EXPLORERS IN A WEIRD WORLD.
"Nick," asserted Scarface, still covering the other with his gat, "you
haven't even the first instincts of a gentleman, so I shan't bother
to reply to your insinuations. Arty, will you go and tell this girl's
father to stop the ship for a minute, and that I wish to see all hands
in the mess-room? Miss Ferreira, please be seated."
"Gee," exclaimed Terry, slumping into a chair.
When all fourteen had gathered in the mess-room, Scarface returned his
gun to his pocket, and addressed them:
"Little Terry Ferreira is a girl."
He paused for the import of this announcement to sink in. Captain
Ferreira's face went ashy gray.
Scarface continued grandiloquently: "We are honored by the unsuspected
presence of a lady on this trip, and must treat her with due respect.
From now on, I shall bunk with the rest of you. Miss Theresa will
occupy, alone and exclusively, what formerly was my stateroom. She is
to be treated like a lady. If any member of this crew annoys her in the
least way, there'll be one less of us. Is that understood? Then you may
all go, Captain Ferreira, start up the ship again."
"Gee, Mr. Jimmy, but you're grand!" said Theresa admiringly. "To think
what I've been missing all this while, by your not knowing I was a
girl!"
The boat got under way again. Scarface moved his belongings into the
bunk room, then went to the bow, where Captain Ferreira was directing
the navigation. Murphy was standing beside him.
"What time is it now, sir?" asked Mike, as he approached. "This is
worse than daylight saving. There seems to be nothing but daylight up
here. The sun stays in one spot in the sky, and it never gets to be any
other time of day. This must be where they send all the daylight to,
that they save up, back in the United States."
"I've always said," added Ferreira, "that if the Lord had wanted
daylight saving, he would have made the clocks that way in the first
place."
Scarface glanced at his wrist watch.
"It's 4 P.M.," he announced. "Time to change the watch; think I'll
rearrange the shifts a bit. We must keep some one on guard all the
while, for there's no telling when some strange creatures may attack
us in this lost world, according to what we've read of it. Ferreira,
you can have Arty, Si, Mike, George, Swede and Cicero. I'll sit up for
another watch, and take the wheel. Scutari can run a gas-engine fairly
well; he used to be a chauffeur, Nick the Rat can take your post. Tom
and the Eskimo and your daughter can help watch for trouble. Let's go
on farther inside the earth. If anything exciting happens, I'll call
you."
Nick Fratelli was considerably mollified by being placed over Scarface,
by Scarface himself. Also at having little Miss Terry in his shift. But
he would have preferred to have had the latter pleasure, unadulterated
by the former honor.
As they changed shifts, Antone Ferreira drew their leader aside.
"Sir," said he, "will you pardon me for suggesting, sir, that you're
making a big mistake in trusting that Fratelli person? When he
mutinied, back there in the ice, you'd ought to have put him in irons.
Instead, you give him the run of the ship, and insult and trust him by
turns. I can tell by the nasty look in his eye that he's just waiting
for a chance to do you dirt."
"My dear captain," replied Scarface suavely, "you don't understand how
to handle men. I've known Fratelli for years. I've managed him, and
dozens of others like him. There's only one way to treat that type:
trust them, and bully them, and make them like it. Then they will fear
you and love you. That's the way Julius Cesar used to do, and it's the
secret of his and my success. Nick may bluster occasionally, and give
me black looks, but he wouldn't dare try to 'do me dirt,' as you say."
As they separated, the navigator sadly shook his head, and muttered to
himself: "Not merely dumb, as I had thought he was, but swell-headed.
Oh, so swell-headed. It amounts to the same thing, in the end. I see
trouble ahead for him--for all of us."
* * * * *
Later that watch they were coasting some land on their right, when
Scarface Jimmy suddenly exclaimed: "Look! See that crescent-shaped
beach, with the cliffs behind it, and the woods on top? I'll bet that's
where Eric Redmond first met the beautiful Viking girl. Remember about
it in 'The Radio Flyers'? If so a path from the summit of the cliffs
must lead to the plateau city, the northernmost outpost of Viking
civilization. Let's land, and find out."
So the Miami swung her bow to starboard, and nosed gently in to the
beach.
"It must be the place!" asserted Tom hopefully. By this time he had
carefully read the story in question. "I believe that that long low
rock to the right is the one that Eric hid behind, in his fight with
the Eskimo-like natives, Skraelings."
Tom and Scarface had been navigating the ship together. They rushed
on deck. The change in the course and the subsequent bump against the
shore diverted the crew from their various preoccupations, and they now
crowded out to see what was up.
Their leader ran his eye over them. Then he announced briskly:
"I want to tell you boys--and the young lady--that I think we have
arrived at the landing-place of one of the cities of the Vikings. You
all have read the story. Doesn't this look like the beach from which
runs the path to the plateau, where Angus Selkirk rules as yarl?
'Beyond the Alps lies Italy.'"
"You don't mean to say that these are the Alps?" asked Nick Fratelli
hopefully.
"Of course not, you dumb idiot!" scornfully replied Jimmy. "I was
merely quoting some remarks that another great man--Napoleon--once made
under similar circumstances."
"Well, try to keep down to earth as much as possible," grumbled the
Italian. "We ain't all of us read books like you, you know."
Jimmy went on unabashed. "When I told you about the polar hole and my
idea of hunting up a new racket down here, I didn't fully let you in on
my plans. The world was invited here to colonize, but we have come here
to stick up these squareheads. According to the story, there are only
two civilized persons in this whole place, namely, the two Milwaukee
boys, Eric Redmond and Angus Selkirk. Their plane is out of gas. Their
rifles must be pretty near out of ammunition. We have plenty of both,
and our gats and machine guns besides. With your help, I can put myself
at the head of the government, make these Vikings fight for me, and
conquer this whole new world. Stick to me, boys, and you'll all wear
diamonds."
His announcement did not meet with the unanimity of approval that he
had expected.
"Ay tank you ban make wan great mistake," enunciated Swede Johnson
slowly. "T'ose Viking von't be so easy, I tank not."
"Do you call this exactly square?" added Tom Jones. "Two of your own
fellow-countrymen come down here, win the love and affection of these
people, and lead them to victory. They publish a general invitation to
the U. S. A. to follow them and colonize. With the whole center of the
earth open to you, do you call it exactly decent to pick on these two
young men, and try to oust them from control, and enslave their people?"
"Jones!" snapped Jimmy, his scar showing dangerously red. "That will be
just about all from you. You're not the chaplain of this trip."
Tom struggled to control his wrath, while Mike Murphy interposed his
objection: "I don't know, chief. What's the use of shooting up some
perfectly peaceful squareheads, when there seems to be plenty of land
to go around, without doing that? I don't know."
"Murphy!" interrupted Jimmy, his scar still red. "When a policeman
enlists under a gun-runner, he may expect to have to do things which
do not exactly constitute preserving the peace. Any one else got any
objections?"
Murphy, too, subsided, and the others hastened to register their
approval.
* * * * *
"I shall take a small force, and reconnoiter," announced the masterful
Scarface. "Murphy, Ferreira, Greene, Jones and Cicero. Nick, you are
left in command in my absence. I wish you'd get busy teaching that
Eskimo some English. You've been at it for days now, and we may need
him at any moment as an interpreter to the savages here."
Nick Fratelli smiled a crafty smile to himself. He had purposely taught
Friday little or no English. But he had managed to get Friday to teach
him considerable of the Eskimo language--of which fact, however, no one
else except Cicero had as yet any suspicion.
All hands turned in for a sleep.
After breakfast the next "morning," the members of the scouting party
were each fitted out with rifle, automatic pistol, cartridge belt, and
condensed rations.
Terry begged to be taken, but Jimmy told her: "I couldn't bear to risk
your life."
She pouted and replied: "Gee, Mr. Scarface, does that mean that I'm
going to miss all the fun of this trip? I wear boy's clothes still. Why
can't you treat me as a boy again for a while?"
She begged so insistently that finally she was promised a place on the
very next adventure.
Then the six pioneers set out. At the top of the cliff they found a
path, as expected, and pressed on along it, uphill through the woods.
Nothing of moment happened, until about an hour later, when the bushes
ahead of them at one side of the trail suddenly parted, and out stepped
a gigantic black leopard, crouched low and tense.
The horrified explorers stopped dead in their tracks. Several started
to draw their futile automatics--all the rifles were strapped across
their backs--but Scarface signalled them down with a single peremptory
gesture, for the beast was so near that to fire would be but to invite
immediate and disastrous attack.
The leopard seemed intent on something across the path ahead of him. He
stood motionless, except for his twitching tail, with his side toward
them--the very picture of deadly feline grace and peril. They did not
breathe as they stood motionless, and waited, too.
Finally, after what seemed ages, the head of the beast swung slowly
around, until his yellow eyes regarded them squarely. The invaders
wilted, unsure whether to stay "frozen" or make a frantic effort at
defense or escape.
Then, as slowly, the leopard's head swung back to its original
position, and it gave a tremendous bound, off the path into the
tropical undergrowth. A moment or two later there came the death-scream
of some smaller creature.
The six men unslung their rifles, and rushed past the haunted spot, and
on up the mountain trail, as fast as their legs would carry them. After
a run of several hundred yards, they paused, out of breath.
"You know," panted Cicero, "I prefer Chicago. It's a much safer place
to live in. Look at the size of the black cat that just crossed our
path!"
"And darn lucky for you that he crossed it, me lad," said Murphy,
"instead of coming down it."
This quip somewhat restored the spirits of the party, and they started
on again up the trail.
* * * * *
At last, after many hours, they emerged upon open land, but it was
not what they expected. Instead of a level plain they had read about,
carpeted with red-pollinated flowers, and the massive cliff of the
plateau rising in the distance, the field before them sloped sharply
upward to a rugged and rocky mountain-top.
And when they reached the summit, there was no plateau to be seen
ahead. Instead, the land sloped downward on all sides. The mountain
on which they stood was the crowning eminence of a long peninsula. On
three sides of them lay the island-dotted sea; while to the south there
was a gradually descending ridge of lower peaks, and a widening of the
land, which stretched off and up, without a break of sea, until it
blended with the sky in the dim gray distance.
"Where's your Viking city, chief?" asked Murphy with a grin that took
all the sting out of the taunt.
Tom was sincerely glad that they hadn't found it, with Scarface's
racketeer intentions; but he hastened to console their leader.
"It would really have been too much to hope for," said he, "to have
stumbled on the place right off the bat."
"Of course!" Ferreira suddenly interjected. "Eric and Angus went over
the edge at longitude 30° off the northern tip of Greenland. We went
over at longitude 60° up through Smith Sound. They headed due south. So
did we. Our route must be about two hundred and fifty miles from theirs
and rapidly diverging. We ought to head southwest to find them."
"Don't you mean southeast?" suggested Tom.
"Oh, hang this back-handed compass-system that they have down here!"
snorted the ship-captain. "What I mean is, turn our bows to starboard.
You can figure out the direction, and name it whatever you please."
"Look!" interrupted Cicero. "Isn't that an airplane off there to the
south?"
All stared in the direction in which he was pointing. It certainly
looked like a plane. And yet not quite.
"It must be one of those huge flying reptiles," asserted Scarface.
"_Skwaas_, they call them. Bat-winged lizards seem to take the place of
birds, when you get far enough into this country."
Then, for a while they stood in silence, taking in the view on all
sides, while the motionless central sun beat down on them from exactly
overhead. The rocks about them were covered with mosses and lichens.
The sky was strangely off color, a dark and velvet blue, graying where
it met the land or sea on every side.
It was easy enough to realize that they were inside a huge ball. In
fact, the effect of blending of earth and sky made the ball seem
infinitely smaller than it really was--gave them a sort of cooped-up
feeling, hard to describe.
Turning their eyes to things nearer at hand, they scanned the dark
green forests which surrounded them almost without a break.
"All this land will one day be covered by farms, and cities, and
railroads, and concrete roads," exulted Scarface, but it was plain to
see that he was talking more to himself than to his companions.
"Oughtn't we take possession in the name of the United States of
America?" suggested Tom.
"No such thing!" retorted Scarface. Then, striking his foot on the
rock, he declaimed: "I hereby take possession in the name of James
Lefavour, alias Scarface Boston Jimmy."
"A lot of good it will do us, chief," Murphy cried out sharply. "There
goes the Miami, leaving us high and dry in this God-forsaken spot!"