QUEST FOR CAMP
Lee Renaud's black eyes looked out anxiously from the shaggy fur of his
hooded parka or Eskimo coat as he climbed out on the top of the airship
to see if ice had formed. Not a pleasant task, this, in a wind pressure
created by a speed of over a hundred miles per hour, and with the
thermometer at twenty below zero! Good, no ice sheathing as yet on the
great shining hull. Coatings of ice and sleet were the danger to a
dirigible--these could weight the ship down to a tragic fall.
Below the Nardak stretched snow fields, and often great frozen lakes
where the ice lay sometimes smooth, sometimes thrust high in grotesque
ridges where some throe of nature had hurled up the frozen substance.
For days now they had been traversing the snow barrens, a strange white
world where daylight held continuously. For this was the land of the
midnight sun. Through the summer of this weird Arctic world, there would
be months of daylight, with the sun riding from horizon to horizon, but
never quite dipping out of sight. With autumn would come a twilight that
would merge into the long winter night when the sun left this frozen
land to months of darkness.
In the present daylight period, the Nardak's men must make their
exploration, then flee before the night, back to civilization and home.
Ordinarily, the great ship kept to a height of well over two thousand
feet, but when the photographers wanted to picture some object, the
dirigible would be glided down to a thousand, five hundred, even a mere
three hundred feet above ground. Lee Renaud was startled to find that
ice sheets which from on high had looked glassy smooth, from the near
view stood out in deep ridges and furrows, as though broken by some
giant's plowshare. Nature turned some strange tricks up here in this
frozen North.
Everywhere was white stillness. Not a sign of vegetation; not a sign of
animal life--or so it seemed at first. Those untrained in the ways of
the Arctic do not at once realize the protective coloring which Nature
has bestowed on her denizens in this land of eternal cold.
To Lee Renaud, a wind-swept hillside over which the dirigible zoomed
low, with moving-picture cameras clicking out film, was--well, was just
a hillside dotted with black rocks where the gale had swept off the
snow. Then--and Lee opened his eyes very wide--some of the black rocks
began galloping off. In truth, these moving objects were a herd of
shaggy musk-oxen that had been pawing for snow moss among the rocks till
the shadow of the huge ship of the air had sent them snorting off in
fear. In a white land, Nature had left these creatures dark colored,
because they most often grazed on wind-swept highlands where their dun
sides melted inconspicuously into the dark splotches of the landscape.
Another time, looking down through the observation window, Lee saw the
amazing sight of a snow field that suddenly seemed to leap up into
separate white parts and go bounding off across the plain. In this case
it was a herd of white caribou that had been huddled at rest on the
snow. Scent of danger, borne down on the wind, must have stampeded them.
Soon enough young Renaud saw what that danger was, for another line of
moving white swept into view--the wolf-pack, white killers of the North!
Lee's heart shivered within him. These were so relentless; they knew
only the law of fang and claw. Tails straight behind, noses down, the
pack swept on down trail, were lost to view. But, ola, in the end the
wolf-pack would pull down its prey; it always did!
In a snow valley, where mountain cliffs rose protectingly on either
side, nestled a row of white domes. Circular hillocks with faint spirals
of blue smoke drifting upward from a crevice in the top. Eskimo
igloos--the round earth-and-stone huts banked in snow that were the
homes of the fur-clad natives of the Arctic! As the huge ship of the air
passed like a menacing shadow above this native settlement, fur-clad men
crept out from their tunnel-like doors, waved their arms and raced
wildly over the snow fields. Seen from the airship, they looked to be
tiny ants swarming out of an ant hill. Then a flight of sharp pointed
arrows shot up toward the sky, curved back uselessly to earth. The huge
ship drifted on serenely, safe in its heights from this puny
demonstration.
"Must have thought we were some vast evil spirit, drifting up from
Sermik-suak, Eskimo spirit-land!" said Valchen who had been much among
the Arctic natives and knew their life and beliefs. "The sight of this
great gas bag sweeping like a black shadow across their village was
enough to strike terror to their hearts and set them on the defensive.
On the whole, these Eskimo tribes are a kindly, hospitable lot. Let a
man come among them in peace, and they'll take him in and give him the
best they have. I've known them, in times of famine, to divide the last
morsel of fish, the last chunk of blubber with some utter stranger."
Through the speeding miles, the white northland revealed itself to eyes
that by degrees were learning to distinguish between the still white
that meant snow wastes, and the moving white that meant some animal
leaping into action on hoof or padded paw. On the ice of great lakes
that were almost inland seas, now and again one glimpsed some shaggy
mound of flesh and white fur that was a great polar bear, seeking his
food through a break in the lake ice. In the air, the honk of geese, the
weird laughter of the long-billed loons flying north in the continuous
daylight, often echoed the siren of the dirigible.
In the navigating-room, maps and charts were always in evidence now.
Across their surfaces, lines drawn in day by day showed the progress of
the ship. Its position was checked constantly both by magnetic compass
and by sun compass. The ship's course was directed away from northwest
and headed due north now.
"There it is--the tri-pointed crest of Coronation Mountain!" shouted
Olaf Valchen, eye to the telescope and one arm wildly waving, beckoning
the others to come and see for themselves.
In the distance, like a regal crown, showed the points of a group of
mountains, rising above swirling clouds that masked all save the
high-flung peaks themselves.
"It's somewhere near that range that we'll find Rottenstone
Lake--Nakaluka, the Eskimos call it. And when we stand on its shores
we'll be standing on wealth. There are rock mounds in this region where
the stone is so old, it has cracked and lets the shining treasure veins
show through. I know. I've seen it myself." Valchen's usually deep voice
was high-pitched with excitement. He pulled from beneath his fur
overgarment a tiny map of caribou hide with some lines scrawled upon it.
"The hunger fever was upon me when I drew this, some five years ago, but
I am sure the lines are right. There's the tri-mountain; and the sun
observations I took then tally with our present check-up, in part,
anyway."
Below them stretched snow field and ice crag. Somewhere in that maze of
peaks and ridges lay the frozen waters of Nakaluka and its encircling
treasure mounds. In all this whiteness, its frozen waters would be no
more noticeable than a tiny grain of dust would be on the expanse of a
great plate glass show window.
The only feasible method of procedure seemed to be to get aerial
photographs, piece together the long strips of film, and from a study of
these get an idea of the lay of the land. This would take time. To
cruise continually would burn the precious fuel and oil that must be
more or less hoarded for the return trip. Better to establish a central
camp for sleeping and eating, then to radiate out on air trips at
regular intervals.
For a time the dirigible forged ahead, the eyes of all watchers
searching the snow barrens for a safe base camp. Below them a snow fog
began creeping over the land, a mysterious curtain of blue and gray
light. As they swept on in this strange haze, snow hills and valleys
took on warped, unreal proportions. The official decision was that it
was better to land now than to risk crashing into some shrouded peak.
At other landing fields there had been hundreds of men to pull at the
drag ropes and gently ease the ship to earth. Here there was naught save
snow and perhaps a polar bear or two--no very active assistance at
landing in that!
Lee Renaud, like the rest of the crew, was full of anxiety as to how the
new, and untried method Captain Jan was depending on would work. He
hurried along the corridor to a trapdoor section where Bartlot and a
number of his officers and men were grouped about a great flat metal
plate that was connected to a windlass by hawsers passing over two sets
of pulleys.
In the meantime, the dirigible, by motor power and the use of elevators,
had been descending lower and lower, until it was now less than a
hundred feet above the great ice field.
At a word of command from the Captain, the metal plate was let down
through its opening in the ship. They heard when it struck the ice with
a clank.
Along one of those pulley hawsers had been affixed a heavily insulated
length of pliable electric wiring. Now, with hand that trembled a little
as he began his great experiment, Captain Jan pushed an electric button
that connected power from one of the ship's generators to this wire
leading down to the plate resting on the ice far below. This plate was
in reality an electric stove. As the current hit it, it was supposed by
its heat to sink rapidly into the ice. Then when the electricity was cut
off, it would freeze deep and fast into the ice--or so men hoped and
prayed it would.
After a breath-taking interval, Captain Jan turned the windlass gently,
to see if the plate-anchor held in the ice. More and more he wound on
the turn shaft--and the anchor held! The experiment was working! A great
shout went up from all sides. Many hands cranked at the windlass, taking
in the lines, gradually forcing the ship down and down.
At last the pneumatic bumpers touched ice. It was all hands out to see
what manner of frozen world they had landed in.
Viewed from above, this surface had looked smooth enough, but now they
found it to be far from a "looking-glass surface." There were up-ended
ice cakes and pressure ridges to be clambered over. Of a certainty,
water must be somewhere under this ice sheet. For water freezing,
expanding, contracting, was what shot up the slabs of pressure ice. This
was no pleasant place to dwell. There were whole stretches where the ice
floor had split asunder in deep crevasses and purple chasms. Seeming
snow hills were mere masks across gully traps.
For a night, or for the length of a period that would have been a night
had the hazy red ball of the sun ever dropped entirely below the
horizon, the expedition rested in this strange ice waste.
Then a party set out on foot to reconnoiter the land. Captain Jan,
Valchen, a dozen others. Lee Renaud was glad his strong young legs
gained him a place in this crew. Of necessity, each man had to bear a
stout load. One could not venture out in the bare white wastes without
food and weapons, a fur sleeping-bag to crawl into in case of a storm,
and a great knife for cutting snow blocks to build a wind-break. Also,
the party carried bundles of bright, orange-hued flags to mark their
trail.
Excitement hung over this little group as they made their start at
trail-breaking into the unknown. Some on snowshoes, some on skis, they
marched out under the strange glow of the Arctic sun, a glow that
sometimes crisped and blistered, but never seemed to hold any cheer in
its pale gleams that slanted over eternal ice.
After they had crossed miles of ice level and laboriously scaled frozen
cliffs, they came down into a strange valley. On every side were snow
mounds, like haycocks in assorted sizes, some the height of a man, some
as tall as a one-story building. They were the roofs of round pits. Some
pressure below had blown up these weird snow bubbles.
Bartlot, in the lead, stumbled against one. Its sides caved in and the
Captain shot out of sight down in a snow hollow fifteen feet deep. Lines
were flung down and soon he was drawn out, breathing hard and pretty
well banged up, but luckily not seriously injured. After that, the party
moved forward, roped together for protection.
Out of curiosity, they now and again slashed openings in the snow domes.
Some covered pits fifty and a hundred feet wide, and vastly deep. It
behooved them to pick their way carefully here, and to test each step
with an Alpine staff thrust into the snow ahead. Behind the party, the
orange gleam of the route flags marked a zig-zag trail and showed the
way back to the base camp.
After threading this valley checkered with pitfalls, and climbing a
range of ice hills all pitted and honeycombed by underground pressure,
Bartlot's party halted on the crest of the ridge to gaze ahead in blank
astonishment. A huge dark blot, a triangle in shape, loomed blackly
against the white of a mountain of snow. It was as though some giant,
passing up this valley, had painted his huge triangular flag on the
smooth white, and had gone on his way.
To find the meaning of that mysterious black tri-cornered surface, they
must push on to it. It could not be far, just across the valley and up
the next height.
But "just across the valley" was a deceptive term. In the haze of the
ever shifting Arctic lights, horizons are most uncanny things. Sometimes
objects far away seem almost under the nose. And again, men find their
feet mounting some small rise that in the haze they had thought was far
away. Mirages, too, fling processions of strange scenes before the eye.
A mountain, a lake, a river looms vividly ahead, then fades back into
the shadows from which it has sprung.
So it was a good ten hours of hard travel, and stumblings, and dodgings
of ice pitfalls, before the exploration party came within "normal
eyesight" view of the great black triangle.
Then they found that, instead of a black surface on the mountain side,
it was a great black hole leading back and back into the mountain
depths.
"A cave! A whale of a cave!" shouted Renaud who was taking his turn at
leading, and had scrambled up the slope a rope-length ahead of the
others.
It was a whale of a cave--one of those mammoth, finned and fluked
creatures of the sea could have drifted in here and brought his whole
family with him.
The snow domes and pits the party had just passed were as toys compared
to this evidence of mighty pressure forces within the earth. Some
terrifically violent cataclysm must have flung up these two great walls
of rock and ice that slanted together and formed a vast triangular
tunnel.
At close view, it was a place of beauty. The depths that penetrated the
mountain were dark. But here at the mighty three hundred foot entrance
all was white. Crystal fringe of ice stalactites hung from the roof like
huge prisms on a giant's candelabra. Snow banks, in soft mounds, guarded
the opening. Now and again the stiff wind swept flurries from these
drifts and scattered the white powder over the floor of the cavern in
ever-changing patterns.
"A hangar for our dirigible! She could ease into here slicker than a
banana into a peel!" shouted Captain Bartlot.
"Banana in a peel!" echoed Valchen. "Why, Captain, she could park in
here and still leave room for an airplane to sail in rings around her!
Whew! Some house we've found ourselves!"
"Think I'll do housekeeping over there, set up my portable stove and
all." Sanderson indicated a side cave like a wing room off the main
tunnel.
Electric torchlights were pulled from their packs and put into use.
Excited laughter and shouts echoed from the mighty roof and rumbled back
through the cave, as they pushed slowly on, exploring wonders as they
went. The ice drip on the cave walls had built itself into beautiful
fantasies. Here stood a row of mighty columns like the pipes of a vast
organ. Over there hung delicate ice lacework. Further on was a scalloped
basin with a pillar rising out of it, icy semblance of a statue set in a
fountain basin.
But even an ice wonder-hall set with frozen filigree could not turn
their minds over long from the pangs of hunger. The journey had been one
continuous round of labor and anxiety. The steep climb in the rarefied
atmosphere told on strength and lungs. So before penetrating the depths
of the cavern, the party decided to halt for food and rest. Back near
the entrance, they dropped down, eased their heavy burdens to the snowy
floor, and joyously opened up their packets of sandwiches and thermos
bottles of steaming hot chocolate.
As they ate, this advance crew went ahead with their planning of how
they could utilize the great tunnel to house the airship.
"We can drop the ice anchor out there on the slope," said Captain Jan
between hearty bites of a thick meat sandwich. "Then all hands can man
the drag ropes and with a little help from the motor, we ought to be
able to ease the Nardak into this ready-made hangar as pretty as you
please."
"And some of the ice pillars will do for anchor posts to knot the ropes
a--Hi, what's that?" The big fur-clad fellow who spoke cocked an eye
upward.
Suddenly zooming almost over their heads, flapping its long wings and
quavering its hoarse hooting call, a great white cliff-owl departed
indignantly, his raucous voice hurling back protest to these invaders of
his icy domain.
"Umph!" grunted Sanderson. "Looks like he's serving notice on us that
this house is already taken. Don't you reckon we'd better step up the
street to the real estate agent in the next block and see what he's got
in the way of nice Arctic mansions and cottages to offer us."
Sanderson's gay banter choked off in a sputter, and a wild look came
into his eyes.
A sound swept, through the cave, the long-drawn, shivery "wha-o-o-o-ah!"
of the wolf-pack trailing meat.
Another moment, and the killer pack surged into view, speeding out of
the depths of the cave itself.
The men screamed and leaped for the cavern walls, clambering madly up,
clinging grimly to ice ledge and ice stalactite, praying that they would
bear human weight.