Boy Aviators Polar Dash | Page 8

was all he could do to keep from shouting at the top of his voice. The contrast between the dignity he felt he ought to assume before Captain Hazzard and the desire he felt to skip about and express his feelings in some active way produced such a ludicrous mixture of emotions on Billy's face that both the boys and the captain himself had to burst into uncontrollable laughter at it. Laughter in which the good natured Billy, without exactly understanding its cause, heartily joined.
A week later the final good-byes were said and the Southern Cross was ready for sea. She was to meet a coal-ship at Monte Video in the Argentine Republic which would tow her as far as the Great Barrier. This was to conserve her own coal supply. The other vessel would then discharge her cargo of coal,--thus leaving the adventurers a plentiful supply of fuel in case the worst came to worst, and they were frozen in for a second winter.
In case nothing was heard of them by the following fall a relief ship was to be despatched which would reach them roughly about the beginning of December, when the Antarctic summer is beginning to draw to a close. The commander of the Southern Cross expected to reach the great southern ice-barrier in about the beginning of February, when the winter, which reaches its climax in August, would be just closing in. The winter months were to be devoted to establishing a camp, from which in the following spring--answering to our fall--the expedition would be sent out.
"Hurray! a winter in the Polar ice," shouted the boys as the program was explained to them.
"And a dash for the pole to cap it off," shouted the usually unemotional Frank, his face shining at the prospect.
As has been said, the Southern Cross was an old whaler. Built rather for staunchness than beauty, she was no ideal of a mariner's dream as she unobtrusively cleared from her wharf one gray, chilly morning which held a promise of snow in its leaden sky. There were few but the stevedores, who always hang about "the Basin," and some idlers, to watch her as she cast off her lines and a tug pulled her head round till she pointed for the opening of the berth in which she had lain so long. Of these onlookers not one had any more than a hazy idea of where the vessel was bound and why.
As the Southern Cross steamed steadily on down the bay, past the bleak hills of Staten Island, on by Sandy Hook, reaching out its long, desolate finger as if pointing ships out to the ocean beyond, the three boys stood together in a delighted group in the lee of a pile of steel drums, each containing twenty gallons of gasolene.
"Well, old fellow, we're off at last," cried Frank, his eye kindling as the Southern Cross altered her course a bit and stood due south down the Jersey coast.
"That's it," cried Billy, with a wave of his soft cap, "off at last; we're the three luckiest boys on this globe, I say."
"Same here," was Harry's rejoinder.
The blunt bows of the Southern Cross began to lift to the long heave of the ever restless Atlantic. She slid over the shoulder of one big wave and into the trough of another with a steady rhythmic glide that spoke well for her seaworthy qualities. Frank, snugly out of the nipping wind in the shelter of the gasolene drums, was silent for several minutes musing over the adventurous voyage on which they were setting out. Thus he had not noticed a change coming over Harry and Billy. Suddenly a groan fell on his ear. Startled, the boy looked round.
On the edge of the hatch sat Billy and beside him, his head sunk in his hands, was Harry.
"What's the matter with you fellows?" demanded Frank.
At that instant an unusually large breaker came rolling towards the Southern Cross and caught her fair and square on the side of the bow. Deep laden as she was it broke over her and a wall of green water came tumbling and sweeping along the decks. Frank avoided it by leaping upward and seizing a stanchion used to secure the framework holding down the deck load.
But neither Harry nor Billy moved, except a few minutes later when another heavy roll sent them sliding into the scuppers.
"Come, you fellows, you'd better get up, and turn in aft," said Frank.
"Oh, leave me alone," groaned Billy.
"I'm going to die, I think," moaned Harry.
At this moment the new steward, a raw boy from Vermont, who had been at sea for several years, came up to where the two boys were suffering.
"Breakfast's ready," he announced, "there's some nice fat bacon and fried eggs and jam and----"
It was too