CHAPTER XIV
DANGER AHEAD
A new feeling permeated the ship. She was on her own now, headed for thegreat North. Only a few miles separated her from the city of Adron, butit might as well have been ten thousand leagues, so definitely was thevoyage on.
After so much confusion of last visitors aboard, supplies being stored,a hundred things underfoot, the crew had to get down to the business ofmaking affairs ship-shape. Some donned overalls, some stripped to thewaist. Men moved swiftly along the catwalk, up and down connectingladders.
Up in the keel corridors of the hull men were happily busy. Down in thenavigating section men were happily busy. In the heat of the enginegondolas, slung four to each side of the hull, half-naked fellows, withsweat dripping down their bodies, tuned the six hundred horsepowergasoline motors for power, and more power. Ninety, ninety-five, ahundred miles an hour--speed was coming up! They were on the way,hurrah!
This huge floating bubble of gas prisoned in fabric was to be men's homefor many months. So the expedition settled down to making itself feel athome.
Bob Tucker, the expedition's photographer, and three assistants, set towork checking up on the complicated mechanism of the aerial cameras andthe million feet of film that was to be aimed at the Arctic topography.Theirs would be the task of getting a picture record of the lay of theland in the mineral section, so as to help the geologists in theirscientific deductions.
Up in the keel storage room, Arctic scouts went through the assortmentof skis and snowshoes, preparatory to the foot-excursions in the land ofsnow. Slim up-curved sticks of the skis, broad, thong-latticed spread ofthe snowshoes--methods of snow-locomotion that have come down from man'sdim, primitive past! These seemed incongruous aboard this modern skyship. But Captain Jan Bartlot was combining the best of many ages inthis exploration.
A little, short-haired dog walked sedately out from the crew's quarters,navigated a ladder-like stair adroitly, and then curled up beside one ofthe big observation windows. This was Yiggy, Olaf Valchen's pet. Yiggywas an old-timer in the ways of the Arctic, having made many tripsacross the snow barrens with Valchen in his mining supply transport, abig-winged aeroplane. Out of some bits of fur, Olaf was already makingYiggy a new set of boots for polar walking--since Yiggy, being atemperate zone dog, had not been born with foot-pad protection like theshaggy canines of the land of snow and ice.
Here, there and everywhere over his craft went Captain Bartlot, seeingthat all things were in proper shape. Before this start for the Arcticcould be made, weary months of closest application to detail had alreadybeen spent by Bartlot. Equipping an expedition was a huge business.There was the ship itself that had had to be refitted from stem to sternin preparation for bucking Arctic storm and the terrors of the "greatcold." There had been waterproof cloth and fur and machinery and radiosand tons of food to be bought. Where they were going, there was nogrocery up the block to run to. There was no mechanician's shop aroundthe corner, either. So to make a ship of the air safe for getting themthere and bringing them back, and safe for landing on frozen polarfields, one had to go prepared with hundreds of extra machine parts. Onelittle missing screw could mean a calamity.
A captain must think of dessicated vegetables and canned sunshine forhis crew's health. And just suppose they had forgotten to pack the snowmoss! They hadn't. It was there in its container, along with reindeerskin boots and the down-lined gloves.
On even so slight a thing as a bundle of snow moss does the success ofan Arctic trip hang. For without this specially prepared moss to lineboots and absorb dampness, the feet of men tramping the blizzard-sweptsnow barrens would freeze.
Just such details as these, and a thousand others, great and small, hadto be attended to by Captain Jan and the men who worked with him.
A trip into the frozen north was no holiday of leisure; it meant hardwork for all concerned.
The busiest place aboard the Nardak was the radio-room, with its everyspace--walls, ceiling, desk--crowded with modern equipment. Here was thepowerful short-wave sending and receiving set, an intermediate wave setfor communication with near-by cities and other ships of both air andsea, and a radio direction finder. Within this room, a group of miningscouts was carefully taking apart and putting back together one of theRenaud portables, under the watchful eye of Lee. These men must knowtheir radio mechanism. For when the great dirigible dropped these menfor scouting in various parts of the Arctic waste, radio would be theironly means of communication with the rest of the party.
The staccato tap-tapping of radio telegraph seemed never to drop silent.Either Simms or Renaud was always at the desk instrument. As the stringof Morse came in, they deciphered the code into plain English, andpassed on the slips of paper to Tornado Harrison, weather-getter of theexpedition. From Harrison's atmospheric deductions, the route of theship was plotted. There was constant communication between radio-room,chartroom and navigating section.
This Morse code that tapped in so steadily was bringing reports from theUnited States Weather Bureau at Washington. These reports were the chiefaids in navigating the great dirigible.
The ocean of air is just as real as any ocean of water; it has itscurrents and tides and its air-falls, similar to waterfalls, where airpours from a higher to a lower level. It is the lay of the land belowthat causes the differences in the vast ocean of atmosphere. Mountains,forests, valleys, all produce their own peculiar currents and crosscurrents in the aerial expanse above. Over hills, the air currents aredeflected upwards. Over great flat tablelands, the air flows downwardover the edges in vast Niagaras of air.
Weatherman Harrison had his air map, America of the Air, all wavy linesand curves and whorls.
From observation posts, on land and sea, all over the world, weathernews is continually radioed to the United States Weather Bureau. Fromthis mass of information, the Bureau continually computes and makesdeductions and predicts impending weather conditions--which it radiosback out into the ether for the safety of ships of both sea and air.
Thus a far-flung outpost wirelesses: "Storm sweeping southwest fromLabrador at hundred and fifty miles an hour."
Knowing its intensity, its area, and its initial speed, weather chiefscan tell that the storm will reach Toronto in so many hours, and theMississippi Valley in so many more hours. Storm warnings tap through theair, radio speeds the word in all directions. In consequence, a mailplane for the West dips south in its itinerary to avoid nasty weather;shipping on the Great Lakes goes into dock or heads for the safety ofopen water; a mammoth dirigible changes its course to circle around ahail-and-wind-tortured sector of the ocean of air.
Between his hours of standing watch at the radio, Lee turned withdelighted eyes to the mosaic of rivers, cities, forests and farms spreadbeneath the ship. Radiograms, together with the great wall map, helpedhim identify the cities and the scenic wonders over which they passed.
They swept above Toledo and the smokestacks of Detroit. In splendidspectacle, the Great Lakes rippled their waters beneath them in thegleaming sun.
"Well, well, Lee," Captain Jan came down from the hull-storage sectioninto the navigation car, bringing out for display one of the fur-linedsleeping bags and a snow knife, "how's traveling? What do you think ofyour first ride in a dirigible?"
"Fine!" said Lee. "Only I might as well be sitting out on the frontporch back in King's Cove, so far as any motion can be felt. I can'ttell I'm moving until I happen to look down and glimpse cities and lakesswishing by at considerably over a mile a minute."
"Um--yes, this thing rides a pretty even keel. Not much dipping anddiving so far. And now take a look at these." Captain Jan spread out hisarmful. "No matter whether it may seem cumbersome or not, a sleeping bagand one of these snow knives for cutting a wind-break out of a drift, iswhat every man must carry if he goes off from the ship any way at allafter we land in the ice country. It's a safety rule that I'm layingdown."
"Er--yes, sir." Lee's
answer was entirely absent-minded, his wholeattention bent towards the radio instrument, as he leaned forward,listening to every click.
"Danger ahead--danger!" White to the lips, Renaud swiftly decoded thewild tap-tapping of wireless into understandable English. "Vast area ofstorms and tornado-twisters sweeping down upon us, moving at immensespeed!"
"Orders for engine-rooms, quick! Switch to the gondola telegraphs,"roared Captain Bartlot. "Tap in orders, boy! Minutes may mean lives!Reverse flight! Turn the ship!"
Before a terror-twister of the skies, man can only flee down the wind.