Sheldon served around hot, fragrant coffee, and suggested lunch. When the meal was ready Saxe. had sufficiently recovered to join us and felt so invigorated after that he proposed we venture out and prospect. We advised against it, of course, but Saxe. was known never to take advice, and we might as well talk to the Propellier.
We discovered a broad plain stretching east to west to an infinite distance, but straight ahead the road continued as though leveled from the side of the mountains. Upon one side huge cliffs towered and upon the other deep, unfathomable chasms. The boulders were perpendicular and of glassy smoothness. A terrific gale was blowing, dark clouds scurried across the sky with occasional breaks, letting a star gleam through, and once a wide space cleared and the moon shone full, lighting up the strange, weird, beautiful scenery.
“If this is the dead portion of the earth, then death is certainly grand, sublime,” remarked Sheldon.
“According to the compass,” interrupted Saxe., whose mind apparently was not upon the scenery, “we must travel straight ahead, and that narrow road in front is the route. I judge it’s about fifteen feet wide,” he continued, “inclines sharply, curving into the cliffs down there. We must know what’s around that bend before we go splurging with the machine.”
We started down the narrow road, but the cutting ice wind chilled us to the heart and we huddled together with a distinct desire to avoid moving. “We’ll petrify if we remain stationary,” warned Saunders, “keep moving. But it’s not as frigid as it should be at this altitude. It’s the atmosphere and earth——”
Saxe. grunted and rushed ahead; we quickly followed, glad of anything to squelch Saunders, who once started upon his hobby was good for days. His language was eloquent, his subject always learned and instructive, and in a nice, warm room, we could have all gone comfortably to sleep, but in an atmosphere of ice, with the Pole almost in sight.... We reached the perilous bend in the road, it was engulfed in deep, black shadows, cast by cliffs above, but farther on re-appeared, stretching along the level for miles and miles, curving, undulating, like a gigantic serpent, and gleaming like silver in the strange light, neither night nor day.
“It was once the bed of a river,” remarked Sheldon, who, like Saunders, was daft on his hobby.
“Nonsense!” retorted Saxe., “it’s the main artery of a burnt-out volcano.”
“Volcano in the frigid zone!” laughed Sheldon.
We returned to the Propellier, tired out and panting heavily, the exertion made us perspire freely after a few seconds’ rest. Saxe. was anxious to push forward at once. We voted consent. He flared the search-light upon the road and the Propellier cautiously started down the incline. Up hill and down into deep, black hollows, we sped like the wind and very little level was there to this riverbed, artery, or whatever it was. Ever to our right were smooth, high cliffs, and to the left unfathomable mist shrouded valleys. The wild, uncanny scenery, magnetic in its monstrous, powerful unreality, chained the attention. Granite, granite, mighty boulders reared to stupendous height, casting shadows that stretched to the impenetrable, blue mist, shielding mysterious chasms. Vegetation? God! Vegetation in this dreadful place with its dull, horrible, mucky atmosphere? It was like a nightmare, awe-inspiring, firing the imagination.