The boys pitched in to this occupation with great enthusiasm and, with the aid of the motor-sledge, soon had established three depots, covering a radius of some eighty miles from the camp. This work brought them to the verge of the chain of snow-mountains, beyond whose white crests they believed lay the pole. Somewhere along the coast line of this chain of mountains, too, so the lieutenant calculated, lay the Viking ship, which, in the years that had elapsed since the whalemen had seen her, must have drifted towards their bases on the ever-shifting polar currents. For the Great Barrier, solid as it seems, is not stationary, and many scientists hold that it is subject to violent earthquakes, caused by the subsidence of great areas of icy land into the boiling craters of polar volcanoes.
A careful study of the position, in which the whalemen set down they had spied the ship, and a calculation of the polar drift during the time that had elapsed from their discovery, had enabled Captain Hazzard to come, as he believed, very nearly locating the exact situation of the mysterious vessel.
"Somewhere to the southeast, at the foot of the snow-mountains, I firmly believe that we shall find her," he said.
It was a week after the establishment of the last depot that the boys were ready to make their first flight in polar regions. The Golden Eagle's vacuum tank and crank-case were attached and a supply of non-freezing oils and gasolene drums, carefully covered with warm felt, taken on board.
"Your instructions are," were Captain Hazzard's parting words, "to fly to the southward for a distance of a hundred miles or so, but no further. You will report the nature of the country and bring back your observations made with the instruments."
The Golden Eagle, which had been assembled earlier in the spring, was wheeled out of her shed and, after a brief "grooming," was ready for her first flight in the antarctic regions.
"It seems queer," observed Frank, "to be flying an aeroplane, that has been through so many tropical adventures, in the frozen regions of the south pole."
"It does, indeed," said the professor, who, with Billy Barnes, had obtained permission to accompany the boys.
Captain Hazzard, himself, would have come but that he and Captain
Barrington had determined to make surveys of the ice surrounding the
Southern Cross, in order to decide whether the ship had a speedy
chance of delivery from her frozen bondage.
The Golden Eagle shot into the icy air at exactly ten minutes past nine on the morning of the 28th of September. It was a perfect day, with the thermometer registering 22 above zero. So accustomed had they become to the bitter cold of the polar winter that even this low temperature seemed oppressive to the boys, and they wore only their ordinary leather aviation garments and warm underclothes. A plentiful supply of warm clothing was, however, taken along in case of need. Plenty of provisions and a specially contrived stove for melting snow into water were also carried, as well as blankets and sleeping bags.