moonlight revealed had better be veiled.
"There's your immortal whale, Captain," the doctor sobbed when from
very emptiness he ceased his calisthenics.
"Whale be blowed. That carcass is the size of four Whales. It's one of
them."
"I believe," said the penitent Doctor, "smelling is a severer test
of truth than seeing. Lead us below and give us asafetida from your
medicine chest to take the taste of truth out of our mouths."
Returning to the Captain's cabin they sought forgetfulness in rum
tinctured with Jamaica ginger.
"How shall I ever get it out of my hair?" Edith wailed.
"Shave your hair, dear," the Doctor prescribed, "and then boil it in
lye."
7
BEACHED
Shortly after midnight Captain Anderson called the sleepers.
"This is the spot, Doctor," he said. "You wanted to see it with your
own eyes."
"What spot?" the Doctor sleepily inquired.
"Where all those big beasts boiled up from the bottom of the sea."
They stood gazing over the rail at the cold, glittering Antarctic waste
of black water. Far to the south the dim shapes of five huge bergs
towered up like vast frozen ghosts in the moonlight.
"The water looks clean enough," the Doctor remarked suspiciously. The
smell having dissipated, his skepticism was returning. "Where's your
oil?"
"Blest if I know. Washed ashore months ago, I expect."
"In what direction is the nearest land?"
"Southeast. Directly in line with the southernmost of those bergs."
"When shall we reach it?"
"Within twelve hours if the wind doesn't rise."
The Doctor glanced at the cloudless sky. "Everything looks serene.
Well, we should see your inlet sometime tomorrow afternoon. By the way,
has the lookout sighted any more dead--whales?"
"Whales? That was no whale we cut through, I tell you. It had four
times the bulk of the biggest whale afloat. Think what you like, that