CHAPTER VIII.
Saxe. vehemently declared he would perish before traveling that route again.
“We would never find it,” Saunders interrupted. “The crater is in constant eruption, heaving new mountains, leveling new valleys, and utterly obliterating the monster fissures we traveled upon. I knew of the danger, but we were determined to reach the Pole. A burnt-out volcano, Saxe.! Ye gods, that we escaped is miraculous! Literally, we traveled over an ocean of fire, an egg-shell between. Had faith in the Propellier’s speed, but—I say, boys, look back at the earth’s summit!” It looked like a monstrous explosion, great masses of rock flying in all directions, while column after column of fire belched to the sky, then poured in torrents down the mountain side, a flood of boiling, seething lava. We were miles from the volcano, but the fiery sea seemed spreading with appalling rapidity, and Saxe. kept the Propellier at high speed till the great barren mountains, and awful chasms of the mighty polar volcano, were dimly outlined in the distance, and upon a broad level plain we sped to wide fields of virgin snow. Late in the afternoon we halted long enough for Saunders to take observations. He reported the temperature fallen two degrees, and wanted to know if we had noticed it. Saxe., who had a vivid imagination, began a speech about the sudden vigor he experienced, but Saunders called our attention to the sky.
“The most remarkable phenomenon man ever witnessed!” he exclaimed.
The filmy gray clouds parted, giving us a flash of brilliant, blue sky. A dull-red ball glided into view, casting a roseate glow with long streamers of penetrating light which fell upon us, sending a warmth through our bodies we had not felt for months; then the clouds rolled together, but far in the distance the great red ball blazed; it flew downward, bounded and bounced over mountain and plain, disappearing, to re-appear, remained stationary an instant, then swinging into space with a flash it bounded out of sight. The phenomenon lasted seven minutes. “It is the Sun,” Saunders explained, “and touches this point once a month.”
Sheldon aired his doubts of course, and suggested the “wonderful sun-lit appearance” merely a reflection or another of Saunders’s fake auroras. But he (Sheldon) honestly believed this “atmospheric exhibition” a deep, Simon-pure aurora at last. Then the argument was on which lasted for hours, and though they were really fond of each other, the energy displayed for flinging out insults without coming to blows was about as wonderful as the Sun visiting the polar regions once a month.
During the night we escaped from the shadowy quarry-land, and light as a bird skimmed over the old, familiar plains of ice and snow.
Saxe. began making calculations; we never interfered with him, he delighted in figuring out just how long it would take the Propellier to cover this or that distance, and as his calculations always went wrong we didn’t bother him. Sheldon and Saunders suddenly became very busy and pre-occupied, and for no particular reason we all grew much elated and nervous with energy. Saunders said it was the atmosphere, and the farther we advanced in the vigor-producing air the livelier we would become. We certainly were very jubilant and chatted in excited consultation over the great progress made during that week, when a sudden sharp, whizzing sound, coming from the Propellier warned us of disaster. The machine stopped with a jerk, the cars banged together and we were thrown from our feet, then with a dying spurt the doomed Propellier bounded forward. In panic we bolted from the car, but did not escape entirely, though we suffered little injury. The four of us were hurled high in the air by the explosion; one, two, three, like cannonading, then all was quiet, and Saxe.’s life-work, his brilliant invention, was destroyed. Destruction was complete.
Saxe. ran around the wreck wringing his hands, muttering incoherently. The top of the Propellier was blown clean away, the cylinders torn wide open, and the diamond prod had shot up in the air with such force that apparently it never came down again. We were unable to find it. Both cars were overturned, one entirely wrecked, but the other was hardly damaged and was to be our sole future conveyance.
We tried to be cheerful, but Saxe. took it hard and considerable time was wasted humoring him; he obstinately believed he could do something with his wrecked machine. We righted the last remaining car and stored everything in it that escaped the explosion; then we buried the Propellier, and courageously formed new plans.