The worthy professor was so excited that he could scarcely hold the binocular firmly enough to look through it, and it was really laughable--to his companions--to hear his "Ach's" and "Pish's" of impatience as he vainly strove to steady his trembling hands and get another good look at the herd of hitherto believed extinct monsters, which were quietly feeding at a distance of about two miles away. At length he, with a comical gesture of despair, restored the borrowed binocular to Mildmay, and, turning to his companions, exclaimed in a voice of feverish earnestness:

"Come, my dear friends, why do we stand idly gaping here and wasting valuable time, when we really have not a moment to lose? We may never have such a priceless opportunity again. Let us press forward, then, and at all risks secure a specimen of so unique an animal as the mammoth. If we were to achieve this and nothing more our success would be ample repayment for all the anxious thought devoted to the designing of our vessel, and all the money spent in her construction."

His excitement was contagious, and the baronet, after briefly arranging with the colonel a plan of operations, invited von Schalckenberg to follow him; Lethbridge and Mildmay going off in another direction, with the object of getting on the other side of the animals, and, in co- operation with the other party, driving them, if possible, within easy distance of the harbour in which the _Flying Fish_ lay at anchor.

To do this a wide detour was necessary, and it was nearly an hour and a half later when the four men found themselves in a proper position to commence the operation of "driving." They had arranged themselves in the form of a semicircle round the herd, at a distance of about a quarter of a mile away, and, at a signal from the baronet, all hands advanced toward the huge creatures, shouting and gesticulating to the utmost extent of their several powers.

The mammoths, utterly unsuspicious of danger, had been quietly feeding among the long gra.s.s during the approach of their enemies; but on the baronet's first signal shout they paused, and, facing rapidly round in the direction of the noise, raised their trunks in the air and waved them slowly from side to side as though scenting the air. The hunters now redoubled their exertions, fully expecting that, on seeing them, the animals would wheel about and shamble off in the required direction.

But, to their dismay, the creatures, instead of doing this, no sooner caught sight of the party than, with upraised trunks and harsh trumpet- like screams of rage and defiance, they charged furiously straight down upon them. The herd numbered ten individuals, four of which appeared to instantly const.i.tute themselves the defenders of the party; and each of these promptly selected his own particular enemy, occupying his attention so fully that the remaining members of the herd were afforded every facility for escape.

It was a nervous moment for the hunters, who, never having faced such a creature before, had not the most remote idea of its fighting tactics; moreover, the aspect of the monsters, with their towering stature of fully fifteen feet, their thick s.h.a.ggy coats of rusty brown hair, their enormous spirally curving tusks, and their small eyes blazing with fury as they rushed forward to the attack, all combined to produce such a hideous _tout ensemble_ as might well strike terror to the boldest heart. But neither Sir Reginald nor the colonel were the men to shrink from an encounter when game was before them; Mildmay possessed all the cool daring and recklessness of the British seaman; and as for the professor, he would willingly have faced a thousand deaths to secure so new and rare a specimen of natural history as the creature before him.

The four sportsmen pulled trigger almost simultaneously. The baronet and the colonel had each selected the same spot, the eye, as the object of their aim, and both had been equally successful, the sh.e.l.l in each case pa.s.sing upward through the eyeball into the brain, exploding there and causing instant death. The professor's fascinated gaze being riveted upon the wide-open mouth of his own particular adversary, he seemed to think that the yawning cavern thus revealed would be as good a place as any to empty his rifle into; and he did so--just in bare time to bring down his game and save himself from being trampled to a jelly.

Mildmay, however, was not so fortunate. He seemed to think that it mattered very little where he directed his aim, so long as he made sure of hitting the brute _somewhere_, and he therefore fired point-blank at the chest of the mammoth which was menacing him. The sh.e.l.l sped true, but, encountering the thick s.h.a.ggy coat and the enormously tough hide of the creature, failed to penetrate the body, and, exploding outside, only inflicted such wounds as further excited the already angry monster to a perfect frenzy of rage. Even at this critical moment there was time for another shot; but Mildmay most unfortunately forgot that he had nine loaded chambers still available, and instead of firing again he flung away his piece and ran for his life. The race was a disastrously short one, however; he had not run more than twenty yards when the huge creature was upon him. The great uplifted trunk gave one whirl in the air and descended with force enough to slay an ox. It struck poor Mildmay on his right side, and, but for the fortunate accident of his having at that moment tripped and fallen forward, the lieutenant would there and then have lost the number of his mess. As it was, he was sent whirling through the air like a cricket-ball, to fall senseless, and bleeding from the nose and mouth, fully forty feet away. The vindictive brute instantly turned short off with the evident intention of trampling his victim to death; but before he could reach the prostrate body a sh.e.l.l from the colonel's rifle sent him crashing lifeless to the ground.

The remainder of the herd, evidently dismayed at the slaughter of their companions, now abandoned a half-formed intention which they had at first manifested to stay and fight it out, and went off in full retreat with horrible trumpetings of anger and alarm.

The colonel was the first to reach the side of his unfortunate friend, the professor and the baronet joining him as speedily as their legs could convey them to the spot. Very fortunately von Schalckenberg, among his other mult.i.tudinous acquirements, possessed a very fair knowledge of medicine and surgery; and his skilful fingers were soon at work removing the lieutenant's clothing so far as was necessary to investigate the nature and extent of his injuries. Singularly enough these were found to be comparatively trifling, a fractured rib and several very severe bruises being the sum of them. A little brandy forced between the lips of the sufferer soon restored him to consciousness, and he was able to sit up.

On attempting to rise to his feet, however, he experienced such severe pain that it was then and there resolved to let him remain where he was, two of his companions also remaining to mount guard over him and see that he came to no harm; whilst the third was to hurry back with all speed to the ship and bring her out on to the plain close by the spot where the accident occurred, when it would be a comparatively easy matter to convey the lieutenant from the spot where he then lay to his own bed on board the _Flying Fish_.

The professor, having first made Mildmay as easy and comfortable as circ.u.mstances permitted, volunteered for the service of moving the ship, explaining to his companions that, in the event of an attack of any kind, they, as seasoned sportsmen, would be able to far more effectually defend the wounded man than he could possibly hope to do; and then, Sir Reginald and the colonel quite concurring in this view, he set off for the bay, shouting back an a.s.surance as he went that he would not be absent one moment longer than should prove absolutely necessary.

The worthy scientist was as good as his word; for in less than an hour from the moment of his departure the immense bulk of the _Flying Fish_ was seen to rise into the air beyond the tops of the distant pine-trees, and, with her polished hull gleaming and flashing in the rays of the sun, to sweep gracefully round until she was heading straight in the direction of the anxious watchers. Under the professor's able pilotage she was soon brought to the ground and secured within a dozen yards of the spot occupied by them, when it was the work of a few minutes only to convey the injured man to his own stateroom, where his hurts were at once properly attended to and himself made thoroughly comfortable.

As soon as luncheon was over Sir Reginald and the colonel set out for the spot were they had shot the bear in the morning, one of them being armed with a large-bore rifle and the other carrying a fowling-piece; and on their return somewhat late in the afternoon they bore not only the skin, skull, and claws of the defunct bruin, but also a goodly bag of ptarmigan. During their absence the professor had also been very busy, dividing his attention pretty evenly between Mildmay and the finest specimen of the slain mammoths, the latter of which he had succeeded in nearly half-denuding of its skin. With the a.s.sistance of his two able-bodied friends this task was completed by dinner-time; and by the corresponding hour next evening not only was the enormous hide undergoing the first stage of preparation for the taxidermist, but the indefatigable labourers had also succeeded in hewing out the tusks of the other slaughtered mammoths. For health's sake the ship was then moved about a mile further inland, and the carca.s.ses were left to the wolves, which had already gathered in large numbers in the vicinity.

Under the skilful treatment of the professor Mildmay made steady and rapid progress toward recovery from the very first; the baronet and the colonel had therefore no hesitation about carrying out a project which had been under discussion between them for the last two or three days, and which was neither more nor less than a pedestrian excursion to the far distant table-land which they had first sighted from the sea. They estimated that this goal of their journey, upon which they expected to find the actual site of the Northern Pole of the earth, must be about sixty miles distant from the ship; and they considered that the trip there and back would occupy them about six days. It would of course have been very much easier, and more convenient in every way, to have made the journey on board the _Flying Fish_; but the professor was busy with the preparation of his mammoth, the skin of which he had carefully stretched and pegged out on the ground alongside the ship, and was so averse to the losing sight of it, even for a few hours, that it was soon decided the _Flying Fish_ must not be moved for the present. After all, the journey would probably not involve any very great amount of hardship; it simply meant camping out for five or six nights, or at least those hours of the twenty-four which did duty for night. And this the two seasoned hunters looked forward to as rather a pleasant change than otherwise.

The necessary preparations were all made on the previous evening, and after breakfast on the appointed day the two adventurers set out, taking leave of Mildmay--who was already out of bed again--and of the professor, who, to tell the truth, was heartily glad to be left to the uninterrupted prosecution of his task.

They were in light marching order, having resolved to carry nothing which they could possibly do without; their previous experience of the country had taught them that game was pretty plentiful, and that they might safely depend upon their guns for the supply of their larder; and their stock of provisions consisted solely, therefore, of a few biscuits and a substantial flask of brandy each. The temperature was decidedly mild, and had been so ever since their arrival at "Elphinstone Land,"

with settled fine weather, and they therefore carried nothing in the shape of extra clothing save a light macintosh each, which they bore securely strapped on the top of their knapsacks. The remainder of their _impedimenta_ consisted of a double-barrelled gun for each man--one barrel being rifled and the other a smooth bore--two cartridge belts, one for the waist and the other for the shoulder, fully stocked; a formidable double-edged hunting knife each; a capacious waterproof bag containing a reserve supply of cartridges, and a small stock of matches and tobacco.

Their road for the first five or six miles led up a gentle acclivity, just sufficient to make itself felt, but not steep enough to render walking difficult or fatiguing. Then came a stretch of flat country, bounded on each side by the projecting spurs of a range of rugged hills of fantastic outline which stretched immediately across their path at a distance of some three or four miles or so. The pedestrians had not progressed very far across this plain before their attention became arrested by a curious phenomenon. The atmosphere immediately behind the range of hills last mentioned was thick with fleecy vapour, now so thin that the distant table-land could be dimly seen through it as through a veil, and anon so dense that it a.s.sumed a decided cloud-like shape upon which the unsetting sun shone with dazzling brilliancy. This thickening of the vapour seemed to occur at tolerably regular intervals of about twenty minutes each, and was immediately preceded by a sudden silvery gleam succeeded by a most brilliant and perfectly formed rainbow. The periodical recurrence of this singular phenomenon under a perfectly cloudless sky of course greatly excited the curiosity of the pedestrians, and they pushed rapidly forward, eager to ascertain the cause.

As they advanced, the encircling hills thrust their projecting spurs further and further into the narrowing plain, their slopes became steeper and more rugged, and rocks began to crop out here and there with increasing frequency through the lessening soil. A corresponding change of course occurred in the character of the landscape; it grew increasingly picturesque and wild at every step, and at length the travellers found themselves at the mouth of a narrow rocky boulder- strewn gorge bounded on either side by t.i.tanic ma.s.ses of volcanic rock, rugged and moss-grown, with little patches of herbage here and there, or an occasional stunted pine growing out of an almost imperceptible fissure. The only signs of life in this wild spot consisted of a diminutive musk-ox here and there cropping the scanty herbage half-way up the apparently inaccessible height in spots from which it appeared equally impossible for the creature to advance or to retreat.

Plunging into this defile, the travellers advanced with steadily increasing difficulty, the boulders with which their path was strewed growing ever larger and more numerous until at length the narrowing road became completely choked with them, and the only mode of progression was that of a slow, toilsome, dangerous scramble. Still the pair pushed resolutely on, every minute hoping that the difficulties of the journey would come to an end, and every minute less willing to turn back and again encounter the obstacles already surmounted. At length the path became so narrow that one enormous boulder sufficed to completely block the way, whilst the perpendicular rocky walls of the chasm towered so far aloft that only the merest thread of sky was visible; the air grew chill and damp, and so deep a twilight gloom pervaded the place that it was difficult to distinguish any object more than half a dozen yards distant.

The weary travellers looked at each other in dismay. Was this to be the ineffectual ending of that long and toilsome scramble through the ravine? There was just one single narrow crevice between the huge boulder which blocked their way, and one of the precipitous walls which pressed so closely in upon them--a crevice left by the irregular shape of the block, and affording barely s.p.a.ce enough for a man of robust proportions to squeeze himself through--and they determined that, before retracing their steps, they would at least satisfy their curiosity so far as to creep through this crevice and see what lay on the farther side. The baronet with some little difficulty squeezed through first, and his exclamation of astonishment quickly took the colonel to his side.

The pair found themselves in a narrow rent between the two vertical faces of rock--the projections of the one accurately corresponding with the indentations of the other, and clearly demonstrating that, at some distant period of the earth's history, that mighty chasm had been suddenly torn open by a great natural convulsion awful in its intensity beyond all power of imagination. The rent was roofed in as it were by boulders which thickly hung suspended and jammed in at varying heights between the almost touching walls of the rift; and the adventurous explorers could not repress a shudder as they glanced aloft at these huge ma.s.ses and thought of the consequences to themselves which would ensue should a projecting corner just then yield and suffer its parent rock to come crashing down to the bottom. Their first impulse was to beat a precipitate retreat; their second, to go forward; for at only a few yards' distance before them the rift closed altogether, except at the very bottom, where a low cavern-like fissure dimly appeared. A hasty consultation pa.s.sed between them, resulting in a determination to go forward and explore the fissure.

Fortunately for their purpose they had, at an early stage of their difficulties, provided themselves with a couple of stoutish pine branches--wrenched from their parent stems and hurled into the ravine perchance by some winter storm--to aid them in surmounting the difficulties of the way, and these they now determined to utilise if possible as torches.

With some little difficulty the smaller ends of these brands were induced to kindle; but, once fairly ignited, they blazed up bravely, and thus provided with the necessary lights the adventurers boldly pushed forward and plunged into the recesses of the fissure.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

AT THE NORTH POLE.

The opening was so low and so narrow, that for the first fifty or sixty feet the explorers were I obliged to creep forward on their hands and knees; then it widened and became gradually higher, so that by the time they had penetrated a couple of hundred feet they were able to resume a perpendicular att.i.tude. The cavern, if such it could be called, still however remained so narrow that it was only here and there possible for them to walk side by side. It was also very tortuous; and the heights varied momentarily, at one time compelling them to stoop almost double in order to pa.s.s beneath some immense projection, and anon increasing so greatly that the light of their torches failed to reach and reveal the roof. They observed several rifts or crevices to the right and left of them as they pressed forward, but, with one or two exceptions, these were quite impa.s.sable, and those which were not so were still so cramped that they offered no inducement to deviate from the main pa.s.sage.

Groping thus in semi-darkness over painfully rough and broken ground, a full hour was spent, and the colonel was just expressing his conviction that they must have traversed a distance of fully two miles when a faint glimmer of daylight revealed itself on one of the rocky walls of the pa.s.sage; and, turning sharply round an angle, the pair suddenly found themselves once more within a few yards of the open air.

Emerging into broad daylight a most wonderful spectacle greeted the two adventurous explorers. They found themselves standing on a narrow strip of coa.r.s.e sandy beach at the bottom of an immense basin, measuring fully a mile in diameter, the sides of which were formed of lofty precipitous cliffs of volcanic rock, so smooth and so nearly vertical that nowhere, at least in their immediate neighbourhood, could they discover a spot capable of being scaled. Before them, and occupying the whole bottom of this enormous basin, stretched a placid lake, the water of which was as clear as crystal. A thin filmy veil of vapour rose everywhere from the surface of the water, softening the hard outlines of the more distant landscape, and imparting an aspect of dreamlike witchery and unreality which it would certainly have otherwise lacked.

"Why, the water is tepid!" exclaimed Sir Reginald, plunging his hand into the lake and raising a small quant.i.ty of its water in his palm, to ascertain by taste whether it was fresh or salt.

The colonel thereupon thrust _his_ hand down, and satisfied himself by experiment of the truth of his companion's statement. It was even more than tepid, it was positively _warm_.

The two were still discussing the probable reason for this phenomenon when their attention was suddenly arrested by a curious movement of the water in the centre of the lake. First a few tremulous ripples appeared, spreading outward from the centre; then the disturbance became more p.r.o.nounced, until, within a minute, an area of some thirty or forty yards in diameter had a.s.sumed an appearance of violent ebullition.

Suddenly a jet of steam and spray shot up out of the centre of this disturbed spot; and then, before either of the two bewildered spectators could find time to remark upon so curious a phenomenon, an immense column of purest crystal water shot into the air to a height of at least two hundred feet, and, gleaming and flashing in the sunbeams as it soared away above the level of the encircling cliffs, spread out into a dome-like sheet, and, leaving behind it aloft a dense cloud of vapour of dazzling whiteness, fell again into the lake in the form of a shower of boiling water.

"A geyser!" exclaimed the baronet. "A geyser! and of such grandeur that the Great Geyser of Iceland, which I have seen, sinks into the utmost insignificance compared with it."

"You are right," acquiesced Lethbridge. "I too have seen the so-called Great Geyser, and admired it immensely; but after this--"

He finished with a shrug of the shoulders so expressive that there was not the slightest need for words to explain his meaning.

"We must bring the professor to see this," he continued after a slight pause. "And--look here, Elphinstone--if you wish to intensely gratify the worthy man, call this geyser after him--'The Von Schalckenberg Geyser'--eh? It doesn't sound half bad, does it?"

The baronet laughingly consented to his friend's proposal, the more readily as he knew that what Lethbridge had said as to the professor's gratification was perfectly true; and then the wanderers resumed their journey, pa.s.sing along the narrow strip of sand which divided the edge of the water from the base of the cliffs.

"There is no doubt, I think, that this geyser produces the cloud of vapour and the sudden flashing gleam, at tolerably regular intervals, which so aroused our curiosity this morning," remarked the baronet as they plodded somewhat wearily along side by side over the sand.

His companion a.s.sented, and then they both paused, and finally flung themselves down upon the sand to witness a repet.i.tion of the eruption, the premonitory signs of which at that moment made their appearance.

Then, when it was over, finding themselves very comfortable--and very hungry--they concluded to take luncheon before again moving; and, this being followed by a pipe, it was after four o'clock in the afternoon when they once more made a move.

A saunter for three-quarters of an hour along the margin of the lake enabled them to reach a spot almost directly opposite that where they had emerged into daylight from the interior of the cavern; and here they found the point of overflow from the lake. The chain of hills, which from their first point of sight had appeared to completely surround the sheet of water, was here pierced by a narrow valley, through which a small shallow stream, emanating from the geyser lake, made its devious way. As the course of this valley appeared to trend generally in a northerly direction, or toward the high table-land of which the travellers were in quest, and as, moreover, the valley appeared to offer the only exit from the lake basin in a northerly direction, the travellers decided to follow its course, which they did by keeping close to the margin of the stream. This mode of procedure, whilst it afforded them tolerably easy walking, also enabled them to estimate more accurately than they had hitherto done, the enormous quant.i.ty of water projected into the air by the geyser; for whilst the stream normally consisted of a body of water some ten feet wide by three or four inches deep, it was swollen--at regular intervals of twenty minutes each, corresponding with the periodical discharge of the geyser--into a rushing and foaming torrent of about ten feet wide and four feet deep, lasting thus for about a minute, when the stream again rapidly subsided to its previous depth.

For a distance of about two miles the stream wound its way over a bed of exposed rock, beyond which occurred a considerable stretch of coa.r.s.e gravelly soil, thickly overgrown with long gra.s.s. The constant flow of water for untold ages through this bed of gravel had scoured out a channel nearly forty feet wide by half that depth; the banks being perfectly vertical, except in a few places where the gravel had crumbled away to a rather steep slope.

It was whilst the wanderers were pa.s.sing one of these places that--the sun being by this time in the western quarter of the heavens, and his level rays falling directly upon the right bank of the stream--the baronet's attention was arrested by the appearance of several bright sparkling gleams emanating from among the _debris_ of the crumbling bank. He directed the colonel's attention to these, whereupon the latter, seized with sudden excitement, scrambled down the bank, waded across the shallow stream, and in another instant flung himself down upon his knees on the gravel. Before the astonished baronet could follow him he leaped to his feet again, and, whilst he waved some glittering object above his head, shouted:

"Hurrah! hurrah! Elphinstone, my dear fellow, we are in luck to-day.

Here is a fabulous fortune for every one of us, to be had merely for the trouble of picking up. _This is a bed of diamondiferous gravel_."

Sir Reginald hastened across the stream, and, scrambling half-way up the bank, joined his companion on the spot where the latter had halted.

"Look here!" exclaimed Lethbridge, holding out for inspection a crystal as large as a pigeon's egg; "what think you of that for a first find?

And it is of the first water, too."

The baronet took it in his hand and examined it critically. Then he handed it back with the remark:

"Well, my dear fellow, I am no judge of diamonds, at least in their natural uncut state; but if your supposition--that you have discovered a 'bed' or 'pocket,' or whatever you call it, of diamonds--be correct, I most heartily congratulate you."