XXV.
WHERE THE WAY ENDS.
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 “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 not 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.