THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC.
The professor was the first to break the tense silence that followed
Frank's words.
"Into the heart of the Antarctic," he breathed.
There seemed to be something in the words that threw a spell of awed
silence over them all. Little was said as on and on through the polar
night the aeroplane drove,--the great wind of the roof of the world
harassing her savagely, viciously,--as if it resented her intrusion
into the long hidden arcana of the polar Plateau.
It grew so bitter cold that the chill ate even through their furs and
air-proofed clothing. The canvas curtains were hoisted for a short
distance to keep off the freezing gale. They dared not set them fully
for fear they might act as sails and drive the ship before the gale so
fast that all control would be lost.
At ten o'clock Frank, his hands frozen almost rigid, surrendered the
wheel to Harry.
It now began to snow. Not a heavy snowfall but a sort of frozen flurry
more like hail in its texture. Frank glanced at his watch.
Eleven o'clock.
"How's she headed?" shouted Harry, above the song of the polar gale.
"Due south," was the short reply as the other boy bent over the
compass.
"Well, wherever we are going, we are bound for the pole, there's some
grim satisfaction in that," remarked Frank.
On and on through the cold they drove. The snow had stopped now and
suddenly Billy called attention to a strange phenomenon in the
southern sky.
It became lit with prismatic colors like a huge curtain, gorgeously
illuminated in its ample folds by the rays of myriad colored
searchlights.
"Whatever is it?" gasped Billy in an awed tone as the mystic lights
glowed and danced in almost blinding radiance and cast strange colored
lights about the laboring aeroplane.
"The Aurora Australis," said the professor in an almost equally
subdued voice, "the most beautiful of all the polar sky displays."
"The Aurora Australis," cried Frank, "then we are near the pole
indeed."
Half past eleven.
The lights in the sky began to dim and soon the aeroplane was driving
on through solid blackness. The suspense was cruel. Not one of the
adventurers had any idea of the conditions they were going to meet. A
nameless dread oppressed all.
Suddenly Frank, after a prolonged scrutiny of the compass, voiced what
was becoming a general fear.
"What if we are being drawn by magnetic force toward the pole?"
"And be dashed to destruction as we reach it?" the professor finished
for him.
Brave as they were, the adventurers gave a shudder that was not born
of the gnawing cold as the possibility occurred to them. Frank glanced
at the barograph. Fifteen hundred feet. They were then holding their
own in altitude. This was a cheering sign.
Ten minutes to twelve.
The strange lights began to reappear. Glowing in fantastic forms they
seemed alive with lambent fire. As the boys gazed at each other they
could see that their features were tinted with the weird fires of the
polar sky.
Twelve o'clock.
Frank gave a hurried dash toward the compass and drew back with a
shout.
"Look," he shouted, "we are within the polar influence."
The needle of the instrument was spinning round and round at an almost
perpendicular angle in the binnacle with tremendous velocity. The
pointer tore round its points like the hands of a crazy clock.
"What does it mean?" quavered Harry.
"The South Pole, or as near to it as we are ever likely to get,"
exclaimed Frank, peering over the side.
Far below illuminated fantastically by the lights of the dancing,
flickering aurora he could see a vast level plain of snow stretching,
so it seemed, to infinity. There was no open sea. No strange land.
Nothing but a vast plateau of silent snow.
"Fire your revolvers, boys," shouted Frank, as, suiting the action to
the word, he drew from his holster his magazine weapon and saluted the
silent skies.
"The South Pole--Hurrah!"
It was a quavering cry, but the first human sound that had ever broken
the peace of the mysterious solitudes above which they were winging.
Suddenly in the midst of the "celebration" the aeroplane was violently
twisted about. Every bolt and stay in her creaked and strained under
the stress, but so well and truly had she been built that nothing
started despite Frank's fears that the voyage to the pole was to end
right there in disaster.
The adventurers were thrown about violently. All, that is, but Frank,
who had now resumed the wheel and steadied himself with it. As they
scrambled to their feet Billy chattered:
"Whatever happened--did a cyclone strike us?"
For answer Frank bent over the compass and gave a puzzled cry.
"I don't understand this," he exclaimed.
"Don't understand what?" asked Harry, coming to his side.
"Why look here--what do you make of that?"
"The needle has steadied and is pointing north!" cried Harry, as he
gazed at the compass.
"North," echoed the professor.
"There's no question about it," rejoined Frank, knitting his brows.
"What is your explanation of this sudden reversal of the wind?" asked
the professor.
"I know no more than you," replied the puzzled young aviator, "the
only reason I can advance is that at the polar cap some strange
influences rule the wind currents and that we are caught in a polar
eddy, as it were."
"If it holds we are saved," cried the professor, who had begun to fear
that they might never be able to emerge from their newly discovered
region.
Hold it did and daybreak found the aeroplane above the same
illimitable expanse of snow that marked the pole, but several miles to
the north.
"I'm going down to take an observation," said Frank, suddenly, "and
also, has it occurred to you fellows that we haven't eaten a bite
since last night?"
"Jiminy crickets," exclaimed Billy Barnes, his natural flow of spirits
now restored, "that's so. I'm hungry enough to eat even a fur-bearing
pollywog, if there's one around here."
"Boys," began the professor solemnly as Billy concluded, "I have a
confession to make."
"A confession?" cried Harry, "what about?"
"Why for some time I have entertained a doubt in my mind and that
doubt has now crystallized to a certainty. I don't believe there is
such a creature as the fur-bearing pollywog."
"Then Professor Tapper is wrong?" asked Harry, amazed at the
scientist's tone.
"I am convinced he is. I shall expose him when we return--if we ever
do," declared the scientist.
A few minutes later they landed on the firm snow and soon a hearty
meal of hot canned mutton, vegetables, soup, and even a can of plum
pudding, warmed on their stove and washed down with boiling tea, was
being disposed of.
"And now," said Frank, as he absorbed the last morsels on his plate,
"let's see whereabouts on the ridgepole of the earth we have lighted."
The boy's observation showed that they were at a point some two
hundred miles to the southwest of the spot in which they had left the
crippled dirigible and the Viking ship. The wind had dropped, however,
and conditions were favorable for making a fast flight to the place
they were now all impatient to reach Frank, after a few minutes'
figuring, announced that dusk ought to find them at the Viking ship
and, if all went well, in communication with their friends.
No time was lost in replenishing the gasolene tank from the reserve
"drums," and carefully inspecting the engine and then a long farewell
was bade to the Polar plateau. Without a stop the Golden Eagle winged
steadily toward the northeast, and as the wonderful polar sunset was
beginning to paint the western sky they made out the black form of the
disabled dirigible on the snow barrens not far from the Viking ship's
gully.
As they gazed they broke into a cheer, for advancing toward the other
dark object at a rapid rate was another blot on the white expanse,
which a moment's scrutiny through the glasses showed them was the
motor-sledge packed with men on whose rifles the setting sun glinted
brightly. The Golden Eagle ten minutes later swooped to earth at a
spot not twenty yards from her original landing place and a few
moments later the boys were shaking hands and executing a sort of war
dance about Captain Barrington and Captain Hazzard, while Ben Stubbs
was imploring some one to "shiver his timbers" or "carry away his
top-sails" or "keel-haul him" or something to relieve his feelings.
Eagerly the officers pressed for details of the polar discovery, but
Frank, after a rapid sketching of conditions as they had observed them
at the world's southern axis, went on to describe the events that had
led up to their wild flight and urged immediate negotiations with the
rival explorers. Both leaders agreed to advance at once, convinced
that their force was sufficiently formidable to overcome the Japs.
"Steady, men, and be ready for trouble but make no hostile move till
you get the word," warned Captain Hazzard, as the somewhat formidable
looking party advanced on the stricken dirigible. At first no sign of
life was visible about her, but as they neared the ship Frank saw that
the wrecked cabin had been patched up with canvas, and parts of the
balloon bag that had not burned, till it formed a fairly snug tent.
They were within a hundred paces of it before anyone appeared to have
taken any notice of their arrival and then the little officer, who had
directed the capture of the adventurers, appeared.
As Billy said afterward, he "never turned a hair," over the conditions
that confronted him. He was a beaten man and knew it; but his manner
was perfectly suave and calm.
"Good evening, gentlemen," was all he said, with a wave of his hand
toward the Viking ship and the pile of ivory and gold that still lay
on the edge of the gully, "to the victors belong the spoils and you
are without doubt the victors."
He gazed at the array of armed men that backed up the two officers and
the boys.
"We have come to take formal possession in the name of the United
States, of the remains of the Viking ship," said Captain Hazzard,
somewhat coldly, for, after what he had heard from the boys, he felt
in no way amiably disposed toward the smiling, suave, little man.
"If you have pen and ink and paper in your cabin we will draw up a
formal agreement which will hold good in an international court,"
supplemented Captain Barrington.
A flash of resentment passed across the other's face but it was gone
in an instant.
"Certainly, sir, if you wish it," he said, "but, if it had not been
for those boys we should by this time have been far away."
"I do not doubt it," said Captain Barrington, dryly, "and, now, if you
please, we will draw up and sign the paper."
Ten minutes later, with the boys' signatures on it as witnesses, the
important document was drawn up and sealed with a bit of wax that
Captain Hazzard had in his pocket writing-set. And so ended the
episode of the attempt to seize the treasure of the Viking ship.
Now only remains to be told the manner of its transporting to the
Southern Cross and the last preparations before bidding farewell to
the inhospitable land in which they had spent so much time. First,
however, the castaways of the dirigible were given transportation on
the motor-sledge to their ship which, to the astonishment of all the
American party, they found was snugly quartered in a deep gulf, not
more than twenty miles to the westward of the berth of the Southern
Cross. This accounted for the light and the buzzing of the air-ship
being heard so plainly by the Southern Crucians. The defeated Japs
sailed at once for the north, departing as silently as they had
arrived.
It took many trips of the motor-sledge before the last load of the
Viking ship's strange cargo was snugly stored in the hold of the
Southern Cross. At Captain Hazzard's command the dead Viking was
buried with military honors and his tomb still stands in the "White
silence." Then came the dismantling of the Golden Eagle and the
packing of the aeroplane in its big boxes.
"Like putting it in a coffin," grunted Billy, as he watched the last
cover being screwed on.
All the time this work was going forward the nights and days were
disturbed with mighty reports like those of a heavy gun.
The ice was breaking up.
The frozen sea was beginning to be instinct with life. The time for
the release of the Southern Cross was close at hand.
At last the tedious period of waiting passed and one night with a
mighty crash the ice "cradle" in which the Southern Cross rested
parted from the ice-field and the ship floated free. The engineers'
force had been busy for a week and in the engine-room all was ready
for the start north, but another tedious wait occurred while they
waited for the field-ice to commence its weary annual drift.
At last, one morning in early December, Captain Barrington and Captain
Hazzard gave the magic order:
"Weigh anchor!"
"Homeward bound!" shouted Ben Stubbs, racing forward like a boy.
A week later, as the Southern Cross was ploughing steadily northward,
a dark cloud of smoke appeared on the horizon. It was not made out
positively for the relief ship Brutus till an hour had passed and then
the rapid-fire gun crackled and the remainder of the daylight rockets
were shot off in joyous celebration.
In the midst of the uproar Billy Barnes appeared with a broom.
"Whatever are you going to do with that?" demanded Captain Hazzard,
with a smile, as the lad, his eyes shining with eagerness, approached.
"Please, Captain Hazzard, have it run up to the main-mast head,"
beseeched Billy.
"Have halliards reeved and run it up, Hazzard," said Captain
Barrington, who came up at this moment, "the lads have certainly made
a clean sweep."
So it came about that a strange emblem that much puzzled the captain
of the Brutus was run up to the main-mast head as the two ships drew
together.
"That's the Boy Aviators' standard," said Billy, proudly surveying it.
"We win."
Shortly afterward a boat from the Brutus came alongside with the mail.
"Letters from home," what magic there is in these words to adventurers
who have long sojourned in the solitary places of the earth! Eagerly
the boys seized theirs and bore them off to quiet corners of the deck.
"Hurrah," cried Billy, after he had skimmed through his epistles. "I'm
commissioned to write up the trip for two newspapers and a magazine.
How's your news, boys, good?"
The boys looked up from their pile of correspondence.
"I'm afraid we're going to have a regular reception when we get home,"
said Frank rather apprehensively.
"Hurray! Brass-bands--speeches--red-fire and big-talk," cried Billy.
"None of that for us," said Harry, "I guess we'll retire to the
country for a while, till it blows over."
But they did not escape, for on the arrival of the Polar ships in New
York the boys and the commanders of the expedition were seized on and
lionized till newer idols caught the popular taste. Then, and not till
then, were they allowed to settle down in peace and quiet to tabulate
the important scientific results of the expedition.
As for the Professor, what he wrote about Professor Tapper--a screed
by the way that nearly caused a mortal combat between the two
savants--may be read in his massive volume entitled "The Confutation
of the Tapper Theory of a South Polar Fur-Bearing Pollywog, by
Professor Simeon Sandburr." It weighs twelve pounds, and can be found
in any large library.
CONCLUSION.
And here, although the author would dearly like to detail their
further adventures, we must bid the Boy Aviators "Farewell." Those who
have followed this series know, however, that the lads were not likely
to remain long inactive without seeking further aerial adventures.
Whether the tale of these will ever be set down cannot at this time be
forecast. The Chester boys adventures have been recorded, not as the
deeds of paragons or phenomenons, but as examples of what pluck, energy,
and a mixture of brains, can accomplish,--and with this valedictory we
will once more bid "God speed" to "The Boy Aviators."
THE END.