Then they found that, instead of a black surface on the mountain side, it was a great black hole leading back and back into the mountain depths.
“A cave! A whale of a cave!” shouted Renaud who was taking his turn at leading, and had scrambled up the slope a rope-length ahead of the others.
It was a whale of a cave—one of those mammoth, finned and fluked creatures of the sea could have drifted in here and brought his whole family with him.
The snow domes and pits the party had just passed were as toys compared to this evidence of mighty pressure forces within the earth. Some terrifically violent cataclysm must have flung up these two great walls of rock and ice that slanted together and formed a vast triangular tunnel.
At close view, it was a place of beauty. The depths that penetrated the mountain were dark. But here at the mighty three hundred foot entrance all was white. Crystal fringe of ice stalactites hung from the roof like huge prisms on a giant’s candelabra. Snow banks, in soft mounds, guarded the opening. Now and again the stiff wind swept flurries from these drifts and scattered the white powder over the floor of the cavern in ever-changing patterns.
“A hangar for our dirigible! She could ease into here slicker than a banana into a peel!” shouted Captain Bartlot.
“Banana in a peel!” echoed Valchen. “Why, Captain, she could park in here and still leave room for an airplane to sail in rings around her! Whew! Some house we’ve found ourselves!”
“Think I’ll do housekeeping over there, set up my portable stove and all.” Sanderson indicated a side cave like a wing room off the main tunnel.
Electric torchlights were pulled from their packs and put into use. Excited laughter and shouts echoed from the mighty roof and rumbled back through the cave, as they pushed slowly on, exploring wonders as they went. The ice drip on the cave walls had built itself into beautiful fantasies. Here stood a row of mighty columns like the pipes of a vast organ. Over there hung delicate ice lacework. Further on was a scalloped basin with a pillar rising out of it, icy semblance of a statue set in a fountain basin.
But even an ice wonder-hall set with frozen filigree could not turn their minds over long from the pangs of hunger. The journey had been one continuous round of labor and anxiety. The steep climb in the rarefied atmosphere told on strength and lungs. So before penetrating the depths of the cavern, the party decided to halt for food and rest. Back near the entrance, they dropped down, eased their heavy burdens to the snowy floor, and joyously opened up their packets of sandwiches and thermos bottles of steaming hot chocolate.