The shout of farewell from the sojourners at the camp had hardly died out before the aviators found themselves flying at a height of three hundred feet above the frozen wastes. Viewed from that height, the aspect stretched below them was, indeed, a desolate one. As far as the eye could reach was nothing but the great whiteness. Had it not been for the colored snow goggles they wore the boys might have been blinded by the brilliancy of the expanse, as cases of snow blindness are by no means uncommon in the Antarctic.
On and on they flew toward the mighty snow mountains which towered like guardian giants ahead of them. The barograph showed that after some hours of flying they had now attained a height of two thousand feet, which was sufficient to enable them to clear the ridge. Viewed from above, the snow mountains looked like any other mountains. They were scarred by gullies and valleys in the snow, and only the lack of vegetation betrayed them as frozen heaps. Perhaps not mountains in the ordinary sense at all, but simply mighty masses of ice thrown up by the action of the polar drift.
"Look, look," quavered Billy Barnes, as they cleared the range and their eyes fell on the expanse beyond.
The boy's exclamation had been called forth by the sight of an immense mountain far to the southward of them.
From its summit was emerging a cloud of black smoke.
"A volcano!" exclaimed Frank, in blank astonishment.
"Such another as Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, also within the antarctic circle, but not either of which is as big as this one. I should imagine," said the professor. "Boys, let us head for it," he exclaimed; "it must be warm in the vicinity of the crater and perhaps we may find some sort of life existent there. Even the fur-bearing pollywog may reside there. Who knows?"
All agreed, without much argument, that it came within the scope of their duties to investigate the volcano, and they soon were winging toward it. As they neared the smoking cone they observed that its sides were formed of some sort of black stone, and with that, mingled with the smoke that erupted from its mouth, came an occasional burst of flame.
"It's in eruption," gasped Billy. "We'd better not get too near to it."
"I apprehend no danger," said the professor. "Both Scott and Shackleton and our own Wilkes examined the craters of Mounts Erebus and Terror, when steam and flames were occasionally spurting from them, without suffering any bad consequences."