"Exactly," smiled the captain, "but there is still another object scarcely of less importance than the ones that I and the professor,"

he added with a smile, "have enumerated."

"You boys have all heard of the daring rovers who set out centuries ago in their ships to explore unknown oceans?"

The boys nodded.

"You mean the Vikings?" asked Frank.

"Yes," replied the captain. "Well, some time ago a member of one of our great scientific bodies, while traveling in Sweden, discovered in a remote village an odd legend concerning some sailors who claimed to have seen an old Viking ship frozen in the ice near the Great Barrier.

They were poor and superst.i.tious whalemen and did not dare to disturb it, but they brought home the story."

"And you think the ship is still there," broke in Harry.

"If they really saw such a thing there is every reason to suppose that it is," rejoined the lieutenant. "In the ice anything might be preserved almost indefinitely. Providing the yarn of the whalemen is true, we now come to the most interesting part of the story. The scientist, who has a large acquaintance among librarians and custodians of old ma.n.u.scripts in European libraries, happened to mention one night to a friend what he had heard in the little Norwegian fishing village. His friend instantly surprised him by declaring that he had an idea what the ship was.

"To make a long story short, he told him that years before, while examining some ma.n.u.scripts in Stockholm, he had read an account of a Viking ship that in company with another had sailed for what must have been the extreme South Pacific. One of the ships returned laden with ivory and gold, which latter may have been obtained from some mine whose location has long since been lost, but the other never came back. That missing ship was the ship of Olaf the Rover, and as her consort said, she had last been seen in the South Pacific. The ma.n.u.script said that the returned rovers stated that they had become parted from the ship of Olaf in a terrific gale amid much ice and great ice mountains. That must have meant the antarctic regions. This much they do know, that Olaf's ship was stripped of her sails and helpless when they were compelled by stress of weather to abandon her.

It is my theory and the theory of a man high in the government, who has authorized me to make this search, that the ship of Olaf was caught in a polar current and that the story heard so many years after about the frozen ship in the ice is true."

"Then somewhere down there along the Great Barrier there is a Viking ship full of ivory and gold, you believe?" asked Frank.

"I do," said the captain.

"And the ice has preserved it all intact?" shouted Billy.

"If the ship is there at all she is undoubtedly preserved exactly as she entered the great ice," was the calm reply.

"Gosh!" was the only thing Billy could think of to say.

"Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it?" gasped Harry.

"Maybe some Viking fleas got frozen up, too," chirped the professor, hopefully. "What a fine chance for me if we find the ship."

"Have you the lat.i.tude and longitude in which the whalers saw the frozen vessel?" asked Frank.

"I have them, yes," replied the captain, "and when the winter is over we will set out on a search for it. On our march toward the pole that will make only a slight detour."

"Was it for this that you wanted to have our aeroplane along?" asked Frank, his eyes sparkling.

"Yes," was the reply, "in an airship you can skim high above the ice-fields and at a pace that would make an attempt to cover unknown tracts on foot ridiculous. If the Viking ship is to be found it will have to be your achievement."

Captain Hazzard was called out on deck at this juncture and the boys, once he was out of the room, joined in a war dance round the swinging cabin table.

"Boys, will you take me along when you go?" asked the professor anxiously. "If there is any chance of getting a Viking flea I would like to. It would make my name famous. I could write a book about it, too."

"But you've got a book to write already about the Patagonians,"

objected Frank.

"Bless me, so I have," exclaimed the absent-minded old man. "However that can wait. A Viking flea would be a novelty indeed."

At this moment loud tramplings on the deck overhead and shouts apprised them that something out of the ordinary must be occurring.

Just as they were about to emerge from the cabin the captain rushed in. He seemed much excited.

"My fur coat, quick," he cried, seizing the garment from Frank, who had s.n.a.t.c.hed it from its peg and handed it to him.

"What has happened?" asked Frank.

The words had hardly left his lips before there came a terrible grinding and jarring and the Southern Cross came to a standstill. Her bow seemed to tilt up, while her stern sank, till the cabin floor attained quite a steep slope.

"What can be the matter?" cried the professor, as he dashed out after the boys and the captain, the latter of whom had been much too excited to answer Frank's question.

CHAPTER XIV.

MAROONED ON AN ICE FLOE.

"We have struck a polar reef!"

It was Captain Barrington who uttered these words after a brief examination.

"Do you think we will be able to get off?" Frank asked Ben Stubbs, who with the boys and the rest of the crew was in the bow peering down at what appeared to be rocks beneath the vessel's bow, except that their glitter in the lanterns that were hung over the side showed that the ship was aground on solid ice.

"Hard to say," p.r.o.nounced Ben. "These polar reefs are bad things. They float along a little below the surface and many a ship that has struck them has had her bottom ripped off before you could say 'knife.'"

"Are we seriously damaged?" asked Billy, anxiously gazing at the scared faces around him.

"I hope not," said the old salt; "there is one thing in our favor and that is that we were being towed so that our bow was raised quite a bit, and instead of hitting the ice fair and square we glided up on top of it."

Another point in favor of the ship's getting off was that there had been no time to reshift the cargo, which, it will be recalled, had been stowed astern when her bow was sprung off Patagonia, so that she rode "high by the head," as sailors say. So far as they could see in the darkness about twenty feet of her bow had driven up onto the polar reef. The Brutus had stopped towing in response to the signal gun of the Southern Cross in time to prevent the towing-bitts being rooted out bodily or the cable parting.

"There is nothing to be done till daylight," p.r.o.nounced Captain Barrington, after an examination of the hold had shown that the vessel was perfectly dry. "The gla.s.s indicates fair weather and we'll have to stay where we are till we get daylight."

Little sleep was had by any aboard that night, and bright and early in the morning the boys, together with most of the crew, were on deck and peering over the bow. The day was a glorious one with the temperature at two below zero. The sun sparkled and flashed on the great ice-reef on which they had grounded, and which in places raised crested heads above the greenish surface of the sea.

No water had been taken on in the night, to the great relief of the captain, and soon a string of gaudy signal flags were set which notified the Brutus, lying at anchor about a mile away, to stand by.

The hawser had been cast off over night and so the Brutus was free to steam to any position her captain thought advisable. As soon as the signalling was completed he heaved anchor and stood for a point about half-a-mile to the leeward of the Southern Cross, where he came to anchor once more.

Breakfast, a solid meal as befitted the lat.i.tude in which they were, was hastily despatched and the boys bundled themselves up in polar clothes and hurried out on deck to see what was going forward. Captain Barrington, after a short consultation with Captain Hazzard, decided to order out boat parties to explore the length and depth of the ice-reef so that he could make plans to free his ship off her prison.

The boys begged to be allowed to accompany one of the boat parties and so did the professor. Their requests were finally acceded to by the two captains and they formed part of the crew of Boat No. 3, in charge of Ben Stubbs.

"Wait a minute," shouted the professor, as, after the boat to which they were a.s.signed lay ready for lowering, the boys clambered into her.

"What's the matter?" demanded the boys.

"I want to get my dredging bucket," exclaimed the man of science, "this is a fine opportunity for me to acquire some rare specimens."