CHAPTER III.
BEYOND THE GREAT BARRIER.
THE Seal sped swiftly over the rolling waves of the northern seas, her whole hull vibrating with the throb of her powerful engines.
Her inventor, a huge cigar between his lips, lounged over the rail which surrounded the vessel’s deck, scarce seeming to feel the bite of the keen wind as he gazed dreamily into the distance.
At the wheel, his wiry hands holding the polished spokes in an iron grip, stood the American, his watchful eye fixed upon the masses of ice which rolled and wallowed around the vessel.
The explorers had been glad to don their heaviest furs, but found even the thickest of them poor enough protection against the icy breath of the Frost King; yet they were occasionally obliged to have the turret door open, despite the cold, when the renewal of the air supply became a necessity.
Two months had passed since the events recorded in our last chapter; the first part of the voyage had been almost completed, and the Seal was rapidly nearing the great barrier, beneath which she was to dive to the North Pole.
It was the Arctic summer; but little of summer was visible in the gloomy scene around; and above a leaden canopy of a sky hung, grey, dismal, and depressing.
For three days the sun had not appeared, and there was every indication of a heavy snowstorm ere long.
Little the party cared for this, however; storm or shine, within twelve hours they would know the result of their quest; would know whether the professor’s theory was a fact or a delusion, and all were eagerly awaiting the moment of decision.
Here, amid the towering crags of the icebergs, some hardy seafowl wheeled, uttering at intervals a shrill shriek of defiance; there a seal, waiting until the submarine had approached to within a few yards of the ice-floe on which it lay, would dive with scarce a splash into the swelling green waters. But beyond these no sign of life was visible.
Unless there was more game in the realms they expected to find beyond the barrier, Seymour’s weapons were like to grow rusty through disuse. Suddenly a cry came from Garth:
“The barrier! At last!”
The Seal, obeying a slight movement of her wheel, had rounded a monster berg, and ahead, many miles distant yet, but looming nearer with every yard the vessel advanced, rose the towering peaks of the barrier ice, the grim and silent guardians of the secret of the Pole.
Crag upon crag, pinnacle after pinnacle, they towered, glittering with an unearthly brilliance, through the rarefied air of these high altitudes.
The inventor’s shout brought Seymour and the scientist up, and out on deck in an instant.
One glimpse they got of the marvellous range of ice mountains, then a giant berg floated across the line of vision.
“Ugh!” the Professor shivered, “let’s get inside. It’s too cold to stand out here.”
Forthwith the three passed into the turret, and closed the door. As they did so, a score of feathery flakes drifted across the vessel’s deck.
“Snow!” cried the baronet.
Ere a moment had passed, the submarine was surrounded by a dazzling white veil, through which it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead.
“Better submerge her,” Garth said; “we shall be less likely to collide with any of the bergs beneath the surface. This smother is worse than a London fog.”
He touched a button on the switchboard beside the wheel as he spoke, and instantly the throb of the pumps sounded through the vessel, and she began to sink.
Soon, with her searchlight gleaming brightly before her, she was gliding swiftly along beneath the surface.
The water was filled with life: hundreds of strange fish flashed past the turret, their gleaming eyes reflecting the electric rays in a myriad rainbow hues.
Once or twice, through the grey-green water, came the ghostly shimmer of ice, as some berg trailed into view, to be left rapidly behind.
So for an hour the Seal moved onward; then the searchlight gleamed on a glistening white wall some distance ahead.
The inventor grasped the telephone, which communicated with the engine-room.
“Stop your engines,” he called, “and sink her.”
“Right you are,” came the answer.
Gliding gently forward by her own momentum, as the propellers ceased to revolve, the Seal nosed almost up to the edge of the barrier; then she sank slowly, her crew keeping a sharp look-out for an opening in the grim wall.
Fifty—sixty—eighty fathoms she sank, and still the ice glittered before her. A hundred—and still no opening, and Mervyn’s face grew strained and white as the moments sped by.
What if the base of the great ice barrier rested upon the ocean bed? What if it were not a floating chain of ice mountains, as he believed, but an immovable line of cliffs, their icy feet gripping the sandy bed of the Polar Sea?
Such might easily be the case; and if so, what then?
Ay! what then?
The scientist answered the question for himself.
A humiliating retreat from the barrier which had battled them; a still more humiliating return to their native shore, there to endure the scoffs and sneers of every dabbler in science who could put pen to paper.
He had staked so much on the outcome of this expedition. His very reputation trembled in the balance. Never again would he be able to lift his head among his rivals, should this, his pet theory, prove a delusion.
Still lower the submarine sank, and no sign was there of an ending of the ice; lower, every plate in her hull creaking beneath the enormous pressure.
Mervyn glanced uneasily at Garth.
“Will she stand it?” he asked, in a hoarse whisper. The inventor consulted a small dial set in the turret wall.
“Yes,” he replied; “she was built to stand greater pressure than this.”
“Thank heaven!” muttered the scientist. “You know what this means to me, Garth? Failure spells ruin!”
“We’re not going to fail,” Garth retorted, cheerfully; “we’ll pull through if I have to blow the barrier into fragments first.”
His hopeful words somewhat revived the drooping spirits of the professor, and he turned once more to the window with renewed hope.
But still no break appeared in the grim face of the ice-cliffs.
Caves there were in plenty, small openings worn in the ice by the action of the water, but not one was large enough for the Seal even to insert her nose; yet each of these Mervyn eyed anxiously as the vessel sank past them, hoping to discover in one of them a passage through the heart of the barrier.
Then, amidst the creaking and groaning of the vessel, came a slight shock, and she ceased to sink.
“I guess we’ve struck bottom,” the Yankee said, glancing keenly at Mervyn.
He grasped the tube. “Ease her up half a dozen yards,” he called, “and start your engines at four knots.”
Almost ere he had ceased to speak, the Seal rose for a few feet, until her keel no longer rested on the sand; her screw: commenced to revolve, and, under the millionaire’s able guidance, she crept slowly along the base of the ice-cliffs.
Not a word passed between the occupants of her wheelhouse.
Each was anxiously looking for an opening, even the cool-blooded Yankee being somewhat concerned at this deadlock.
As the moments went by without their hopes being realised, a fit of gloomy depression swept over them all, which was lifted at length, as a sharp cry broke from Seymour.
“Look!”
The submarine had crept round a great out-jutting spur of the ice-cliffs, and before her, in the face of the glittering wall, loomed a monstrous archway, full one hundred feet in width and almost as much in height.
Before this enormous cavern the millionaire brought the Seal to, with her brow pointing directly into the darkness, which even the rays of the searchlight failed to dispel for more than a few yards distant.
“I reckon we might do worse than try this,” he suggested.
“Take her in,” Mervyn said eagerly; “there is a chance. We can but return, should it prove to be a cul-de-sac.”
Forthwith the submarine passed cautiously through the archway into the great domed chamber which opened beyond.
Through this she crept, with searchlight flashing on the alabaster walls, till a second archway loomed before her, smaller than the first, yet wide enough to give her passage.
Her pace within this narrow tunnel was scarcely a crawl, but no faster dared Haverly drive her, lest, through the sudden narrowing of the passage, she should collide with the ice.
Two hours dragged by, and still the eternal ice gleamed around them in dazzling monotony, and they grew sick of gazing upon its never-ending sameness. Mervyn alone knew no weariness.
Close to the glass he stood, his nervous hands clenching and unclenching as he gazed ahead.
Suddenly a glad cry pealed from his lips.
“At last!”
The ice tunnel had ended; the Seal had passed out into open water.
“Raise her,” roared the American down the tube. “I guess we’ve struck the Polar Sea!”
The scientist could scarcely control his eagerness as the submarine slowly rose. Back and forth he paced, as the tinge of the water without faded from deep green to grey. Then the dim light gave way to a flood of brilliant sunshine, and Garth switched off the searchlight, as the Seal emerged into the full glory of the Northern sun.
For here no leaden grey sky overhung the scene, but a pure blue vault of matchless brilliance, its beauty unmarred by a single cloud.
As, in response to Haverly’s signal, the engines stopped, Mervyn flung open the door, and a flood of bracing air poured into the turret.
Keen it was, but without the sting of the frost, and its sharpness was tempered by the warming rays of the sun.
Stepping out on to the wet and glistening deck, Silas moored the vessel securely by her stern cable to a projecting pinnacle of ice, then turned and gazed about them.
Above rose the heights of the barrier range, towering peak above peak for thousands of feet into the splendour of the Arctic sky; before him, silent and deserted as a sea of the dead, rolled the mighty waters of the Polar Sea.
“Glorious!” breathed Mervyn rapturously. “Glorious!” and he shaded his eyes from the glare of the sun, as he gazed in an ecstasy of enthusiasm across the shimmering wave-crests.
Then, from far away, came a low, rumbling roar, as of distant thunder.
“What was that?” the scientist asked sharply; “not thunder, surely?”
“Hardly,” returned Seymour; “but now let us turn in for a spell. It’s been over forty-eight hours since we had a wink of sleep.”
“You’re right, Seymour,” admitted the scientist; “do you all go below for an hour or two. I will take the watch; I cannot sleep until I know the result of our quest.”
Despite the persuasions of his comrades, the Professor’s determination remained unshaken, and at length they left him and went below.
For an hour Mervyn paced the deck excitedly, listening to the thunder-like detonations, which rolled up at frequent intervals from the far horizon; then, for the first time, he became conscious that the vessel was quivering beneath him, as though in motion.
He glanced astern.
The Seal was straining at her cable like a thing of life!
“The current must be strong,” he exclaimed to himself, and walking aft he tried the lashing of the rope.
It was secure, for the American was an adept at knotting. Retracing his steps, Mervyn leaned against the rail and fell into a reverie.
What could there be beyond? he thought. Was there a great island in the midst of this sea, an undiscovered realm whose forests afforded refuge to strange animals, or perhaps stranger men?
The deserted sea around seemed to give little hope of this.
Surely, if there were habitable land within the Arctic circle, within the confines of the barrier ice, some flying creature would be visible; some seafowl would be disporting itself above the waters, or diving for its food beneath the curling crests of the sparkling waves? But no sign was there of bird; not even a seal furrowed the lifeless waters.
Crack!
A pistol-like report startled Mervyn out of his abstraction.
Crack! Again it sounded, from directly overhead, and the Professor looked up quickly.
A thin, dark line was spreading rapidly along the face of the ice-cliffs, and even as he gazed it widened, and a huge mass of ice, thousands of tons in weight, leaned outward. For an instant it hung poised, then thundered downward.
The enormity of the peril appalled Mervyn! He stood as one spellbound. It seemed as though naught could save the Seal and her crew from utter destruction; yet, in the very instant of her dire peril, deliverance came in a marvellous manner.
There came a sharp snap from the stern, and the Seal, leaping forward like hound from leash, passed clear beneath the huge, descending mass, and sped seaward. Her cable had parted!
A fearful roar, a mighty wave which almost swept Mervyn from the deck, an avalanche of falling fragments, then the whole thing was over.
As the last of the débris plunged into the seething water, and before the scientist had recovered from the shock, his comrades, awakened by the uproar, darted out on deck.
“Whatever has happened?” Garth gasped, gazing in amazement at Mervyn’s ashen-white face, and then at the rapidly receding ice-cliffs.
Somehow Mervyn stammered through his explanation.
“Great Scott!” Seymour cried, as the scientist finished, “if the cable hadn’t parted, the Seal would have been crushed like an egg-shell!”
“It was a close call,” Haverly broke in. “I guess we must ha’ struck a fairly healthy current, to snap the cable like that. However, all’s well as ends right side up.”
He grasped the wheel as he spoke, and the engineer, who had hurried on deck with his friends at the alarm, went below once more to his engines.
A moment later the Seal was leaping forward, with her engines running at twenty-five knots.
For some little time Garth stood watching the wall of foam flung up by the Seal’s sharp prow as she raced over the waters of the Polar Sea.
A vessel to be proud of was she, and none were more thankful than her inventor for her marvellous escape.
At length he turned towards the stairhead.
“I think I’ll go down and prepare a bit of grub,” he said. “I dare say you fellows can manage a feed?”
“Rather,” Seymour returned, and at the word Garth left the turret.
Some moments later Haverly noticed a decided increase in the speed of the vessel.
“Say!” he growled down the tube, “what speed have you got on?”
“Twenty-five,” came Wilson’s answer.
“I guess we’re doing more like fifty,” returned the Yankee. “Ease her off ten knots and stand by.”
For a time the way of the Seal slackened, but not for long. Within ten minutes she was sweeping on as fast as before.
Again Silas grasped the tube, and there was a note of irritation in his voice as he called sharply, “Half speed astern!”
There came a clank from the engine-room as Wilson flung over the levers; then a jarring, grinding crash, that shook the vessel from stem to stern, and the purr of the engines ceased.
With an exclamation of annoyance, Mervyn left the turret, and went below. As he disappeared a cry broke from Seymour.
“Land ho!”
Far away on the horizon a dark, cloud-like shadow rose out of the sea, growing in size each moment as the vessel raced on.
Glass in hand, Seymour sprang to the door; but though he exerted all his huge strength, it defied his efforts to open it.
“Lock the wheel for a second, Silas,” he said, “and give me a hand with this door; it’s got jammed somehow.”
“I guess the wheel don’t need any locking,” retorted the Yankee, as he loosed the spokes.
“What do you mean?” Seymour asked.
“The steerin’ gear’s got jammed, too,” returned Silas, with a grim smile, and he applied himself to assist Seymour with the door.
But the thing refused to budge, and at length, sweating from the violence of their exertions, they gave up the attempt.
“What the plague has taken the things?” Seymour cried angrily. “First the engines break down, then the door jams, and now you say the steering gear’s gone wrong!”
As he spoke, Mervyn re-entered the turret.
“They can’t make out what’s wrong with the engines.” he announced. “Nothing is out of place, yet they will not run. It seems as though something were holding them back!”
“Exactly,” returned the millionaire. “I guess we’ve struck the magnetic attraction of the Pole!”
For an instant this announcement, given in the coolest of tones, staggered his comrades; then Mervyn spoke:
“Then this is no current which is urging the vessel on?” he began interrogatively.
“But real fifty thousand horse-power magnetism,” replied the Yankee; “and I guess it’s goin’ to take an extra large-size miracle to get the old boat out of its grip.”
His companions stared at him incredulously for a few seconds; then, as the full significance of this statement became clear to them, both turned and glanced out of the window.
“You say the door’s immovable?” the scientist questioned.
“Hopelessly!” returned the baronet; “but we can smash the glass if we wish to get out.”
“I reckon there’ll be no call to smash the glass,” Silas said; “another ten minutes and the hull outfit’ll be bust.”
He pointed ahead as he spoke.
Scarce a mile away, looming nearer each moment, a terrible line of cliffs rose black and beetling from the water’s edge; and above, veiling their summits, hung a threatening black smoke cloud, from somewhere in the heart of which came the rumbling explosions they had heard at frequent intervals since their entry into this sea.
The speed of the Seal increased as the moments flew by, until her pace could not have been less than forty knots an hour, and that without any aid from her engines.
“This is terrible!” muttered Mervyn. “Have we escaped one peril, only to be dashed to pieces against those cliffs?”
He was pale to the lips, and his hands shook as with an ague; the nearness of that terrible wall, upon which the Seal was rushing so blindly, unmanned him. He turned to his comrades.
“I’m afraid the old boat’s doomed,” he murmured brokenly; “she will go to pieces like matchwood against that barrier. I am sorry that our trip will have so disastrous an ending——”
“Say,” the Yankee interrupted, “don’t you be too previous, Mervyn. I guess we ain’t done yet, by a considerable piece. If I ain’t dreamin’, there’s a gap in the darned barrier, and the old Seal’s a-shovin’ her nose straight towards it.”
“You’re right, Silas!” Seymour cried. “Heaven grant she clears the entrance!”
Ten seconds later, the Seal, rushing madly forward, cleared by a fraction of an inch the mighty rocks which guarded the entrance, and plunged into the darkness of a canyon.
As she did so, Haverly switched on the searchlight.
Thirty feet above her hung a dense, poisonous cloud of smoke, blotting out the light of the sun like an immense black curtain, and making the canyon dark as midnight.
The rugged walls of the canyon flashed past in a gleaming line as the electric light danced upon them, and around the vessel a shower of ashes began to fall, converting the spotless paint of the deck into a mass of sooty-grey blotches.
Boom! A thunderous explosion reverberated down the canyon, shaking the instruments in the turret lockers, and a burst of flame leapt up some distance ahead, its vivid crimson glow paling the beams of the great searchlight.
It died away in a moment,
“A volcano!” gasped the scientist. Then the Seal, narrowly escaping collision with the rocky wall, swept out of the gorge.
Before them, seen dimly through the falling ashes, lay the black and silent waters of a great lake; and, in the midst, its fiery crest glowing like the mouth of the Pit, towered a mighty volcano.