PROSPECTING
"Ah-boom-ah!" It sounded like guns, but it could be only the roar of
some glacier avalanche, or an ice peak splitting asunder.
"Ah-boom-ah! Ah-boom!" There it came again, almost at hand.
Puffs of white smoke, fur-jacketed men running, dropping on knee to aim,
to fire, leaping up to run on again. These were Goode, Millard,
Harrison, and a score of armed men from the dirigible. At their
onslaught, the wolf-pack leaped snarling into action, faced the hail of
lead for a moment, then fled, leaving their dead behind. The snarling
call and hunger wail of a pack cheated of its prey drifted back on the
wind.
Numb and stiff in their frost-rimed furs, the cave refugees had to be
lifted down from the ice ledges. Hot soup, and many hands to rub up
circulation in numb forms soon brought them back to normal.
"How--how'd you ever find us so quick?" asked Renaud. "Radio wouldn't
work--"
"Like thunder, it wouldn't!" ejaculated Tornado Harrison, whirling on
his heel. "Why, your voice came sliding in on that ship's instrument
like greased lightning. Simms tuned in to your voice soon as that buzz
signal zipped in. He answered you a dozen times, telling you that help
was coming. Didn't you get that?"
"Got nothing, not a sound, till those guns boomed. They were powerful
welcome, though," Renaud grinned, then sobered down. "Something wrong
with my instrument. Next time it might not work even one way. Got to
look into that."
* * * * *
The next few days saw mighty changes at the ice cave. Instead of
slinking wolves and flapping owls, it now housed a settlement of
humankind. A very modern settlement it was. Man had brought electricity
into the wastes of the Arctic,--electricity for heating, for cooking,
for running various mechanical devices.
Before the explorers moved into this vast, ready-built, triangular
abode, however, some precautionary steps were taken. No telling whether
bear as well as wolf had made this a den. Smoke bombs and gas rockets
were hurled in to drive out any dangerous inmates. Then when the
atmosphere cleared, thorough investigation was made by the light of
electric torches. They found themselves in a mammoth shelter. A great
opening back into the mountain that must have been full three city
blocks deep by a block wide. So high was its pointed ceiling that our
National Capitol and a couple of skyscrapers besides could have been
housed beneath it.
With the motors running gently, and with men hauling at the drag ropes,
the great silver hull of the Nardak was finally drawn into this Arctic
cave-hangar. Ice columns served as anchor posts for its hawsers. The
great dirigible held central place within the shelter. Here and there
little rooms and tunnels rayed off from the main room. In one was set up
a workshop with anvil and hammers and an electric furnace. In another a
kitchen with pots and stove and part of the stores banked against the
wall. Further on, Lee Renaud had spread some laboratory material, tubes,
acids, wires. He was trailing the flaw in his radio receiver,
experimenting with an acid dip for selenized plates, to render them
impervious to the terrific cold of this bleak white world. Since the
wiring of his radio was in perfect order, and since the little machine
worked well within a compartment heated to moderate warmth, Renaud was
more than sure that the penetrating touch of the bitter Arctic must have
interfered with his sensitized plates. With grim determination he pushed
on with his work. He must find the flaw, must find the cure. Failure of
these little portable connecting links could spell failure for the whole
expedition.
When the expedition began to settle itself into the real business of
this hazardous journey, seeking gold in this white, frozen land, Renaud
watched his little "knapsack radios" being placed in the various field
outfits with a clutch at his heart. Suppose the new acid-treated plates
worked no better than the old ones? Suppose, in dire need, the radios
failed, even as his had failed in part during the wolf episode!
Far different from anything that had ever heretofore been tried out,
were Captain Jan Bartlot's very modern methods of gold seeking. For
generations, the great Canadian Northwest has been luring men into its
frozen heart to seek wealth. The magnet which drew adventurers into this
enormous wilderness, where for hundreds upon hundreds of miles there was
no sign of human life, no vegetation save the fossilized leaves and
twigs of a million years ago, no connection with the world of living
men--the magnet which lured was mineral wealth. Gold, silver, nickel,
platinum, not reckoned in millions of dollars, but in billions, lay
almost to hand, just below the frozen crust of this frozen land. For
hope of such treasures, men in the past pushed into the very fringes of
the Arctic Circle by the primitive sledge drawn by wolf-dogs, and the
equally primitive canoe of bark or skin. With such crude, laborious
means of travel it took almost superhuman endurance to even reach the
mineral fields of the Arctic. When the old-time mining prospector
stepped off the train and aboard sled or canoe, it meant a whole summer
of grueling, grinding travel before he reached the northern ore country.
Then winter darkness would cover the land, and the prospector could do
nothing but sit down and await the coming of another spring. The
following year, when the red rim of the sun again showed above the
Arctic world, he set about his prospecting, slow work that might lead
him to wealth, but that would likely take the whole of summer daylight
in the doing. That meant another settling down for another lonely
sojourn through the night of winter. The next spring the bearded,
fur-clad prospector trekked his wealth back to civilization--if he lived
to tell the tale of those terrible years of frozen exposure, hardship
and suffering. Three years to trek a thousand miles and back! Hundreds
followed the lure of gold up into the far north. Only tens lived to get
back.
Olaf Valchen was one of those prospectors, who, eight years ago,
followed the land trail and the water trail, by sled, by skin canoe, up
into the frozen north. He had found gold--millions of dollars' worth of
it in the strange rottenstone mounds that edged a frozen lake. Three
years later he reached civilization, but as penniless as when he had
adventured forth. On the long trail, when one has to either cast away
life or gold--well, one drops the heavy skin sacks in the snow, and
struggles on, thankful to survive.
And now he was going back to try to find again the trail that led to
gold. But this time he was following the Arctic trail in a manner that
was most modern of the modern.
In the past, one year by sled and portage! Now, over the same trail by
air in a few days! As the Bartlot expedition had by dirigible so speeded
up the trek into the north, so it now planned to speed up the business
of prospecting.
In this marvel of mine-prospecting by air, the camera was to be the
surveyor's first instrument.
When the great dirigible backed out of its ice hangar and took the air
once more, it wore a new appendage--a small, boat-like arrangement that
swung by long hawsers far below the hull. In the nose of this and aimed
toward earth were set three big motion-picture cameras. The major part
of that million feet of film was about to be put into use.
As the huge ship of the air, day after day, radiated out from its cave
base on journeys that covered hundreds of miles, the steady grind of
cameras devouring film made aerial maps of the frozen hills, valleys,
mountains, and lakes.
This was no film to be "canned" and carried to a warmer clime for
development and display. To fulfill its purpose, it had to be developed
right here in liquid baths of eight hundred gallons of water. A
startling order for a land where water was not water at all, but solid
ice. So after the aerial cameras had clicked their final click, some
rousing times were had at the ice cave camp. Captain, engineers, weather
man, radio men, doctor, geologist, cook and crew, every man-jack of them
turned out to lug snow, three tons of it! Cook pots were everywhere.
Buckets and bags of snow were dumped in them to melt. In the end, tons
of snow made hundreds of gallons of water--and the film had its
developing bath, Arctic or no Arctic!
Outside on the snow barrens, the polar world went its old way. The cold
streamers of the northern lights flickered in the sky; the wolf-pack
flung its hunting howl on the winds; the great white bear stalked across
his lonely domain.
But within the shelter of the ice tunnel, a handful of humans had dared
to bring a new way of life into the Arctic wilds. Here a little audience
sat thrilled and tense before a screen on which a moving-picture machine
projected flight pictures made and developed in the very teeth of Arctic
cold. Here was pictured no tawdry drama of human love and hate. Instead
the film unrolled magnificent vistas of mountain land and lake land.
Before the screen sat the expedition geologists, exploring a thousand
miles by paper in less time than the prospectors of other days took to
explore only a few miles on foot, and with the pick and shovel. To a
geologist, this pointed range of hills meant a certain rock formation.
The lake bed presaged another. The long, low, rounded mounds circling
water meant the great pre-Cambrian rock shield, the oldest stone
formation in the north country, stone so old that its weathered seams
have chipped and cracked and broken, so that the treasure it once hid
now shows through in extrusions of gold or copper, silver or platinum.
With modern machines in that ice hangar, this little band of explorers
could tap the air of the civilized latitudes and bring its music across
thousands of miles of snow barrens. A turn of the dial in the ship's
radio-room, and the long arm of radio reached forth and plucked music
out of the air, the latest news from America's metropolitan cities,
tunes from Broadway and personal messages from well-wishers.
"Shades of all ancient explorers!" Lee Renaud chuckled to himself. "How
those old fellows would turn over in their graves at the idea of music
from Broadway being just twenty seconds from the Arctic Circle. And it
all happened because a Pomeranian monk shut some electricity in a glass
jar." As his mind went back to his own first studies of things
electrical, Lee had the strange feeling that King's Cove and all his old
life were in the realm of the unreal--that only the Arctic, and radio at
the top of the world, and a modern airship flying the polar wastes were
real.
When, from study of the aerial photographs, the geological map was
finally pieced together and arranged, it was time for the ground
prospecting to begin. The prospectors were carried out in pairs. The
dirigible landed them in various places where the ground formation was
such as to indicate the pre-Cambrian sheath rising in its long, shallow
mounds. Some men were put down within a few miles of the cave base;
some, hundreds of miles away. These intrepid ones were left with a pup
tent, an eiderdown sleeping bag, a rifle and ammunition, radio outfit
and food.
Left alone, the men were to make a temporary camp immediately and to
begin prospecting. If they made a find, they were to communicate with
the main base by radio, or by orange flags laid out on the white snow as
signals for the dirigible when it passed over again. In the prospecting
crew were the best of their kind, miners from Africa, India and the
Yukon.
The messages began rolling in incredibly soon. The ship's radio men had
to dance continual attendance on buzzer signal and radio code. The first
prospector to get in touch with dirigible headquarters was Olaf Valchen.
"Stand by--O. V. on the air! After breakfast, better hop over here in
that sky boat. Location a hundred miles west of where longitude 110 cuts
latitude 65. Come prepared to knock off a few samples of greenstone with
a geologist's hammer, and fly back to base to have 'em assayed before
supper. Come in a hurry! Got something real to show you! O. V. signing
off!"
As the great dirigible, answering this joy call, sped through the snow
haze and skimmed lower and lower, her lookouts sighted the orange signal
laid out on the frozen white, and her engines were halted. The ice
anchor was dropped and with a loud hissing seared its way to a secure
depth. The hawsers were windlassed up, and the great hull eased to earth
on its pneumatic bumpers. The entrances to gondolas and navigating
section were flung open--and the first fellow out was Yiggy, fur boots
and all, barking a delighted greeting to his stocky blond Norwegian
master. Scooping up the wriggling terrier into his arms, Olaf Valchen
led the way to his find.
A hundred paces back from where he had laid out his flag signal, the
prospector stopped on the banks of a frozen lake. Circling the lake was
a rim of low mounds. One of these, like a domed ant hill, thirty feet
high and some two hundred feet in diameter, had been partly freed of its
frozen crust. These bare spots showed dull green and gray, the famous
greenstone of the Canadian prospectors who had made lucky strikes.
Nakaluka, the rottenstone of the Eskimos! So old was this, the oldest
stone formation in the north country, that it was crumbling asunder,
cracking apart in great seams. And in those seams lay gold, glittering
and yellow.
Lee Renaud could feel his heart thumping against his double-furred
shirt. He had not dreamed that his eyes would ever see such a thing--a
great mound that was one vast heap of wealth, piled up in plain sight,
set out where anyone strolling by in the course of the last thousand
years might have seen it.
A few hours of work and they had collected bagfuls of samples, so rich
that the naked eye could almost estimate their value.
Excitement and happiness swirled through Lee Renaud. But it was not all
"gold" excitement. His chief thrill was that his radio had passed a
great test. Despite the creeping touch of abnormal cold on metal and
acid and tube, his radio had brought in the message! His latest
improvement had worked! Already still other plans were dimly outlining
themselves, plans for stretching the power of his tiny instrument,
making its call reach farther and farther.
Other reports were radioed in. Some prospectors had found other
pre-Cambrian rock mounds, but with slight gold value, for ridges of
granite rose too close and precluded the possibility of the ore veins
stretching to any distance. Here and there, though, more of the vastly
rich finds were located, mapped, stake-claimed, and sample ore taken.
On this one trip, gold worth millions of dollars could be taken out. And
that was but the beginning. In the next few years, these Arctic Barren
Lands would see civilization brought into them because of man's mastery
of the flying ship, and his new power of speeding the spoken word
through the air on the waves of radio. For this forward march of
civilization into the waste places, first bases of operation would have
to be laid. Great dirigibles would transport the gas, food, equipment up
into the North. Planes would be flown in. Hangars would be set up. Spare
engines, spare parts, together with landing gears for summer or winter,
all would be stored away. Gasoline and oil would be put down in large
caches. Gradually a combination airport and mining camp would spring
into being, with huts, radio mast, machine shops and the rest of the
equipment.
Bartlot's expedition into the great northland had achieved success. And
future success loomed ahead.
To Lee Renaud, it was all very wonderful and marvelous. Success written
in large letters! And yet through it all, he felt a strange little throb
of regret. This success had been too easy, too mechanical. He could not
down an unwonted touch of sadness that soon there would be left no more
surprises on this world of ours. No far, unknown, mysterious and frozen
outposts for man to dream about. The White North conquered, and turned
into factory ground!
But young Renaud was indulging too soon in boyish regrets over man's
conquest of the great white mysteries of the north country.
The frozen North still held some surprises for puny man who had dared
push his machines of sound and of flight into her vast lonely spaces.
The North reached her icy fingers after the huge silver Nardak loaded
with Arctic treasure and headed southward; she roared out her power in
merciless blasts that tossed and whirled the great ship like some chip
at the base of a cataract.