“That chap seems to be following us,” commented Gale, “they say it means a death aboard, but I think it’s more likely he’s after the garbage. ’Twouldn’t be a good time to swim, would it?”
He walked away and left me leaning over the rail. I thought his advice kindly, on the whole encouraging, and made up my mind to remember it. I wondered if Ferratoni had really spoken to Edith Gale. “Poor fellow,” I thought, “it must have been the glamour of the tropic night that made his ideal seem real to him for the moment.” And this I still believe to have been the case; but what it was he said that night to Edith Gale, or just what she replied, I shall never know.
X.
CAPTAIN BIFFER IS ASSISTED BY THE PAMPEIRO.
Southward, and still southward.
We crossed the equator under light steam, for there was no wind and it was too warm to lie becalmed, even in that mystical, lotus-breathing sea.
Our world was turned around, now. We were going back to the year’s beginning, and springtime lay at the end of our bow-sprit. The Big Dipper and the North Star were ours no longer; the Southern Cross had become our beacon and our hope. The sun and moon were still with us, but even these had fallen behind and it was to the northward now that we turned for noonday.
Gradually the glorious sunsets of the lower tropics faded into a semblance of those we had known in our own land. It was no longer quite comfortable on deck without wraps. An April quality had come into the air, and we grew presently to realize that we were entering rapidly into what was, to us, the curious anomaly of an October spring.
To me it was all pure enjoyment. It seemed that I could never look at the sea enough, and often I got Edith Gale to help me. And Ferratoni too, sometimes, for with the cooler weather and more temperate skies he had become quite himself again.
The first frost in the air seemed a glacial feeling to us, and set us to talking with renewed interest of the Far South and the lands and peoples we had undertaken to discover. I felt sure we were extravagant in some of our expectations. The tales we had read led us to hope for marvels in the way of mechanical progress, and we treated ourselves to flying machines and heaven only knows what other luxuries. In the end, I discouraged flying machines. I said that if these were a fact with the Antarcticans, they would have come to us long since. I said also that we must not build our anticipations too big, but base everything on calm reason and sound logic. It was more than possible, I admitted, that the Antarcticans had made some advancements in mechanism that were unknown to us, but on the whole I thought we would hold our own at the next world’s exhibition.
It had been Chauncey Gale’s intention to touch at one of the large South American ports for a little holiday, and to procure a few articles needed in the construction department below stairs. This idea, however, was now discouraged by the officers, who believed that a number if not all of the crew would desert the ship at the first opportunity.