CHAPTER XVIII
PROSPECTING
"Ah-boom-ah!" It sounded like guns, but it could be only the roar ofsome glacier avalanche, or an ice peak splitting asunder.
"Ah-boom-ah! Ah-boom!" There it came again, almost at hand.
Puffs of white smoke, fur-jacketed men running, dropping on knee to aim,to fire, leaping up to run on again. These were Goode, Millard,Harrison, and a score of armed men from the dirigible. At theironslaught, the wolf-pack leaped snarling into action, faced the hail oflead for a moment, then fled, leaving their dead behind. The snarlingcall and hunger wail of a pack cheated of its prey drifted back on thewind.
Numb and stiff in their frost-rimed furs, the cave refugees had to belifted down from the ice ledges. Hot soup, and many hands to rub upcirculation in numb forms soon brought them back to normal.
"How--how'd you ever find us so quick?" asked Renaud. "Radio wouldn'twork--"
"Like thunder, it wouldn't!" ejaculated Tornado Harrison, whirling onhis heel. "Why, your voice came sliding in on that ship's instrumentlike greased lightning. Simms tuned in to your voice soon as that buzzsignal zipped in. He answered you a dozen times, telling you that helpwas coming. Didn't you get that?"
"Got nothing, not a sound, till those guns boomed. They were powerfulwelcome, though," Renaud grinned, then sobered down. "Something wrongwith my instrument. Next time it might not work even one way. Got tolook into that."
* * * * *
The next few days saw mighty changes at the ice cave. Instead ofslinking wolves and flapping owls, it now housed a settlement ofhumankind. A very modern settlement it was. Man had brought electricityinto the wastes of the Arctic,--electricity for heating, for cooking,for running various mechanical devices.
Before the explorers moved into this vast, ready-built, triangularabode, however, some precautionary steps were taken. No telling whetherbear as well as wolf had made this a den. Smoke bombs and gas rocketswere hurled in to drive out any dangerous inmates. Then when theatmosphere cleared, thorough investigation was made by the light ofelectric torches. They found themselves in a mammoth shelter. A greatopening back into the mountain that must have been full three cityblocks deep by a block wide. So high was its pointed ceiling that ourNational Capitol and a couple of skyscrapers besides could have beenhoused beneath it.
With the motors running gently, and with men hauling at the drag ropes,the great silver hull of the Nardak was finally drawn into this Arcticcave-hangar. Ice columns served as anchor posts for its hawsers. Thegreat dirigible held central place within the shelter. Here and therelittle rooms and tunnels rayed off from the main room. In one was set upa workshop with anvil and hammers and an electric furnace. In another akitchen with pots and stove and part of the stores banked against thewall. Further on, Lee Renaud had spread some laboratory material, tubes,acids, wires. He was trailing the flaw in his radio receiver,experimenting with an acid dip for selenized plates, to render themimpervious to the terrific cold of this bleak white world. Since thewiring of his radio was in perfect order, and since the little machineworked well within a compartment heated to moderate warmth, Renaud wasmore than sure that the penetrating touch of the bitter Arctic must haveinterfered with his sensitized plates. With grim determination he pushedon with his work. He must find the flaw, must find the cure. Failure ofthese little portable connecting links could spell failure for the wholeexpedition.
When the expedition began to settle itself into the real business ofthis hazardous journey, seeking gold in this white, frozen land, Renaudwatched his little "knapsack radios" being placed in the various fieldoutfits with a clutch at his heart. Suppose the new acid-treated platesworked no better than the old ones? Suppose, in dire need, the radiosfailed, even as his had failed in part during the wolf episode!
Far different from anything that had ever heretofore been tried out,were Captain Jan Bartlot's very modern methods of gold seeking. Forgenerations, the great Canadian Northwest has been luring men into itsfrozen heart to seek wealth. The magnet which drew adventurers into thisenormous wilderness, where for hundreds upon hundreds of miles there wasno sign of human life, no vegetation save the fossilized leaves andtwigs of a million years ago, no connection with the world of livingmen--the magnet which lured was mineral wealth. Gold, silver, nickel,platinum, not reckoned in millions of dollars, but in billions, layalmost to hand, just below the frozen crust of this frozen land. Forhope of such treasures, men in the past pushed into the very fringes ofthe Arctic Circle by the primitive sledge drawn by wolf-dogs, and theequally primitive canoe of bark or skin. With such crude, laboriousmeans of travel it took almost superhuman endurance to even reach themineral fields of the Arctic. When the old-time mining prospectorstepped off the train and aboard sled or canoe, it meant a whole summerof grueling, grinding travel before he reached the northern ore country.Then winter darkness would cover the land, and the prospector could donothing but sit down and await the coming of another spring. Thefollowing year, when the red rim of the sun again showed above theArctic world, he set about his prospecting, slow work that might leadhim to wealth, but that would likely take the whole of summer daylightin the doing. That meant another settling down for another lonelysojourn through the night of winter. The next spring the bearded,fur-clad prospector trekked his wealth back to civilization--if he livedto tell the tale of those terrible years of frozen exposure, hardshipand suffering. Three years to trek a thousand miles and back! Hundredsfollowed the lure of gold up into the far north. Only tens lived to getback.
Olaf Valchen was one of those prospectors, who, eight years ago,followed the land trail and the water trail, by sled, by skin canoe, upinto the frozen north. He had found gold--millions of dollars' worth ofit in the strange rottenstone mounds that edged a frozen lake. Threeyears later he reached civilization, but as penniless as when he hadadventured forth. On the long trail, when one has to either cast awaylife or gold--well, one drops the heavy skin sacks in the snow, andstruggles on, thankful to survive.
And now he was going back to try to find again the trail that led togold. But this time he was following the Arctic trail in a manner thatwas most modern of the modern.
In the past, one year by sled and portage! Now, over the same trail byair in a few days! As the Bartlot expedition had by dirigible so speededup the trek into the north, so it now planned to speed up the businessof prospecting.
In this marvel of mine-prospecting by air, the camera was to be thesurveyor's first instrument.
When the great dirigible backed out of its ice hangar and took the aironce more, it wore a new appendage--a small, boat-like arrangement thatswung by long hawsers far below the hull. In the nose of this and aimedtoward earth were set three big motion-picture cameras. The major partof that million feet of film was about to be put into use.
As the huge ship of the air, day after day, radiated out from its cavebase on journeys that covered hundreds of miles, the steady grind ofcameras devouring film made aerial maps of the frozen hills, valleys,mountains, and lakes.
This was no film to be "canned" and carried to a warmer clime fordevelopment and display. To fulfill its purpose, it had to be developedright here in liquid baths of eight hundred gallons of water. Astartling order for a land where water was not water at all, but solidice. So after the aerial cameras had clicked their final click, somerousing times were had at the ice cave camp. Captain, engineers, weatherman, radio men, doctor, geologist, cook and crew, every man-jack of themturned out to lug snow, three tons of it! Cook pots were everywhere.Buckets and bags of snow were dumped in them to melt. In the end, tonsof snow made hundreds of gallons of water--and the film had itsdeveloping bath, Arctic or no Arctic!
Outside on the snow barrens, the polar world went its old way. The coldstreamers of the northern lights flickered in the sky; the wolf-packflung its hunting howl on the winds; the great white bear stalked acrosshis lonely domain.
; But within the shelter of the ice tunnel, a handful of humans had daredto bring a new way of life into the Arctic wilds. Here a little audiencesat thrilled and tense before a screen on which a moving-picture machineprojected flight pictures made and developed in the very teeth of Arcticcold. Here was pictured no tawdry drama of human love and hate. Insteadthe film unrolled magnificent vistas of mountain land and lake land.Before the screen sat the expedition geologists, exploring a thousandmiles by paper in less time than the prospectors of other days took toexplore only a few miles on foot, and with the pick and shovel. To ageologist, this pointed range of hills meant a certain rock formation.The lake bed presaged another. The long, low, rounded mounds circlingwater meant the great pre-Cambrian rock shield, the oldest stoneformation in the north country, stone so old that its weathered seamshave chipped and cracked and broken, so that the treasure it once hidnow shows through in extrusions of gold or copper, silver or platinum.
With modern machines in that ice hangar, this little band of explorerscould tap the air of the civilized latitudes and bring its music acrossthousands of miles of snow barrens. A turn of the dial in the ship'sradio-room, and the long arm of radio reached forth and plucked musicout of the air, the latest news from America's metropolitan cities,tunes from Broadway and personal messages from well-wishers.
"Shades of all ancient explorers!" Lee Renaud chuckled to himself. "Howthose old fellows would turn over in their graves at the idea of musicfrom Broadway being just twenty seconds from the Arctic Circle. And itall happened because a Pomeranian monk shut some electricity in a glassjar." As his mind went back to his own first studies of thingselectrical, Lee had the strange feeling that King's Cove and all his oldlife were in the realm of the unreal--that only the Arctic, and radio atthe top of the world, and a modern airship flying the polar wastes werereal.
When, from study of the aerial photographs, the geological map wasfinally pieced together and arranged, it was time for the groundprospecting to begin. The prospectors were carried out in pairs. Thedirigible landed them in various places where the ground formation wassuch as to indicate the pre-Cambrian sheath rising in its long, shallowmounds. Some men were put down within a few miles of the cave base;some, hundreds of miles away. These intrepid ones were left with a puptent, an eiderdown sleeping bag, a rifle and ammunition, radio outfitand food.
Left alone, the men were to make a temporary camp immediately and tobegin prospecting. If they made a find, they were to communicate withthe main base by radio, or by orange flags laid out on the white snow assignals for the dirigible when it passed over again. In the prospectingcrew were the best of their kind, miners from Africa, India and theYukon.
The messages began rolling in incredibly soon. The ship's radio men hadto dance continual attendance on buzzer signal and radio code. The firstprospector to get in touch with dirigible headquarters was Olaf Valchen.
"Stand by--O. V. on the air! After breakfast, better hop over here inthat sky boat. Location a hundred miles west of where longitude 110 cutslatitude 65. Come prepared to knock off a few samples of greenstone witha geologist's hammer, and fly back to base to have 'em assayed beforesupper. Come in a hurry! Got something real to show you! O. V. signingoff!"
As the great dirigible, answering this joy call, sped through the snowhaze and skimmed lower and lower, her lookouts sighted the orange signallaid out on the frozen white, and her engines were halted. The iceanchor was dropped and with a loud hissing seared its way to a securedepth. The hawsers were windlassed up, and the great hull eased to earthon its pneumatic bumpers. The entrances to gondolas and navigatingsection were flung open--and the first fellow out was Yiggy, fur bootsand all, barking a delighted greeting to his stocky blond Norwegianmaster. Scooping up the wriggling terrier into his arms, Olaf Valchenled the way to his find.
A hundred paces back from where he had laid out his flag signal, theprospector stopped on the banks of a frozen lake. Circling the lake wasa rim of low mounds. One of these, like a domed ant hill, thirty feethigh and some two hundred feet in diameter, had been partly freed of itsfrozen crust. These bare spots showed dull green and gray, the famousgreenstone of the Canadian prospectors who had made lucky strikes.Nakaluka, the rottenstone of the Eskimos! So old was this, the oldeststone formation in the north country, that it was crumbling asunder,cracking apart in great seams. And in those seams lay gold, glitteringand yellow.
Lee Renaud could feel his heart thumping against his double-furredshirt. He had not dreamed that his eyes would ever see such a thing--agreat mound that was one vast heap of wealth, piled up in plain sight,set out where anyone strolling by in the course of the last thousandyears might have seen it.
A few hours of work and they had collected bagfuls of samples, so richthat the naked eye could almost estimate their value.
Excitement and happiness swirled through Lee Renaud. But it was not all"gold" excitement. His chief thrill was that his radio had passed agreat test. Despite the creeping touch of abnormal cold on metal andacid and tube, his radio had brought in the message! His latestimprovement had worked! Already still other plans were dimly outliningthemselves, plans for stretching the power of his tiny instrument,making its call reach farther and farther.
Other reports were radioed in. Some prospectors had found otherpre-Cambrian rock mounds, but with slight gold value, for ridges ofgranite rose too close and precluded the possibility of the ore veinsstretching to any distance. Here and there, though, more of the vastlyrich finds were located, mapped, stake-claimed, and sample ore taken.
On this one trip, gold worth millions of dollars could be taken out. Andthat was but the beginning. In the next few years, these Arctic BarrenLands would see civilization brought into them because of man's masteryof the flying ship, and his new power of speeding the spoken wordthrough the air on the waves of radio. For this forward march ofcivilization into the waste places, first bases of operation would haveto be laid. Great dirigibles would transport the gas, food, equipment upinto the North. Planes would be flown in. Hangars would be set up. Spareengines, spare parts, together with landing gears for summer or winter,all would be stored away. Gasoline and oil would be put down in largecaches. Gradually a combination airport and mining camp would springinto being, with huts, radio mast, machine shops and the rest of theequipment.
Bartlot's expedition into the great northland had achieved success. Andfuture success loomed ahead.
To Lee Renaud, it was all very wonderful and marvelous. Success writtenin large letters! And yet through it all, he felt a strange little throbof regret. This success had been too easy, too mechanical. He could notdown an unwonted touch of sadness that soon there would be left no moresurprises on this world of ours. No far, unknown, mysterious and frozenoutposts for man to dream about. The White North conquered, and turnedinto factory ground!
But young Renaud was indulging too soon in boyish regrets over man'sconquest of the great white mysteries of the north country.
The frozen North still held some surprises for puny man who had daredpush his machines of sound and of flight into her vast lonely spaces.
The North reached her icy fingers after the huge silver Nardak loadedwith Arctic treasure and headed southward; she roared out her power inmerciless blasts that tossed and whirled the great ship like some chipat the base of a cataract.