“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 snow 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 miles 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.