but now came a great day.
it began with a discovery. my pockets had been full of lozenges which i could not eat, and i had emptied them out on the snow. it seems, however, that i had left two in my coat pocket—a white one and a brown one. i had such a gnawing hunger after we started that when i felt these there, i put them both in my mouth together, thinking to hold them a moment and then take them out before they sickened me.
but, strangely enough, they did not do so. as they dissolved i swallowed them, and when they were gone i felt strengthened. then i asked mr. sturritt if he had ever tried this particular combination. he shook his head sadly and said no, but that it was no use. i then told him what i had done, and he made the experiment. presently we were all consuming brown and white lozenges, and satisfying what the advertisements refer to as a 216“long-felt want.” mr. sturritt was almost mad with delight. he grew ten years younger in as many minutes, and capered about in the snow until he caught his foot in one of the runners and fell head-first into a drift. then we all laughed, and got hold of the boat and sent it ahead faster than it had gone since we landed. the brown was the medicated lozenge, intended for extreme cold and exhaustion. combined with the white soup lozenge, it formed an acceptable nourishment, and we had an ample store of both colors.
the next event of the day came about eleven o’clock. gale, who was looking ahead, stopped suddenly.
“hey! black snow on the port bow!” he called.
we all looked where he pointed. then i gave a whoop.
“not snow!” i cried, “but land!”
we ran forward like boys. no, it was not land, after all, but the next thing to it—a great black expanse of bare, wind-swept rock! we could not tell, of course, how high it rose above the normal surface, but we did not believe it could be many feet. looking ahead with the glass we saw many other black patches, stretching away and blending together, as it seemed, on the horizon. we made all haste forward, and when we stopped for our noon rest i made a calculation of our position. we were 217not quite to the eighty-third parallel, and a little more than two hundred miles from the billowcrest. i had calculated that the habitable zone would begin here, but it appeared that i had been in error. the cold from the sea reached farther inland than i had supposed. still, i reflected, this place might be altogether clear of snow a month later, and only uninhabitable because of barrenness.
immediately after our coffee we pushed on again. all at once i made out what seemed to be the opening, or chasm, among the bare patches to the right. leaving the others, i ran over to investigate and came back shouting and breathless.
“a river! a river!” i called, “and smooth ice. we can sail on it!”
we steered our boat-sled over there as rapidly as possible. it was difficult getting down to the surface, some forty feet below, but we managed it at last. then we stopped for breath and observation.
“i’ll bet this is our river,” said gale, “and that we haven’t been more than a mile from it since we started.”
“no doubt of it,” i said, “and we even may have been on top of it part of the time. of course it’s filled level full of snow somewhere below here, and we shouldn’t have known the difference. it is a channel that cuts through and carries the melting 218snow to the sea. if it didn’t the center of the antarctic continent would be a big circular pond. there may be many of these rivers.”
“well, one is enough for us, just now,” said gale. then he promptly confessed to edith that we had “abandoned” our balloon bag, owing to “adverse winds,” but that we didn’t care, for we had reached a river and “good sailing.” she didn’t appear to notice any discrepancy in this statement, and we decided that it would be unsafe to attempt to mend it. the “good sailing,” at least, was true, for the wind continued favorable, and we were presently going up-stream at a fair rate of speed. gale leaned back and lit a cigar.
“this beats pushing,” he said. “good boat, good crowd, good cigar. what is joy without a jews-harp!”
by nightfall—it fell much later now—the snowbanks on either side were no more than ten feet high on a level, and when we stopped for camp we found the country above almost more black than white—the bare rocks showing in masses in all directions.
we rejoiced greatly, and fondly hoped to be out of the snow altogether by the following evening, though i was a bit uneasy about the rock. if the antarctic continent proved to be nothing but barren granite it would be of as little value as if it were a waste of snow. still, a circle of nearly a thousand 219miles in diameter could hardly be the same throughout.
our failing telephone, however, was a real sorrow. though still distinct, the voices were very faint, now. unless ferratoni could do something, it would fail us altogether, soon. he believed its condition due mainly to our lower altitude, and the vast obstruction that was now lying between us and the billowcrest. but it had been a great comfort to us all through our hardest hours, and i would be content. the mental vibrations from the vessel, ferratoni said, were similarly affected, and much confused.
another day of discovery followed. the wind and weather being too good to waste, by five o’clock we were on our way up the river. the snow crust thinned out rapidly, until, by ten o’clock, there was no more than a foot on the banks above, and we were sailing between shores of genuine stone and clay, the first soil we had seen for a year. flocks of birds became plentiful, and at one place we saw some strange, brown animals, about the size and shape of rabbits, but with very long hind legs and with a method of locomotion similar to that of a frog. gale named them “skipteroons” because of their lightsome mode of travel, and shot at them, without success.
the temperature was barely freezing, now, and 220we were altogether happy. so much so that we confessed to edith all the affair of the balloon, and our subsequent difficulties. she was less surprised than we had expected. she had suspected, it seems, that all was not so well as we had pretended, and of course our statements had been a trifle contradictory at times. but she rejoiced now in the reality of good fortune that had come to us, the genuineness of which could not be mistaken, even through our fast failing telephone.
several times we halted and climbed up on the shore to look at the country for possible inhabitants, but there was as yet no human sign, though much bird life, and some more of the funny half-rabbit creatures, one of which gale succeeded in killing at last, a welcome addition to our bill-of-fare. all at once, about four o’clock, ferratoni held out his hand. “listen!” he said.
we listened very hard, and thought we heard a roaring sound ahead, but as the wind was blowing in that direction, we could not be sure. it grew stronger, however, as we ascended, and was steady and continuous. we decided that it was a fall, and not far away. hardly had we made this conclusion when there was a cracking sound beneath us, followed by a crash of ice and a splash of water, and our boat-sleigh was no longer a sleigh at all, but a genuine boat, battling with a strong current and 221broken ice. our momentum had sent us ahead a few feet, but our sail was too small to stem the current and we were drifting back to the jagged ice. this time it was ferratoni who saved the situation. he had foreseen just such an emergency and had at hand the little propeller wheel for water. with a quick movement, now, he plunged it beneath the surface at the stern, and deftly slipping and locking it into place, pressed the button of the dynamo. we were off, like a trolley car. the thin ice ahead parted before our sharp bow, and in a few moments we were in open water, heading up-stream under both electricity and sail.
“like gettin’ money from home,” said gale. “look here, nick, where would your boat scheme have been, anyway, without tony and me to help you out?”
certainly the propeller was a success, and i approved it heartily.
we rounded a bend a little later, and the fall came in sight. it was perhaps a mile away and was a long rapid, rather than a fall. there was no thought of ascending it with the boat. already the current was very swift, and the shores narrowing together. we headed in for the bank. landing proved a hard job, for the bank here was rather high, and very steep. we had to unload most of our things and carry them up in our arms. by 222the time we got everything up we were too tired to attempt to climb the long hill which we now saw rose ahead of us. it was this rise that formed the rapid, and against it the snow had blown and drifted, though this was all the better for us, as it made the ascent easier for the boat, which would have been hard to push up over rough, bare rocks. to-morrow morning we would know what lay beyond that hill. to-night we were resting, and getting strength from the “skipteroon” for a long tug. zar had promised to sing “brown cows” to me, and perhaps for the last time, for edith gale’s voice when i had called to her just now was barely audible, even though she must have spoken very loudly. i was obliged to shout to make her hear, which made any expression of tenderness between us somewhat difficult. zar’s voice, however, would probably carry.
