Drake was now on his knees, rooting with Ole. An exclamation from the
Captain proclaimed the discovery of the second black stone which,
buried in the snow, had wrecked the sledge. All hands now began
digging. In a few minutes two small, jagged fragments, evidently pieces
of a larger rock which had been shattered by its impact on the ground
ice, lay clean for inspection.
At first the result was deeply disappointing. One of the fragments
had been so badly scarred by its rough treatment that not a single
pictogram remained on its surface, while the other exhibited only
the broken remains of half a dozen. Neither was worth photographing.
Anderson, having set Drake's disaster to rights, suggested that they
move on.
But Drake appeared to be deaf. The more badly damaged of the two
fragments seemed to hold him hypnotized. Presently he rose to his feet
and kicked the black mass savagely with his heel.
"Fetch a sledge-hammer," he ordered Ole.
"Where in hell am I to get one?"
Edith had already located the handaxe which she now offered to Drake.
With one sharp blow he split the black fragment into two along a
plane of cleavage. The sight which met their eyes brought a cry of
astonishment from all but Anderson and Ole. One surface of the divided
rock was covered with the deeply incised pictograms of prehistoric
monsters, while the other, like a relief map, bore the raised replica
of the same inscription. Yet the whole fragment before Drake split it
into two had seemed to be an ordinary chunk of black, cement-like rock.
Drake's brain was at work.
"If you found twelve dozen of one kind, Hansen," he said, "it is
against all probability that you saw none of the other. Why didn't you
photograph some of them too?"
"I did," Ole replied like a stolid keg. "In all I took over one hundred
pictures of the raised kind of inscriptions. They are in my chest
aboard the ship."
"Then why on earth didn't you show them to me?"
"Because," Anderson informed him, "we knew what sort of men you
scientific chaps are. We didn't want to give you too much to swallow
all at once--just enough in fact to make you hungry for more."
"You win," said Lane. "I want everything you have."
"That's the lot, Doctor, honest. From now on we are as green as you
are."
"And that's saying a good deal. Does this throw any light on your
difficulties with Ole's photographs, Drake?"
"Enough to show me why the whole series doesn't hang together. No
wonder the drawings of those animals are in two different styles
belonging to two totally distinct epochs of art. It also explains a
thing you would have noticed if you had taken the trouble to examine
the pictures carefully. Even I, with my vast ignorance of natural
science, can see that the monsters represented belong to different
ages of the earth's history. Roughly they seem to be alike. But the
resemblance, although real, is no deeper than the similarity between
men and apes. They belong to the same races of creatures, but are
separated by millions of years of evolution."
"You're wrong there, Drake. I prefer to think that the differences are
merely the varying expression of a fixed idea. The minds of the artists
have evolved, not the creations of their art. I'll argue it out with
you later. For the present, does this find affect your guess as to
what's ahead of us?"
"Not materially. The struggle that I deduced from the symbolism of the
inscriptions must have been longer than I thought. That's all."
"Where did you find your inscriptions, Ole?"
"A good seventy miles north of here."
"Then there should be more in this neighborhood, because it probably
is nearer the source of the explosion. If so, we shall find enough to
write a prehistoric encyclopaedia from A to Z."
And so it proved. At intervals of half a mile to a mile they found
the vast undulating snowfields littered with colossal fragments of
black rock, many of which on their level faces were covered with the
deeply cut figures of prehistoric monsters. As many more smaller chunks
doubtless lay buried beneath the snow and ice of two winters. Not
stopping to photograph these now they hurried on to their goal, the
source of the eerie light which they had seen from the ship.
That night, without much wind, was cloudless. Although the temperature
dropped below zero none of the party experienced any serious discomfort
in their dry sleeping bags. The months of hardening in the Canadian
Rockies and Alaska had well prepared the new-comers to the Antarctic
for hardships which otherwise might have proved unendurable. The
absence of high winds on the bleak plateau was an unexpected piece of
good luck. By rare fortune they had penetrated one of those mysterious,
almost windless regions of the Antarctic continent which have puzzled
explorers.
The first day they covered only twenty miles. With the experience of a
march behind them they made a little over forty miles through the dead
calm of the second day, to creep into their bags at night exhausted.
The men took watch by turns in two-hour spells. Not a flicker of
the strange fire they were seeking stained the cloudless night sky.
Beginning to doubt the correctness of their route they were wholly
unprepared for the inferno into which they blundered at five o'clock of
the third day.
The start at five o'clock on that memorable morning was made under a
sky blazing with the icy jewels of innumerable stars. At sunrise they
found themselves ascending a sharp declivity of blue ice. Up that long
ascent the going was necessarily slow. By slogging ahead they had risen
two thousand feet shortly before ten o'clock. As nearly as they could
judge they were now climbing over a huge fold of rock running almost
due north and south. The view from the crest of the rise confirmed
their guess. Below them they saw a broad trough running north and south
as far as vision carried, filled almost to the brim with tumbling white
mist. Some thirty miles distant the farther side of the trough towered
high above the rolling mists in an unbroken barrier of jagged black
peaks.
Although it looked hopeless they decided after a brief consultation to
continue on their course. Should the black barrier prove as forbidding
as it looked from thirty miles away they must turn back. They were
not going to be balked, however, by the mere aspect of difficulties.
Without further debate they descended the long ice slope into the
heaving pall of white fog.
The descent was made without accident. Arrived on the floor of the
trough Anderson produced his compass and led off through the swirling
mist. Lane assumed command of one sledge with Drake as helper. A few
yards behind the leader Ole and Edith managed the second. So thick was
the fog that Anderson's figure only some forty feet ahead was invisible
to the tenders of the second sledge. Nevertheless the Captain set a
stiff pace over the blue ice and hard packed snow crystals.
They had now but four and a half days left in which to make their
objective and return to the ship. The Captain was determined to find
out the nature of that black barrier before Bronson could overtake him
with an unwelcome relief party. The stiff pace, almost a run, suited
the others, for the clutching cold of the fog sought out and gripped
the marrows of their bones.
For perhaps three-quarters of an hour all went well. Then a horrified
shout from Anderson brought the party to a palpitating halt.
"Don't come here," the Captain called back. "Wait till I fetch you."
One by one he led the others to the brink of the death which he had
escaped by half a second. There it gaped, a sheer well in the blue ice
thirty feet across and of depth unknown. The lip of the circular hole
lay flush with the surrounding ice. Its sides dropped straight down as
if carved out with a huge knife. It was a perfect circular well, over
a hundred feet in circumference and of a depth which they could only
guess, for it was full to the brim with white fog.
Edith had an inspiration. She returned to the first sledge.
"Here," she said, handing the Captain a pound tin of soup, "throw that
down and listen for the echo. Then we can figure out how deep it is."
Anderson tossed the can into the centre of the hole. Only the breathing
of the dogs broke the intense stillness. Not the ghost of an echo rose
from the well.
"Probably there is soft snow at the bottom," the Captain remarked.
"Well, I'm glad I'm above instead of below."
Not suspecting what lay before them, the party proceeded through the
fog at a brisk trot. An astonished shout again brought them instantly
to a halt.
"Here's another of the damned things," the Captain announced. "Ole,
fetch a rope. There's one on the second sledge."
"You're not going down it, are you?" Drake asked nervously.
"Not if I can help it, nor the next one either." He tied one end of the
rope securely about his middle and passed the other end to Lane. "Make
that fast to both sledges. When they begin to shoot ahead, pull back
hard. All right, come on. These may be oil wells for all we know."
He marched rapidly forward through the blinding mist. "Follow me
exactly," he called back. "I've just gone two yards south of another."
From that time on they passed at least two of the wells every five
minutes, occasionally cutting across the narrow strip which separated
three or four in a cluster. Prudence urged them to return, but the
determination to see the thing through held them to their course.
They had neither time nor inclination to speculate on the significance
of those sheer pits in the ice and rock. All their will was
concentrated on their feet. One slip and they might learn more of the
mystery than they cared to know.
Anderson forged steadily ahead without speaking. He was bent on
reaching the barrier before turning back, holes or no holes.
At five o'clock they had been marching almost continuously for twelve
hours. The constant strain on their nerves no less than the pull on
their muscles was beginning to tell. Anderson suggested a brief halt
and a warm drink. It would take half an hour to prepare the chocolate.
That would leave them about an hour of such daylight as there was in
the cheesy fog.
They were just about to enjoy the steaming drink when, with a rapid
up and down vibration, the ice beneath them began to shake violently.
The dogs howled dismally and tried to bolt. Suddenly a terrific jar
directly under them sent the party rolling. Staggering to their feet
they succeeded in cowing the dogs. The jarring ceased. In dead silence
the last tremor died.
White and still, they stood staring at each other's scared eyes in the
ghostly mist. Few things so terrify even the most courageous human
being as a violent earthquake. There is about the terrific jarring
an impression of uncontrollable and insane force that temporarily
upsets the balance of the reason, and the helpless victim, powerless
to escape, can only wonder when the torment will cease. Lane had
experienced earthquakes in central China. This, however, was a
different order. To the other members of the party it was a new test of
courage. Drake's knees turned to water. He almost went down when Edith,
suffering from the same malady, clung to him for support. Ole said
nothing. He was too scared to pray. Anderson stood it best.
"That's nothing," he said. "It will save my blasting powder."
The words were hardly off his tongue before it began again, worse than
ever. In ten seconds it was over.
"That's the queerest shake I ever felt," said the Doctor, wiping the
perspiration from his face. "The motion was entirely vertical. It felt
exactly as if someone miles below us was hitting the roof over him with
a heavy iron bar. Listen!"
Miles under their feet they heard a muffled crashing like the slamming
of thousands of doors along a hundred mile corridor. With a last
crescendo of slams the noise ceased, to be followed immediately by a
hollow rumble as of water bursting underground from the sea through
labyrinths of rock. Rising to a sudden, deafening thunder directly
beneath them the shattering noise passed, to mutter itself out in the
bowels of the earth leagues to the south. Then the mist all about them
took sudden life. A great wind, eddying like a maelstrom, spun them
helplessly on the ice.
By instinct rather than reason Anderson got his claspknife open and
cut the rope which bound him to the sledges. At the same instant Drake
and Ole each clutched one of Edith's arms, Lane seized Anderson by his
collar and with the other hand grasped Ole's coat, and all five huddled
together, flattened themselves on the ice. Not one of them afterward
recalled any thought in all of this. It had been purely the instinct of
self-preservation acting automatically.
Spinning like straws in a whirlwind, now this way, now that, they were
too dazed to comprehend what was happening. Only a dim consciousness
that the air was being swept clean of fog penetrated their numbed
consciousness.
The vortex motion of the atmosphere ceased as abruptly as it had begun.
Staggering to their feet in an air as clear and hard as glass they
found themselves less than two feet from the brink of a well fifty
yards across. The last vestige of the fog had been sucked down the
innumerable blowholes. These they now saw thickly pitted over the
desolate ice in all directions to the range of vision.
It was some seconds before they realized the full horror of their
plight. Drake was the first to come out of the stupor.
"The sledges?" he muttered, staring about him in a daze.
They were gone. Anderson took in the situation at a glance. He kept his
nerve.
"Out of this as fast as we can," he said quietly.
He still clutched his compass. They followed him at a run. There was no
time to speculate down which of the wells the sledges had been sucked.
Every nerve strained to get out of that ghastly maze of death traps.
"It's beginning again," Lane said presently. "I felt a slight jar. Down
on your stomachs and all hang together. Hansen, you're heaviest. Get in
the middle."
They cowered on the ice, their hands joined round Ole's stout figure,
waiting for they knew not what.
10