Their brother's death agonies had roused the bewildered scavengers in
a bellowing horde. Blundering into one another in the darkness, the
monsters fought and screamed till the roof shook. And the multitude of
reptilian birds, alarmed at the tumult, clattered down the black tunnel
in flapping clouds, screeching their fright or pain where they dashed
their brainless heads against the unseen walls. Their broken bodies,
raining down on the rock floor, flapped convulsively till the maddened
monsters trampled them to smears.
Twice when a batwinged bird became entangled for a moment in the guy
wires the plane jarred dizzily, and once a bellowing monster lumbering
from its pursuer set the whole machine spinning like a top. Unless the
pillars of fire burst forth soon it would be only a matter of minutes
until the plane was splinters and the bodies of its occupants pulp.
Above the jarring din they sensed a deeper tremor and a heavier
reverberation. The subterranean waves were buffeting their way through
the labyrinthine corridors beneath the tunnel. In a moment the solid
rock floor heaved like a swell of the sea, the blowholes roared, and
ten thousand pillars of flame burst thundering to the roof.
Panic-stricken, the huge monsters scuttled for their burrows in the
mountain of corruption. On a vast scale it was the scurrying of a
multitude of beetles when a board is lifted, letting down the sun on
their secret world.
Blinded by the sudden glare, clouds of the reptilian bat birds crashed
against the walls of the tunnel, breaking heads and wings and necks.
Most horrible of all, hundreds dashed directly into the pillared flames
to be roasted alive and shot to the rock vault, where they exploded.
Their steaming viscera rained upon the floor.
Before she realized what he was about, Ole had cranked the propeller
and was back in the machine. The impact of the bewildered scavenger had
reversed the plane.
"The shortest way," Ole shouted, and headed for the shambles.
Soaring over it, he plunged into the smoke and stench above. They
saw now the cause of the dimmer light above the festering pile. The
blowholes were choked with the huge carcasses which had rolled down
from the vast heap undermined by the feeding of the scavengers. Until
the rushing flames could incinerate these obstructions they must bell
out in roses of fire. Heavy black smoke billowing up from these fierce
crematories filled the narrow channel above the mountain of corruption
with an indescribable foulness.
Mile after mile they flew down the shallow channel between the
corruption and the rock roof, lighted only by the flickering crimson
reflected from the vault. Would it never end? Twenty miles fell behind
them, twenty-five, and still the obscene bat birds rose at their
approach to circle down to their interrupted banquet when the droning
parvenu had passed.
The smoke thickened, but became less foul. Like a breath of heaven they
recognized the reek of burning petroleum.
A cleaner wind cut their faces. Black with soot, the plane shot clear
of the tunnel into the relatively clean night.
They were still enveloped in billowing smoke, but it was not unclean.
An occasional banner of crimson flame unfurling for a moment at the
bottom of the black sea revealed the source of the conflagration. A
vast lake of oil was burning far down there on the floor of the ruined
crater.
Rising sharply, they pierced the heaving smoke pall up to the wonder of
sweet air and icy stars.
The moon had just set. They had emerged into the ruined crater of their
first discovery far west of the line along which they had previously
flown.
Edith, as a rational being, assumed that Ole would fly straight for
the ship at top speed. He, however, had a nobler intention, and one
which did him great credit. Taking the shortest air line to the jagged
rim against the northern stars he let out the engine, soared over the
wilderness of black rocks, black now as Tophet in the moonless night,
and then, when the dim gray of the icy desolation swam into sight, cut
out the motor.
"What in the name of sin are you going to do?" Edith demanded.
"I am going to land on the snowfield beyond these rocks."
"And what for? Are you crazy?"
"Not crazy," he replied solemnly, "although the scoffers would call me
so. And why? Because I am thankful."
"You're raving."
"This is not the first time I have been scorned and mocked for my
faith. If I can forgive Captain Anderson's blasphemous jeers I can put
up with yours."
"I haven't jeered at you, and besides I'm not blasphemous. Just now I
wish I were."
"Whosoever lusteth in his heart after an oath to say it hath committed
the unmentionable sin."
The plane was running along the snowfield parallel to the outlying mass
of jumbled rocks and about eight hundred yards from the nearest.
"On my knees," Ole announced as the plane came to rest, "I shall offer
up thanks for our merciful deliverance to God."
"If you do any such thing in this absurd place I shall box your fat
ears till they sing like all the hosts of Heaven. Don't be a fool. Get
on home to the ship. I'm freezing."
"I pray that you may not some day long for a lump of ice to cool your
tongue."
And with that hypocritical intercession he climbed down to the frozen
snow.
"Look here, Ole," she flung after him, "if you think the Creator is as
big a fool as you are, you are jolly well mistaken. It will serve you
right if you fall down a blowhole. You might at least have the decency
to crank the propeller before you commit suicide."
But Ole was absorbed in his search for the most uncomfortable square
foot on the Antarctic continent. To offer thanks from a bed of downy
ease would not be treating his audience with due respect.
Having found what he sought, he knelt down, uncovered his head, and
opened fire. Edith suspected that his extreme humility, voiced in an
unnecessarily loud tone, was aimed at her instead of at Heaven. His
impersonal allusions to hardness of heart, a stiff neck, a disagreeable
temper and an ungrateful disposition were put with remarkable skill.
Although Edith's name, age, sex and color were meticulously omitted
from his oration he yet contrived to give her a severe and exceedingly
long-winded lecture on her numerous shortcomings. Bitterly did she
regret that her aim was like that of any girl. Otherwise she would have
heaved the heavy thermos bottle into his fat, smug face. It was such a
lovely chance to miss; with his eyes closed like a sleeping lobster's
he wouldn't see it coming.
But common-sense and the Lord were on her side. Ole had overlooked
more than the blowholes. In so astute a theorizer his oversight really
was unpardonable. He should have observed that all the monsters of his
acquaintance were confirmed lovers of a mild temperature. And he should
have reflected that such of the poor brutes as had wandered back to
their ruined home, would naturally gather round the cheerful hearths to
drool over the good old times.
In short, Ole should have known that these heat-loving, carnivorous
monsters would frequent the vicinity of the blowholes. To be snugly
out of the draughts they would retire between eruptions to their
spacious lairs in the jumble of rocks. When the home fires burned
again they would emerge and gather round the blaze. The spells of
cold between roasts would be excellent sharpeners of the appetite.
Undoubtedly the home-loving beasts were communists, sharing all things.
When a journey from the cheery blowholes to the gloomy banquet halls of
the tunnel seemed long and unattractive, they stayed at home and ate
one another.
To these simple-minded beasts the thankful Ole was literally a godsend.
Their pious instincts perceived him as manna dropped from Heaven. It
chanced that he had selected his uncomfortable spot opposite one of
the poorer rookeries. For a week all the famished beasts had been of
two sizes only: mere babies just born and therefore still dear to
their ferocious mothers, and huge, agile brutes of approximately equal
fighting abilities. All intermediate sizes had devoted their lives to
the welfare of the community.
Being of extremely low intelligence, the strapping survivors had not
yet mastered the theory and practice of co-operation. It never entered
their brainless heads that any two of them were more than a match for
an unlucky third. Consequently all starved, whereas two-thirds of
them at any time until the Armageddon between the last gigantic pair
might have wallowed in luxury. Lacking farsighted statesmen they lived
in armed neutrality and hunger until such time as the babies of the
community should develop militarism. But this sporadic sort of uprising
furnished pretty lean pickings.
Unaware of his grateful audience, Ole prayed vigorously. He thanked
Heaven that the blowholes in his immediate vicinity were not as other
blowholes. These were orderly and quiet, the others roaring furnaces of
the devil. He proceeded to inform headquarters that he had a theory.
"This chain of blowholes, O Lord, vents the gas of another tunnel. The
oil tank under these is not connected with the tank under the others.
Thus, O Lord, hast thou prepared a safe place in the wilderness that
thy servant may give thanks unto Thee."
To say the least, Ole lacked neither brazen nerve nor conceit. To
give Edith the full strength of his lecture he continued facing
her. His back, therefore, was toward the rookery. Nevertheless his
remarks carried in all directions unimpaired by distance in that
intensely still air. Staccato echoes from the black rocks repeated his
vainglorious theory. The echoes even improved on his remarks. To Edith,
trying not to listen, it seemed that over there in the rocks there was
a sound of sleepy revelry, a drowsy, incredulous chuckling as it were,
reinforced by subdued squawks. The infernal brood was awake.
Curiously watching a shadow against the starry sky she saw it move,
black out a dazzling planet, and grow larger. Evidently it was not a
lump of rock. A long neck cautiously raised itself above the black mass
like a periscope. Having sighted its prey, the hungry head was quickly
lowered. The black mass effaced itself on the blacker slope of the
rocks.
"Look out!" she cried. "It's coming."
Ignoring the unseemly interruption, Ole theorized louder.
"You idiot! Crank the propeller--run for it!"
"The Lord is mindful of his own," Ole responded unctuously, and
proceeded to give thanks for the fact.
A piercing shriek from Edith brought him to his common sense. One
glance over his shoulder and he was on his feet, running as he had
never run in his fat life. After him like a gigantic ostrich raced
the enormous lizard on its long hind legs, the tail curved up like a
scimitar, and the twenty-foot neck stretched forward to the elastic
limit. No turkey after a hapless grasshopper was ever more eager.
Ole's seven or eight hundred yard start saved him. He fell into Edith's
lap just as a vicious swish of the monster's tail cut the air under the
machine in two.
Looking back toward the rocks, they saw the whole black brood boiling
out over the dim gray desolation. As aimlessly as brainless hens they
darted hither and thither over the snowfields, seeking a prey which had
escaped. Far over the black expanse they raced like great scuttling
lizards, and behind some of the huger shadows trailed three or four
tiny dots like pursuing vermin. These were the babies of the brood
following their eager mothers.
Evidently these creatures were of a breed distinct from any that Edith
and Ole had yet seen alive. On the slaughter beach Ole and Lane had
operated on three roughly similar giants.
So entranced were the observers with the ludicrous steeple-chase that
they failed to note the familiar thunder preceding a "blow." Before
Edith knew what was happening the plane was bounding and tumbling like
a glass ball in a fountain.
She came to her senses just in time. As she shot the plane up for a
sixty degree climb the air immediately below them burst with a dull
roar into thousands of blue flame cones. It was a sharp rebuke to
Ole's irreverent conceit. The theory which he had confided to Heaven
evidently was faulty. After all, the oil tank under this region of
blowholes probably was connected with that under the tunnel. The
backwash of the tide under the tunnel was now forcing up the compressed
gas through the secondary chain of vents.
Looking down, they saw the flame cones descending rapidly. In a
moment they would disappear down the wells. Such, at least, was Ole's
confident prediction. As if to teach him caution in theorizing, the
flames did nothing of the kind. This eruption of gas was not of
precisely the same sort as that first one into which Anderson had
blundered with his party. It was more like the neighboring one under
the tunnel. The flames did not disappear, but lengthening downward to
the blowholes became short pillars of fire. These, however, were on a
much smaller scale, mere conical candles a hundred feet high and from
five to thirty feet thick.
The home fires were again burning merrily. It was impossible not to
feel a twinge of sympathy for the exiled monsters scurrying over the
icy plain to the friendly fires. Mothers abandoned their trailing young
in the race after their more agile mates to the cheery hearths, and
many a small monster was left squawking piteously in the cold. Around
the invigorating warmth and light of the blowholes sociable groups of
three or four huge lizards squatted in amiable content, their hunger
and its consequent animosities for the moment forgotten. Edith was
touched; Ole wasn't.
Mother instinct is said to be universal. Those brainless females
hobnobbing with their ferocious mates around the comforting fires while
their babies cried miserably in the cold, disproved the theory. Again
Edith was deeply touched.
Wheeling back in the starlight, she dipped and circled low above the
forlorn little monsters on the ice. All her dormant mother love awoke
and strode rampant over one particularly shameful case of abandonment.
The isolated little creature, no bigger than a Newfoundland dog, could
not have been more than a few days old. Its ridiculous little tail
was a mere stub, and its grotesquely disproportionate head all but
over-balanced the emaciated body see-sawing on two feeble pins.
"Ole," she exclaimed, "we must take that darling little devil chick
back to the ship. It is perishing for warmth and its mother."
"You're not its mother, and I'm blowed if I'll warm it."
"Oh yes you will. For you are going to catch it."
"Who is crazy now?"
"Not I. You will be perfectly safe with the parents away selfishly
enjoying themselves. Besides, you will have a fair start of nearly
three-quarters of a mile if the mother sees your kidnapping. If you
can't outrun her at that distance you're no good. Here we are. Climb
out and fetch the baby. Grab it well up by the neck so it can't bite."
"I'll be damned if I do."
"You will be if you don't. Now look here, Ole. Either you get that
chick for me or I make your life miserable forever by telling the
Captain how you ran away from your prayers. You will be famous from
Liverpool to San Francisco and from there to Hong Kong as the grateful
seaman whose able-bodied prayers raised the devil. Get that poor little
beast for me and I swear never to tell a soul what kind of a fool you
looked racing that two-legged reptile."
It was rank blackmail, and as such succeeded in a continent where there
is not a single lawyer.
With elaborate but unnecessary caution Ole sneaked up on the squawking
foundling from behind. In its hunger and pathetic loneliness it would
have welcomed him with open mouth. Grabbing its long thin neck with one
hand, he clutched its stubby tail with the other. Then putting forth
all his barrel of strength he started to lug the kicking little monster
toward the airplane.
Who would have suspected that the puny wretch had such a fight in its
emaciated body? And who would have dreamed from its plaintive squawk
that the little devil had lungs of leather? It bawled for its daddy,
screeched for its big brother, and yelled for its gadding mother. They
came bounding in great hops.
All things considered, we must conclude with Edith that Ole, not the
abandoned chick, was the attraction.
Edith's mother love suddenly fell below zero. She implored Ole to
drop the little beast--he was now carrying it bodily by its neck
and tail--and win the race to the propeller. But Ole's Norwegian
perseverance was roused. Having begun the job he would finish it or
bust.
Only an exceptionally strong man could have duplicated his feat. While
with one hand he cranked the propeller he held the chick by its neck at
arm's length with the other. The little beast had a wicked, raking kick
with its feeble-looking legs. One rip with its claws might have taught
Ole anatomy.
The bereaved family arrived in time to hear their darling's farewell
wafted from above. It was dangling over the side of the plane, still
kicking. Ole had not relaxed his strangle hold on its neck. With a
deft swing he got it aboard and sat on its stomach. He still did not
trust the chick with its own head. Consequently its last message to its
mother was sufficiently like the skirl of a bagpipe to be distressing.
"Cuddle it up in the sealskins," Edith directed, "so it won't freeze on
the way home."
Ole cuddled it. He was careful, however, not to let go of its neck.
"Won't father be delighted?" Edith resumed. "This is better than a
whole continent of dead ones. I wonder what it eats?"
"Shall I let go of its neck and find out?"
"Not yet. Milk, I think is probably the right diet for so tender an
infant. Have we plenty of the canned variety aboard?"
"About a hundred cases, I suppose. They will last this little devil all
of a week."
Their way home passed over a region which was new to them, some thirty
miles west of the line which they had flown first. About ten miles
beyond the blowholes they saw far beneath them a strange black lake.
"That looks interesting," Edith remarked, dipping down, "let's
investigate. We can't be much later than we are already."
Nearing the surface of the lake they saw that it was in violent motion.
Even by starlight Ole recognized the appearance of those huge bubbles
instantly.
"Oil!" he shouted.
Oil was in fact bubbling up from hundreds of gushers at the bottom
of the lake. The theory which Ole spontaneously brought forth was
probably not far from the truth. The underground tides having risen to
the rock roof above them were forcing the crude oil through a chain
of blowholes. At this point some obstruction, possibly a heavy fall
of rock from the roof, jarred loose by the violent earthquakes, had
blocked the passageway damming back the tidal oil. Consequently it now
spouted through the gas vents. The correspondingly slower motion of the
heavy oil as it was forced upward had not generated sufficient friction
to ignite the fluid. Such at any rate was Ole's theory.
As a first rough guess it may pass. Much further work, however, must
be done before all the scientific puzzles raised by Lane's historic
expedition are finally elucidated.
The practical question troubling Ole now was whether the oil would
be sucked down with the receding subterranean tide. If so Anderson
might find it difficult to form a stock company. For obviously it
would be one thing to sell shares in a thirty by fifteen mile lake of
oil and quite another to float stock on a dirty hole in the ground.
He comforted himself with the reflection that more oil stock is sold
on one smell of oil than on a thousand gushers. With a practically
unlimited supply of smell in the hole even when empty they might easily
make millionaires of themselves and the entire crew in a month.
The southern boundary of the lake gave Ole a qualm. On the south the
oil was dammed back by a mere swell in the ice not fifty feet broad on
top and less than twenty feet high. What if this slight wall should
give way before the pressure of the oil? The millions of dollars in
that beautiful lake would rush down the blowholes on the plain beyond.
To the north, on the shore nearer the ship, conditions were more
satisfactory. Here the wall of the long trough--fifteen miles broad
by thirty long--was well over a hundred yards across the top. His
calculations, of course, were only rough estimates based on their time
of flight and their first observation from above that the lake was
about twice as long as it was broad.
With a thousand fortunes in sight Ole forgot himself. A tentative nip
on his leg reminded him of his infant charge. Once more he grasped it
firmly by the neck.
The reception of the wanderers was cordial in the extreme. Edith had
expected the very deuce from her father, but she was totally unprepared
for Drake's attack. The devoted John tersely vented a longing to shake
the tar out of her.
"Try it," Edith suggested. "You might find it profitable."
"What?" the Captain shouted. "Have you found oil?"
"Oceans of it."
The Captain forgave both her and Ole on the spot.
"Father," said Edith, uncovering the devil chick which till now they
had kept concealed beneath the skins, "I have brought you a little
playmate. Am I forgiven?"
Ole at that instant loosened his stranglehold on the chick's windpipe.
A whooping squawk greeted the Doctor.
"Oh you beautiful child!" he exclaimed with wondering reverence. But
whether he was referring to Edith or her peace offering she was unable
to decide.
15