THE SHIP OF OLAF THE VIKING.
"Stop all that confusion," roared Captain Barrington through his
megaphone, which he had snatched from its place on the bridge.
Silence instantly followed, only to be succeeded by a tearing and
rending sound.
The rigging of the foremast had caught in a projecting ridge of the
berg and was being torn out. The ship trembled and shook as if a giant
hand was crushing her, but so far her heavy timbers seemed to have
stood the shock. Presently the noises ceased and the air began to grow
less chilly.
"I believe we are free of the berg!" shouted Captain Hazzard.
The rapid clearing away of the dense fog that had hung like a pall
about the seemingly doomed ship confirmed this belief. By great good
fortune the Southern Cross had been spared the fate of many ships that
venture into the polar seas, and the boys gazing backward from the
bridge could see the mighty berg, looking as huge as a cathedral,
slowly increasing its distance from them, as it was borne along on the
current.
"Hurrah, we are safe!" cried Harry.
"Don't be too sure," warned Captain Barrington. "I hope we are, but
the vessel will have to be examined before we can be certain. In any
event our foremast and bowsprit are sad wrecks."
The portions of the ship he referred to were, indeed, badly damaged.
The shrouds supporting the foremast had been ripped out by the berg on
the port or left hand side of the vessel, and her jibboom had been
snapped off short where the berg struck her. Two boats had, besides,
been broken and the paint scraped off the polar ship's sides.
"We look like a wreck," exclaimed Billy.
"We may think ourselves lucky we got off so easily," said Captain
Barrington, "we have just gone through the deadliest peril an
antarctic ship can undergo."
The Brutus now came gliding up, and after congratulations had been
exchanged between the two ships, a new hawser was rigged and the
Southern Cross was once more taken in tow.
"I don't want any more encounters with icebergs," said Billy, as the
ship proceeded toward her goal once more.
"Nor I," spoke the others.
"It's a pity this isn't at the north pole," said the professor, who
was varnishing dried fish in the cabin, where this conversation took
place.
"Why?" asked Frank.
"Because, if it had been, there might have been a polar bear on that
iceberg. I have read that sometimes they drift away on bergs that
become detached and are sighted by steamers quite far south."
"Why,--do you want a polar bear skin," asked Billy, "you can buy lots
of them in New York."
"Oh, I don't care about the polar bear," said the professor quickly,
"but the creatures have a kind of flea on them that is very rare."
At the idea of hunting such great animals as polar bears for such
insignificant things as fleas, the boys all had to laugh. The
professor, who was very good-natured, was not at all offended.
"Small animals are sometimes quite as interesting as large ones," was
all he said.
The next day the rigging and bowsprit were refitted and further and
further south steamed the Brutus with the polar ship in tow. The fires
of the Southern Cross had now been started and her acetylene gas plant
started going as the heat and light were needed. Icebergs were now
frequently met with and the boys often remained on deck at night,
snugly wrapped in furs, to watch the great masses of ice drift by.
Although they were as dangerous as ever, now that the ships were in
cooler water the bergs did not create a fog as they did in the warmer
region further north. By keeping a sharp lookout during the day and
using the searchlights at night, Captain Barrington felt fairly
confident of avoiding another encounter with an ice mountain. The
damage the ship had sustained in her narrow escape from annihilation
had proved quite difficult to repair, though before the vessel reached
the sixtieth parallel it had been adjusted.
"Well, boys," announced Captain Hazzard one day at noon, "we are now
not more than three hundred miles from the Great Barrier."
"Beyond which lies the polar mystery," exclaimed Frank.
Captain Hazzard glanced at him quickly.
"Yes, the polar mystery," he repeated, "perhaps now is as good a time
as any for telling you boys the secret of this voyage. Come to my
cabin and I will tell you one of the objects of our expedition, which
hitherto has been kept a secret from all but the officers."
The excitement of the boys may be imagined as they followed the
captain to his cabin and seated themselves on a seat arranged above
the radiator.
"It's the ship of Olaf," whispered Billy to Harry.
"Of course," began Captain Hazzard, "the main object of this
expedition is to plant the flag of the United States at 'furthest
south,' even if not at the pole itself."
"And to capture a South Polar flea and a fur-bearing pollywog," put in
the professor, who had included himself in the invitation to the boys.
"Exactly," smiled the captain, "but there is still another object
scarcely of less importance than the ones that I and the professor,"
he added with a smile, "have enumerated."
"You boys have all heard of the daring rovers who set out centuries
ago in their ships to explore unknown oceans?"
The boys nodded.
"You mean the Vikings?" asked Frank.
"Yes," replied the captain. "Well, some time ago a member of one of
our great scientific bodies, while traveling in Sweden, discovered in
a remote village an odd legend concerning some sailors who claimed to
have seen an old Viking ship frozen in the ice near the Great Barrier.
They were poor and superstitious whalemen and did not dare to disturb
it, but they brought home the story."
"And you think the ship is still there," broke in Harry.
"If they really saw such a thing there is every reason to suppose that
it is," rejoined the lieutenant. "In the ice anything might be
preserved almost indefinitely. Providing the yarn of the whalemen is
true, we now come to the most interesting part of the story. The
scientist, who has a large acquaintance among librarians and
custodians of old manuscripts in European libraries, happened to
mention one night to a friend what he had heard in the little
Norwegian fishing village. His friend instantly surprised him by
declaring that he had an idea what the ship was.
"To make a long story short, he told him that years before, while
examining some manuscripts in Stockholm, he had read an account of a
Viking ship that in company with another had sailed for what must have
been the extreme South Pacific. One of the ships returned laden with
ivory and gold, which latter may have been obtained from some mine
whose location has long since been lost, but the other never came
back. That missing ship was the ship of Olaf the Rover, and as her
consort said, she had last been seen in the South Pacific. The
manuscript said that the returned rovers stated that they had become
parted from the ship of Olaf in a terrific gale amid much ice and
great ice mountains. That must have meant the antarctic regions. This
much they do know, that Olaf's ship was stripped of her sails and
helpless when they were compelled by stress of weather to abandon her.
It is my theory and the theory of a man high in the government, who
has authorized me to make this search, that the ship of Olaf was
caught in a polar current and that the story heard so many years after
about the frozen ship in the ice is true."
"Then somewhere down there along the Great Barrier there is a Viking
ship full of ivory and gold, you believe?" asked Frank.
"I do," said the captain.
"And the ice has preserved it all intact?" shouted Billy.
"If the ship is there at all she is undoubtedly preserved exactly as
she entered the great ice," was the calm reply.
"Gosh!" was the only thing Billy could think of to say.
"Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it?" gasped Harry.
"Maybe some Viking fleas got frozen up, too," chirped the professor,
hopefully. "What a fine chance for me if we find the ship."
"Have you the latitude and longitude in which the whalers saw the
frozen vessel?" asked Frank.
"I have them, yes," replied the captain, "and when the winter is over
we will set out on a search for it. On our march toward the pole that
will make only a slight detour."
"Was it for this that you wanted to have our aeroplane along?" asked
Frank, his eyes sparkling.
"Yes," was the reply, "in an airship you can skim high above the
ice-fields and at a pace that would make an attempt to cover unknown
tracts on foot ridiculous. If the Viking ship is to be found it will
have to be your achievement."
Captain Hazzard was called out on deck at this juncture and the boys,
once he was out of the room, joined in a war dance round the swinging
cabin table.
"Boys, will you take me along when you go?" asked the professor
anxiously. "If there is any chance of getting a Viking flea I would
like to. It would make my name famous. I could write a book about it,
too."
"But you've got a book to write already about the Patagonians,"
objected Frank.
"Bless me, so I have," exclaimed the absent-minded old man. "However
that can wait. A Viking flea would be a novelty indeed."
At this moment loud tramplings on the deck overhead and shouts
apprised them that something out of the ordinary must be occurring.
Just as they were about to emerge from the cabin the captain rushed
in. He seemed much excited.
"My fur coat, quick," he cried, seizing the garment from Frank, who
had snatched it from its peg and handed it to him.
"What has happened?" asked Frank.
The words had hardly left his lips before there came a terrible
grinding and jarring and the Southern Cross came to a standstill. Her
bow seemed to tilt up, while her stern sank, till the cabin floor
attained quite a steep slope.
"What can be the matter?" cried the professor, as he dashed out after
the boys and the captain, the latter of whom had been much too excited
to answer Frank's question.