“Yeah! We crossed the frontier while I was down in an egg looking at an engine. One of those engineers is bugs on geography, and he spouted enough facts about Russia to fill a book. I’ll say they have some mad looking country, haven’t they? But not many people so far. Towns kind of scattered.”
“Wait a day or two,” David prophesied. “I have a hunch that this is Central Park to what’s ahead. Can you leave the cat long enough to look things over a bit?”
Red assented, and felt exploringly under his pillow. He brought out a small can.
“God help me, I even have to steal condensed cream for me cat!” he said.
Monday evening passed uneventfully. During the night the Moonbeam encountered a skirmish of winds which she rode so evenly that there was scarcely any discomfort on the ship. The instruments, however, as well as radio reports from Irkutsk, Chita, and Chabarovsk in Siberia warned them of thick and uncertain weather ahead.
Viatka was passed at ten minutes after ten Tuesday morning; and with daylight appeared the grim, austere peaks of the Ural Mountains. As the light became clearer, the mountains emerged from their enveloping fogs and reared their bleak monstrous crests as though reaching for the passing ship. The panorama was of surpassing grandeur. At ten-thirty they sailed over the city of Kisel. Here they approached as low as was safe, and dropped several sacks of mail.
Cold biting winds from the Arctic buffeted them. Overcoats, sweaters and mufflers appeared, but the elements could not keep the awed sightseers from the windows, where they watched the slow march of the Titans below. Their speed was reduced for safety’s sake here, for the winds were more and more uncertain. The mountains covered a vast space, but the general trend of the range was northeast, the direction that the Moonbeam was gradually following. About the base of the mountains were dark blots of forests, but they covered little of the great areas, bald, repellent, and threatening, that looked from the ship as though carved of solid stone.
They passed several tiny hamlets. To their surprise, the inhabitants observed the ship with unfeigned terror. They left their huts, looked, and one and all took refuge in the surrounding woods. With the glasses it was easy to see their terror as they fled, mothers carrying babies, and small children being dragged ruthlessly away to safety by agitated fathers.
“What fools!” said Wally to Dulcie.
“I don’t think so at all,” she replied hotly. “I suppose in their place you would know all about us by instinct? I am just as sorry for them as I can be.”