Boy Aviators' Polar Dash; or, Facing Death in the Antarctic Read online

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  THE BOY AVIATORS' POLAR DASH

  OR

  FACING DEATH IN THE ANTARCTIC

  BY

  CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON(pseudonym for John Henry Goldfrap)

  Boy Aviators' Series

  By Captain Wilbur Lawton

  1 THE BOY AVIATORS IN NICARAGUA;or, In League with the Insurgents.

  2 THE BOY AVIATORS ON SECRET SERVICE;or, Working with Wireless.

  3 THE BOY AVIATORS IN AFRICA;or, An Aerial Ivory Trail.

  4 THE BOY AVIATORS' TREASURE QUEST;or, The Golden Galleon.

  5 THE BOY AVIATORS IN RECORD FLIGHT;or, The Rival Aeroplane.

  6 THE BOY AVIATORS' POLAR DASH;or, Facing Death in the Antarctic.

  CONTENTS.

  CHAPTERI. The Polar ShipII. A Mysterious RobberyIII. Off for the South PoleIV. A Message from the AirV. A Tragedy of the SkiesVI. A Strange CollisionVII. Adrift on a Floating IslandVIII. Caught in the FlamesIX. A Queer AccidentX. The Professor is KidnappedXI. A Battle in the AirXII. AdriftXIII. The Ship of Olaf the VikingXIV. Marooned on an Ice FloeXV. Dynamiting the ReefXVI. A Polar StormXVII. The Great BarrierXVIII. The Professor Takes a Cold BathXIX. Facing the Polar NightXX. A Mysterious LightXXI. A Penguin HuntXXII. The Flaming MountainXXIII. Adrift Above the SnowsXXIV. Swallowed by a CrevasseXXV. The Viking's ShipXXVI. Caught in a TrapXXVII. The Fate of the DirigibleXXVIII. The Heart of the Antarctic

  THE BOY AVIATORS' POLAR DASH

  OR

  FACING DEATH IN THE ANTARCTIC

  CHAPTER I.

  THE POLAR SHIP.

  "Oh, it's southward ho, where the breezes blow; we're off for thepole, yo, ho! heave ho!"

  "Is that you, Harry?" asked a lad of about seventeen, without lookingup from some curious-looking frames and apparatus over which he wasworking in the garage workshop back of his New York home on MadisonAvenue.

  "Ay! ay! my hearty," responded his brother, giving his trousers anautical hitch; "you seem to have forgotten that to-day is the day weare to see the polar ship."

  "Not likely," exclaimed Frank Chester, flinging down his wrench andpassing his hand through a mop of curly hair; "what time is it?"

  "Almost noon; we must be at the Eric Basin at two o'clock."

  "As late as that? Well, building a motor sledge and fixing up theGolden Eagle certainly occupies time."

  "Come on; wash up and then we'll get dinner and start over."

  "Will Captain Hazzard be there?"

  "Yes, they are getting the supplies on board now."

  "Say, that sounds good, doesn't it? Mighty few boys get such a chance.The South Pole,--ice-bergs--sea-lions,--and--and--oh, heaps ofthings."

  Arm in arm the two boys left the garage on the upper floor of whichthey had fitted up their aeronautical workshop. There the GoldenEagle, their big twin-screw aeroplane, had been planned and partiallybuilt, and here, too, they were now working on a motor-sledge for theexpedition which now occupied most of their waking--andsleeping--thoughts.

  The Erie Basin is an enclosed body of water which forms at once arepair shop and a graveyard for every conceivable variety of vessel,steam and sail, and is not the warmest place in the world on a chillday in late November, yet to the two lads, as they hurried along anarrow string-piece in the direction of a big three-masted steamer,which lay at a small pier projecting in an L-shaped formation, fromthe main wharf, the bitter blasts that swept round warehouse cornersappeared to be of not the slightest consequence--at least to judge bytheir earnest conversation.

  "What a muss!" exclaimed Harry, the younger of the two lads.

  "Well," commented the other, "you'd hardly expect to find a wharf,alongside which a south polar ship is fitting up, on rush orders, tobe as clean swept as a drawing-room, would you?"

  As Harry Chester had said, the wharf was "a muss." Everywhere werecases and barrels all stenciled "Ship Southern Cross, U. S. SouthPolar Expedition." As fast as a gang of stevedores, their laboringbodies steaming in the sharp air, could handle the muddle, thenumerous cases and crates were hauled aboard the vessel we havenoticed and lowered into her capacious holds by a rattling, fussycargo winch. The shouts of the freight handlers and the sharp shrieksof the whistle of the boss stevedore, as he started or stopped thehoisting engine, all combined to form a picture as confused as couldwell be imagined, and yet one which was in reality merely an orderlyloading of a ship of whose existence, much less her destination, fewwere aware.

  As the readers of The Boy Aviators in Record Flight; or, The RivalAeroplane, will recall, the Chester boys, in their overland trip forthe big newspaper prize, encountered Captain Robert Hazzard, a youngarmy officer in pursuit of a band of renegade Indians. On thatoccasion he displayed much interest in the aeroplane in which theywere voyaging over plains, mountains and rivers on their remarkabletrip. They in turn were equally absorbed in what he had to tell themabout his hopes of being selected for the post of commander of theexpedition to the South Pole, which the government was thenconsidering fitting out for the purpose of obtaining meteorologicaland geographical data. The actual attainment of the pole was, ofcourse, the main object of the dash southward, but the expedition waslikewise to do all in its power to add to the slender stock of theworld's knowledge concerning the great silences south of the 80thparallel. About a month before this story opens the young captain hadrealized his wish and the Southern Cross--formerly a stanchbark-rigged whaler--had been purchased for uses of the expedition.

  Their friend had not forgotten the boys and their aeroplane and infact had lost no time in communicating with them, and a series ofconsultations and councils of war had ended in the boys being signedon as the aviators of the expedition. They also had had assigned totheir care the mechanical details of the equipment, including a motorsledge, which latter will be more fully described later.

  That the consent of the boys' parents to their long and hazardous triphad not been gained without a lot of coaxing and persuasion goeswithout saying. Mrs. Chester had held out till the last against whatshe termed "a hare-brained project," but the boys with learneddiscourses on the inestimable benefits that would redound tohumanity's benefit from the discovery of the South Pole, had overborneeven her rather bewildered opposition, and the day before they stoodon the wharf in the Erie Basin, watching the Southern Cross swallowingher cargo, like a mighty sea monster demolishing a gigantic meal, theyhad received their duly signed and witnessed commissions as aviatorsto the expedition--documents of which they were not a little proud.

  "Well, boys, here you are, I see. Come aboard."

  The two boys gazed upward at the high side of the ship from whence thehail had proceeded. In the figure that had addressed them they had atfirst no little difficulty in recognizing Captain Hazzard. In grimyoveralls, with a battered woolen cap of the Tam o' Shanter variety onhis head, and his face liberally smudged with grime and dust,--for onthe opposite side of the Southern Cross three lighters were at workcoaling her,--a figure more unlike that of the usually trim and trigofficer could scarcely be imagined.

  The lads' confusion was only momentary, however, and ended in a heartylaugh as they nimbly ascended the narrow gangway and gained the deckby their friend's side. After a warm handshake, Frank exclaimedmerrily:

  "I suppose we are now another part of the miscellaneous cargo, sir. Ifwe are in the way tell us and we'll go ashore again."

  "No, I've got you here now and I don't mean to let you escape,"laughed the other in response; "in my cabin--its aft there under thebreak in the poop, you'll find some more overall
s, put them on andthen I'll set you both to work as tallyers."

  Harry looked blank at this. He had counted on rambling over the shipand examining her at his leisure. It seemed, however, that they wereto be allowed no time for skylarking. Frank, however, obeyed withalacrity.

  "Ay, ay, sir!" he exclaimed, with a sailor-like hitch at his trousers;"come, Harry, my hearty, tumble aft, we might as well begin to takeorders now as any other time."

  "That's the spirit, my boy," exclaimed the captain warmly, as Harry,looking a bit shamefaced at his temporary desire to protest, followedhis brother to the stern of the ship.

  Once on board there was no room to doubt that the Southern Cross hadonce been a whaler under the prosaic name of Eben A. Thayer. In factif there had been any indecision about the matter the strong smell ofoil and blubber which still clung to her, despite new coats of paintand a thorough cleaning, would have dispelled it.

  The engine-room, as is usual in vessels of the type of the convertedwhaler, was as far aft as it could be placed, and the boys noticedwith satisfaction as they entered the officers' quarters aft, that theradiators had been connected with the boilers and had warmed the placeup to a comfortable temperature. A Japanese steward showed them intoCaptain Hazzard's cabin, and they selected a suit of overalls eachfrom a higgledy-piggledy collection of oil-skins, rough pilot-clothsuits and all manner of headgear hanging on one of the cabinbulkheads.

  They had encased themselves in them, and were laughing at thewhimsical appearance they made in the clumsy garments, when thecaptain himself entered the cabin.

  "The stevedores have knocked off for a rest spell and a smoke and thelighters are emptied," he announced, "so I might as well show you boysround a bit. Would you care to?"

  Would they care to? Two hearty shouts of assent left the youngcommander no doubt on this score.

  The former Eben A. Thayer had been a beamy ship, and the livingquarters of her officers astern left nothing to be desired in the wayof room. On one side of the cabin, extending beneath the poop deck,with a row of lights in the circular wall formed by the stern, werethe four cabins to be occupied by Captain Hazzard, the chief engineer,a middle-aged Scotchman named Gavin MacKenzie, Professor SimeonSandburr, the scientist of the expedition, and the surgeon, a DoctorWatson Gregg.

  The four staterooms on the other side were to be occupied by the boys,whom the lieutenant assigned to the one nearest the stern, the secondengineer and the mate were berthed next to them. Then came the cabinof Captain Pent Barrington, the navigating officer of the ship, andhis first mate, a New Englander, as dry as salt cod, named DariusGreen. The fourth stateroom was empty. The steward bunked forward in alittle cabin rigged up in the same deck-house as the galley whichsnuggled up to the foot of the foremast.

  Summing up what the boys saw as they followed their conductor over theship they found her to be a three-masted, bark-rigged vessel with acro' nest, like a small barrel, perched atop of her mainmast. Heralready large coal bunkers had been added to until she was enabled tocarry enough coal to give her a tremendous cruising radius. It was inorder to economize on fuel she was rigged for the carrying of sailwhen she encountered a good slant of wind. Her forecastle, originallythe dark, wet hole common to whalers, had been built up till it was acommodious chamber fitted with bunks at the sides and a swinging tablein the center, which could be hoisted up out of the way when not inuse. Like the officers' cabins, it was warmed by radiators fed fromthe main boilers when under way and from the donkey, or auxiliary,boiler when hove to.

  Besides the provisions, which the stevedores, having completed their"spell," were now tumbling into the hold with renewed ardor, the deckwas piled high with a strange miscellany of articles. There weresledges, bales of canvas, which on investigation proved to be tents,coils of rope, pick-axes, shovels, five portable houses in knock-downform, a couple of specially constructed whale boats, so made as toresist any ordinary pressure that might be brought to bear on them inthe polar drift, and nail-kegs and tool-chests everywhere.

  Peeping into the hold the boys saw that each side of it had been builtup with big partitions, something like the pigeon-holes in which boltsof cloth are stored in dry-goods shops--only much larger. Each ofthese spaces was labeled in plain letters with the nature of thestores to be placed there so that those in charge of the supplieswould have no difficulty in laying their hands at once on whateverhappened to be needed. Each space was provided with a swiveled bar ofstout timber which could be pulled across the front of the opening inheavy weather, and which prevented anything plunging out.

  Captain Hazzard explained that the heavy stores were stowed forwardand the provisions aft. A gallery ran between the shelves from stem tostern and provided ready access to any part of the holds. A system ofhot steam-pipes had been rigged in the holds so that in the antarctican equable temperature could be maintained. The great water tanks wereforward immediately below the forecastle. The inspection of theengines came last. The Southern Cross had been fitted with newwater-tube boilers--two of them--that steamed readily on small fuelconsumption. Her engine was triple expansion, especially installed, asthe boilers had been, to take the place of the antiquated machineryboasted by the old Thayer.

  "Hoot, mon, she's as fine as a liner," commented old MacKenzie, the"chief," who had taken charge of the boys on this part of theirexpedition over the vessel, which was destined to be their home formany months.

  "Some day," said Frank, "every vessel will be equipped with gasolinemotors and all this clumsy arrangement of boilers and complicatedpiping will be done away with."

  The old Scotch engineer looked at him queerly.

  "Oh, ay," he sniffed, "and some day we'll all go to sea in pea-soupbowls nae doot."

  "Well, a man in Connecticut has built a schooner out of cement,"declared Harry.

  The engineer looked at him and slowly wiped his hands on a bit ofwaste.

  "I ken his head must be a muckle thicker nor that," was his comment,at which both the boys laughed as they climbed the steel ladders thatled from the warm and oily regions to the deck. The engineer, with a"dour" Scot's grin, gazed after them.

  "Hoots-toots," he muttered to his gauges and levers, "the great icehas a wonderful way with lads as cocksure as them twa."