CHAPTER XIII.
THE SHIP OF OLAF THE VIKING.
"Stop all that confusion," roared Captain Barrington through hismegaphone, which he had snatched from its place on the bridge.
Silence instantly followed, only to be succeeded by a tearing andrending sound.
The rigging of the foremast had caught in a projecting ridge of theberg and was being torn out. The ship trembled and shook as if a gianthand was crushing her, but so far her heavy timbers seemed to havestood the shock. Presently the noises ceased and the air began to growless chilly.
"I believe we are free of the berg!" shouted Captain Hazzard.
The rapid clearing away of the dense fog that had hung like a pallabout the seemingly doomed ship confirmed this belief. By great goodfortune the Southern Cross had been spared the fate of many ships thatventure into the polar seas, and the boys gazing backward from thebridge could see the mighty berg, looking as huge as a cathedral,slowly increasing its distance from them, as it was borne along on thecurrent.
"Hurrah, we are safe!" cried Harry.
"Don't be too sure," warned Captain Barrington. "I hope we are, butthe vessel will have to be examined before we can be certain. In anyevent our foremast and bowsprit are sad wrecks."
The portions of the ship he referred to were, indeed, badly damaged.The shrouds supporting the foremast had been ripped out by the berg onthe port or left hand side of the vessel, and her jibboom had beensnapped off short where the berg struck her. Two boats had, besides,been broken and the paint scraped off the polar ship's sides.
"We look like a wreck," exclaimed Billy.
"We may think ourselves lucky we got off so easily," said CaptainBarrington, "we have just gone through the deadliest peril anantarctic ship can undergo."
The Brutus now came gliding up, and after congratulations had beenexchanged between the two ships, a new hawser was rigged and theSouthern Cross was once more taken in tow.
"I don't want any more encounters with icebergs," said Billy, as theship proceeded toward her goal once more.
"Nor I," spoke the others.
"It's a pity this isn't at the north pole," said the professor, whowas varnishing dried fish in the cabin, where this conversation tookplace.
"Why?" asked Frank.
"Because, if it had been, there might have been a polar bear on thaticeberg. I have read that sometimes they drift away on bergs thatbecome detached and are sighted by steamers quite far south."
"Why,--do you want a polar bear skin," asked Billy, "you can buy lotsof them in New York."
"Oh, I don't care about the polar bear," said the professor quickly,"but the creatures have a kind of flea on them that is very rare."
At the idea of hunting such great animals as polar bears for suchinsignificant things as fleas, the boys all had to laugh. Theprofessor, who was very good-natured, was not at all offended.
"Small animals are sometimes quite as interesting as large ones," wasall he said.
The next day the rigging and bowsprit were refitted and further andfurther south steamed the Brutus with the polar ship in tow. The firesof the Southern Cross had now been started and her acetylene gas plantstarted going as the heat and light were needed. Icebergs were nowfrequently met with and the boys often remained on deck at night,snugly wrapped in furs, to watch the great masses of ice drift by.
Although they were as dangerous as ever, now that the ships were incooler water the bergs did not create a fog as they did in the warmerregion further north. By keeping a sharp lookout during the day andusing the searchlights at night, Captain Barrington felt fairlyconfident of avoiding another encounter with an ice mountain. Thedamage the ship had sustained in her narrow escape from annihilationhad proved quite difficult to repair, though before the vessel reachedthe sixtieth parallel it had been adjusted.
"Well, boys," announced Captain Hazzard one day at noon, "we are nownot more than three hundred miles from the Great Barrier."
"Beyond which lies the polar mystery," exclaimed Frank.
Captain Hazzard glanced at him quickly.
"Yes, the polar mystery," he repeated, "perhaps now is as good a timeas any for telling you boys the secret of this voyage. Come to mycabin and I will tell you one of the objects of our expedition, whichhitherto has been kept a secret from all but the officers."
The excitement of the boys may be imagined as they followed thecaptain to his cabin and seated themselves on a seat arranged abovethe radiator.
"It's the ship of Olaf," whispered Billy to Harry.
"Of course," began Captain Hazzard, "the main object of thisexpedition is to plant the flag of the United States at 'furthestsouth,' even if not at the pole itself."
"And to capture a South Polar flea and a fur-bearing pollywog," put inthe professor, who had included himself in the invitation to the boys.
"Exactly," smiled the captain, "but there is still another objectscarcely 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 centuriesago 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 ofour great scientific bodies, while traveling in Sweden, discovered ina remote village an odd legend concerning some sailors who claimed tohave seen an old Viking ship frozen in the ice near the Great Barrier.They were poor and superstitious whalemen and did not dare to disturbit, 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 thatit is," rejoined the lieutenant. "In the ice anything might bepreserved almost indefinitely. Providing the yarn of the whalemen istrue, we now come to the most interesting part of the story. Thescientist, who has a large acquaintance among librarians andcustodians of old manuscripts in European libraries, happened tomention one night to a friend what he had heard in the littleNorwegian fishing village. His friend instantly surprised him bydeclaring that he had an idea what the ship was.
"To make a long story short, he told him that years before, whileexamining some manuscripts in Stockholm, he had read an account of aViking ship that in company with another had sailed for what must havebeen the extreme South Pacific. One of the ships returned laden withivory and gold, which latter may have been obtained from some minewhose location has long since been lost, but the other never cameback. That missing ship was the ship of Olaf the Rover, and as herconsort said, she had last been seen in the South Pacific. Themanuscript said that the returned rovers stated that they had becomeparted from the ship of Olaf in a terrific gale amid much ice andgreat ice mountains. That must have meant the antarctic regions. Thismuch they do know, that Olaf's ship was stripped of her sails andhelpless 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, whohas authorized me to make this search, that the ship of Olaf wascaught in a polar current and that the story heard so many years afterabout the frozen ship in the ice is true."
"Then somewhere down there along the Great Barrier there is a Vikingship 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 asshe 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 latitude and longitude in which the whalers saw thefrozen vessel?" asked Frank.
"I have them, yes," replied the captain, "and when the winter is overwe will set out on a search for it. On our march toward
the pole thatwill make only a slight detour."
"Was it for this that you wanted to have our aeroplane along?" askedFrank, his eyes sparkling.
"Yes," was the reply, "in an airship you can skim high above theice-fields and at a pace that would make an attempt to cover unknowntracts on foot ridiculous. If the Viking ship is to be found it willhave 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 swingingcabin table.
"Boys, will you take me along when you go?" asked the professoranxiously. "If there is any chance of getting a Viking flea I wouldlike 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. "Howeverthat can wait. A Viking flea would be a novelty indeed."
At this moment loud tramplings on the deck overhead and shoutsapprised them that something out of the ordinary must be occurring.Just as they were about to emerge from the cabin the captain rushedin. He seemed much excited.
"My fur coat, quick," he cried, seizing the garment from Frank, whohad snatched 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 terriblegrinding and jarring and the Southern Cross came to a standstill. Herbow seemed to tilt up, while her stern sank, till the cabin floorattained quite a steep slope.
"What can be the matter?" cried the professor, as he dashed out afterthe boys and the captain, the latter of whom had been much too excitedto answer Frank's question.