Boy Aviators Polar Dash | Page 3

to work as tallyers."
Harry looked blank at this. He had counted on rambling over the ship
and examining her at his leisure. It seemed, however, that they were to
be allowed no time for skylarking. Frank, however, obeyed with
alacrity.
"Ay, ay, sir!" he exclaimed, with a sailor-like hitch at his trousers;
"come, Harry, my hearty, tumble aft, we might as well begin to take
orders now as any other time."
"That's the spirit, my boy," exclaimed the captain warmly, as Harry,
looking a bit shamefaced at his temporary desire to protest, followed
his brother to the stern of the ship.
Once on board there was no room to doubt that the Southern Cross had
once been a whaler under the prosaic name of Eben A. Thayer. In fact
if there had been any indecision about the matter the strong smell of oil
and blubber which still clung to her, despite new coats of paint and a
thorough cleaning, would have dispelled it.
The engine-room, as is usual in vessels of the type of the converted
whaler, was as far aft as it could be placed, and the boys noticed with
satisfaction as they entered the officers' quarters aft, that the radiators
had been connected with the boilers and had warmed the place up to a
comfortable temperature. A Japanese steward showed them into
Captain Hazzard's cabin, and they selected a suit of overalls each from
a higgledy-piggledy collection of oil-skins, rough pilot-cloth suits and
all manner of headgear hanging on one of the cabin bulkheads.

They had encased themselves in them, and were laughing at the
whimsical appearance they made in the clumsy garments, when the
captain himself entered the cabin.
"The stevedores have knocked off for a rest spell and a smoke and the
lighters are emptied," he announced, "so I might as well show you boys
round a bit. Would you care to?"
Would they care to? Two hearty shouts of assent left the young
commander no doubt on this score.
The former Eben A. Thayer had been a beamy ship, and the living
quarters of her officers astern left nothing to be desired in the way of
room. On one side of the cabin, extending beneath the poop deck, with
a row of lights in the circular wall formed by the stern, were the four
cabins to be occupied by Captain Hazzard, the chief engineer, a
middle-aged Scotchman named Gavin MacKenzie, Professor Simeon
Sandburr, the scientist of the expedition, and the surgeon, a Doctor
Watson Gregg.
The four staterooms on the other side were to be occupied by the boys,
whom the lieutenant assigned to the one nearest the stern, the second
engineer and the mate were berthed next to them. Then came the cabin
of Captain Pent Barrington, the navigating officer of the ship, and his
first mate, a New Englander, as dry as salt cod, named Darius Green.
The fourth stateroom was empty. The steward bunked forward in a
little cabin rigged up in the same deck-house as the galley which
snuggled up to the foot of the foremast.
Summing up what the boys saw as they followed their conductor over
the ship they found her to be a three-masted, bark-rigged vessel with a
cro' nest, like a small barrel, perched atop of her mainmast. Her already
large coal bunkers had been added to until she was enabled to carry
enough coal to give her a tremendous cruising radius. It was in order to
economize on fuel she was rigged for the carrying of sail when she
encountered a good slant of wind. Her forecastle, originally the dark,
wet hole common to whalers, had been built up till it was a
commodious chamber fitted with bunks at the sides and a swinging

table in the center, which could be hoisted up out of the way when not
in use. Like the officers' cabins, it was warmed by radiators fed from
the main boilers when under way and from the donkey, or auxiliary,
boiler when hove to.
Besides the provisions, which the stevedores, having completed their
"spell," were now tumbling into the hold with renewed ardor, the deck
was piled high with a strange miscellany of articles. There were sledges,
bales of canvas, which on investigation proved to be tents, coils of rope,
pick-axes, shovels, five portable houses in knock-down form, a couple
of specially constructed whale boats, so made as to resist any ordinary
pressure that might be brought to bear on them in the polar drift, and
nail-kegs and tool-chests everywhere.
Peeping into the hold the boys saw that each side of it had been built up
with big partitions, something like the pigeon-holes in which bolts of
cloth are stored in dry-goods shops--only much larger. Each of these
spaces was labeled in plain