The egg struck the floe with a deep boom off our weather lee and a dense cloud of bright orange smoke filled the air in the midst of which we saw the fledgling pemmican in full flight, rising to join its mother. The male or bull pemmican now added himself to the party and together they made off to the edge of the ice bowl where the young one alighted.
"Stand back," warned Plock. "Cover up your noses."
The saffron laying fumes were drifting toward us, and their odor was overpowering and indescribable. Even as I crouched behind our bulwarks I thought of my old friend Lucien Sentent, the nasal gourmet of Battambang and wished he were with us. He could have had my share!
Three times this curious phenomenon was repeated and though vastly diverted we were glad when it was over.
Along other lines, Miskin covered a large number of cardboards with maps. He was preparing a folio, "The Pole and its Environs," he called it. A difficulty was that of locating any other point in relation to the Pole. Triplett's science could go no further than it had.
"Son," he said to Miskin, who had been anxiously asking which direction New York was. "Son, I kin tell yer where we be, but not where we ain't."
So Miskin tried the effect of the Pole in various positions on the sheets and said he would fill in the details later.
Swank got some excellent photographs using Whinney's camera, some of which are reproduced with this book. The views from the Pole itself were particularly interesting, but his best results were to come later.
Wigmore kept adding to his collection of snow crystals and algæ which he packed carefully in cracked ice, while Whinney, even in his darkened condition found it possible to tinker with his radio outfit. Sloff helped him rig his antennae to the Pole itself and we began to get messages with increasing clarity.