To Lee Renaud, a wind-swept hillside over which the dirigible zoomed low, with moving-picture cameras clicking out film, was—well, was just a hillside dotted with black rocks where the gale had swept off the snow. Then—and Lee opened his eyes very wide—some of the black rocks began galloping off. In truth, these moving objects were a herd of shaggy musk-oxen that had been pawing for snow moss among the rocks till the shadow of the huge ship of the air had sent them snorting off in fear. In a white land, Nature had left these creatures dark colored, because they most often grazed on wind-swept highlands where their dun sides melted inconspicuously into the dark splotches of the landscape.
Another time, looking down through the observation window, Lee saw the amazing sight of a snow field that suddenly seemed to leap up into separate white parts and go bounding off across the plain. In this case it was a herd of white caribou that had been huddled at rest on the snow. Scent of danger, borne down on the wind, must have stampeded them. Soon enough young Renaud saw what that danger was, for another line of moving white swept into view—the wolf-pack, white killers of the North! Lee’s heart shivered within him. These were so relentless; they knew only the law of fang and claw. Tails straight behind, noses down, the pack swept on down trail, were lost to view. But, ola, in the end the wolf-pack would pull down its prey; it always did!
In a snow valley, where mountain cliffs rose protectingly on either side, nestled a row of white domes. Circular hillocks with faint spirals of blue smoke drifting upward from a crevice in the top. Eskimo igloos—the round earth-and-stone huts banked in snow that were the homes of the fur-clad natives of the Arctic! As the huge ship of the air passed like a menacing shadow above this native settlement, fur-clad men crept out from their tunnel-like doors, waved their arms and raced wildly over the snow fields. Seen from the airship, they looked to be tiny ants swarming out of an ant hill. Then a flight of sharp pointed arrows shot up toward the sky, curved back uselessly to earth. The huge ship drifted on serenely, safe in its heights from this puny demonstration.
“Must have thought we were some vast evil spirit, drifting up from Sermik-suak, Eskimo spirit-land!” said Valchen who had been much among the Arctic natives and knew their life and beliefs. “The sight of this great gas bag sweeping like a black shadow across their village was enough to strike terror to their hearts and set them on the defensive. On the whole, these Eskimo tribes are a kindly, hospitable lot. Let a man come among them in peace, and they’ll take him in and give him the best they have. I’ve known them, in times of famine, to divide the last morsel of fish, the last chunk of blubber with some utter stranger.”
Through the speeding miles, the white northland revealed itself to eyes that by degrees were learning to distinguish between the still white that meant snow wastes, and the moving white that meant some animal leaping into action on hoof or padded paw. On the ice of great lakes that were almost inland seas, now and again one glimpsed some shaggy mound of flesh and white fur that was a great polar bear, seeking his food through a break in the lake ice. In the air, the honk of geese, the weird laughter of the long-billed loons flying north in the continuous daylight, often echoed the siren of the dirigible.
In the navigating-room, maps and charts were always in evidence now. Across their surfaces, lines drawn in day by day showed the progress of the ship. Its position was checked constantly both by magnetic compass and by sun compass. The ship’s course was directed away from northwest and headed due north now.
“There it is—the tri-pointed crest of Coronation Mountain!” shouted Olaf Valchen, eye to the telescope and one arm wildly waving, beckoning the others to come and see for themselves.
In the distance, like a regal crown, showed the points of a group of mountains, rising above swirling clouds that masked all save the high-flung peaks themselves.
“It’s somewhere near that range that we’ll find Rottenstone Lake—Nakaluka, the Eskimos call it. And when we stand on its shores we’ll be standing on wealth. There are rock mounds in this region where the stone is so old, it has cracked and lets the shining treasure veins show through. I know. I’ve seen it myself.” Valchen’s usually deep voice was high-pitched with excitement. He pulled from beneath his fur overgarment a tiny map of caribou hide with some lines scrawled upon it. “The hunger fever was upon me when I drew this, some five years ago, but I am sure the lines are right. There’s the tri-mountain; and the sun observations I took then tally with our present check-up, in part, anyway.”
Below them stretched snow field and ice crag. Somewhere in that maze of peaks and ridges lay the frozen waters of Nakaluka and its encircling treasure mounds. In all this whiteness, its frozen waters would be no more noticeable than a tiny grain of dust would be on the expanse of a great plate glass show window.