Followed by the others he entered the dark, mouldy cabin and could himself hardly repress a start as he found himself facing a man who must have been of gigantic stature. The dead sea rover was seated at a rough oak table with his head resting on his hand as if in deep thought. He had a mighty yellow beard reaching almost to his waist and wore a loose garment of some rough material. Had it not been for a green-mold on his features he must have seemed a living man.
The cabin contained some rude couches and rough bunks of dark wood lined its sides, but otherwise, with the exception of the table and chairs, it was bare of furniture. Some curious looking weapons, including several shields and battle axes, were littered about the place and some quaint instruments of navigation which Frank guessed were crude foreshadows of the sextent and the patent log, lay on a shelf.
"How do you suppose he died?" asked Billy in an awed whisper, indicating the dead man.
"I don't know—frozen to death perhaps," was Frank's reply.
"But where are the others? The crew,—his companions?"
"Perhaps they rowed away; perhaps they went out to seek for food and never came back—we can't tell and never shall be able to," was the rejoinder.
The bare, dark cabin was soon explored and the boys, marveling a good deal at the temerity of the old-time sailors who made their way across unknown seas in such frail ships, emerged into the air once more. They determined to throw off in work the gloomy feelings that had oppressed them in the moldering cabin of the Viking ship.
"The first thing to do," announced Frank, "is to get all we can of this stuff to the surface." He indicated the hold.
With this end in view a block and tackle was rigged on the surface of the plateau, and the ivory and gold hauled out as fast as the boys could load it. The professor at the top attended to the hauling and dumping of each load. Soon a good pile of the valuable stuff lay beside him and he hailed the boys and suggested that it was time for a rest.
Nothing loath to knock off their fatiguing task for a while, the boys clambered up to the surface by the rope and soon were busy eating the lunch they had brought with them. They washed it down with smoking hot chocolate which they had poured into their vacuum bottles at breakfast time. The hot stuff was grateful and invigorating in the chill air, and they ate and drank with keen appetites.