Have I given you some food for thought, lads?
If I have, I am exceedingly glad, and so I close this short chapter at once.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DASH FOR THE POLE—A WONDROUS SCENE
I was obliged to belay my jawing tackle, as sailors say, in that last chapter, and to cut short my yarn, else my subject, which is to me a most interesting one, might have led me to forget poor lonesome Curtis and Ingomar, sledging, ski-ing, and toiling on and on across bitter untrodden tracks to plant the British and American flags further south on solid land than ever they have been hoisted before.
The same plan was adopted as before, of climbing hills every day to plan out the next day’s journey.
The same method, too, of feeding dogs and men. Just enough to work upon, and no more. For they must keep food enough to get home on—back to Dr. Wright’s camp, I mean—or they would have to kill a dog and eat it.
The “road” was devious enough and toilsome in the extreme for the first week, after which they gradually got into higher regions with fewer mountains, though mostly volcanic, some emitting clouds of rolling smoke, which would have been pillars of fire by night had the sun gone down.
It would be impossible to describe the character and appearance of the scenery without illustrations. I only wish you to understand that if you place on your table a lot of limpet shells, and call them mountains and the spaces between glens or valleys, you have no more idea of this territory than you have of the surface of the moon. Such mountains as they beheld, I believe, are not to be seen in any other country in the world. There were cone-shaped hills, it is true, and rolling brae lands; but there were those, too, of every shape you could imagine. It was evident to Ingomar even, that the gigantic forces of nature had been at war here for ages and ages, terrible earthquakes, awful explosions, volcanic eruptions, such as not even the people of Iceland ever experienced in the awful days and weeks of darkness long ago.
See yonder half mountain. It stands there in its somewhat solitary grandeur in a plain of snow, as evenly cut down the centre as you see a cheese. Where is the other half? What force divided it? None can answer that. Here, again, is a kind of chaotic heap of hills. That nearest to the plane is a gigantic cliff fully one thousand feet in height, and over the ridge of this a stream must have at one time dashed. Here it is still, a motionless cataract of ice!
And many miles farther on, and nearer to this Pole, is a marvellous monument. You could not call it a hill, it is an almost square slab, like an old-fashioned tombstone, about fifty yards from back to front, a thousand yards wide, and about two thousand feet in height.