Far below illuminated fantastically by the lights of the dancing, flickering aurora he could see a vast level plain of snow stretching, so it seemed, to infinity. There was no open sea. No strange land. Nothing but a vast plateau of silent snow.
"Fire your revolvers, boys," shouted Frank, as, suiting the action to the word, he drew from his holster his magazine weapon and saluted the silent skies.
"The South Pole—Hurrah!"
It was a quavering cry, but the first human sound that had ever broken the peace of the mysterious solitudes above which they were winging.
Suddenly in the midst of the "celebration" the aeroplane was violently twisted about. Every bolt and stay in her creaked and strained under the stress, but so well and truly had she been built that nothing started despite Frank's fears that the voyage to the pole was to end right there in disaster.
The adventurers were thrown about violently. All, that is, but Frank, who had now resumed the wheel and steadied himself with it. As they scrambled to their feet Billy chattered:
"Whatever happened—did a cyclone strike us?"
For answer Frank bent over the compass and gave a puzzled cry.
"I don't understand this," he exclaimed.
"Don't understand what?" asked Harry, coming to his side.