Chapter III: The Beauty and Marvels of an Ice-Cave

“Oh, what a shame!” cried Walt, impatiently. “We did expect to see something real splendid.”

Ingomar laughed.

“You are snow-blind, boys, just for the moment. If you’d come when I told you, when the sun was still above the horizon, you would have had a daylight view.

“The sun can’t be expected to stay for you. He has to rise and shine on other seas, if not on other lands.”

But when their eyes became more accustomed to the twilight, they could see that they were in a vast vaulted cave, solid ice and snow beneath them, and strange uncanny shapes sparkling in the semi-darkness beyond.

Three men had accompanied Ingomar and the boys, and one was carrying a bag.

“Be cautious how you move, lads, else one of you may go through into the sea, and never be seen again.”

“But the ice feels very strong.”

“Yes; it is perhaps a foot thick, and that is strong enough for anything. But there are ‘pussy-holes’ here and there, up through which seals crawl to sleep, and on these the ice is very thin.”

Just as he spoke, there was a sudden and angry roar heard ahead of them, where something black and big reared itself, and two fierce eyes glared at the intruders.

The boys clutched each other in superstitious fear, and stepped quickly back.

It was only a large seal, however, but so quickly did it retreat that Ingomar had not the slightest idea what species it was.

I may say for the seals here in the Antarctic, which number four or five species, that though in the breeding season they have certain habitats, after that happy time is over they are free to wander where they please, and often turn up in strange places. It is the same with Arctic seals.

An eared seal, whose fur has been much sought after, is now, I think, almost extinct, owing to the murderous greed of the sealer. I think it would be well if there were a close season for all species. But this is a digression. Let us return to the cave.

The somewhat mysterious bag carried into the cave was now opened, and Ingomar, bending down, extracted some of what he termed theatrical properties therefrom.

Next moment, on the touch of a button, the whole of this cave was filled with dazzling light.

What a sight!

“Oh--h--h!”

That was all our boys could say for a moment or two.

No stalactite cave probably ever rivalled the beauty of this.

And here were stalactites, too, in the form of depending icicles, dozens, scores, hundreds of them, and, seen by the electric light, they emitted all the colours of the rainbow.

They walked cautiously on and on a long way into the bowels of this mighty cavern, watching the floor for pussy-holes.

No one could even guess where the seal had gone.

“Well,” said Charlie, as they came at last to the end of the ocean-hollowed cave, “I should really have expected to find mermaids here.”

“Now,” said Ingomar, “one more transformation scene, or perhaps two, and then the pantomime is over.”

As he spoke he touched a spring, and, wonderful to say, the cave was illuminated with brightest crimson, then with orange and red again. So on to the pure white light, and in this they found their way to the mouth of the cave, and made their exit and presently their way to the boats.

“We’ve seen a sight,” said Ingomar, “that is surely worth coming to the Antarctic to look upon.”

“Yes,” said Charlie, thoughtfully.

“Oh,” cried Walt, “will you do it again some time?”

Ingomar laughed.

“It all depends,” he said.

A beautiful night now. They must have been a full hour in that cave and didn’t mark time.

The moon had arisen, stars were bright and sparkled in the sea.

It was a night for thought more than talking, and no one did talk.

Nothing indeed was heard, save the chunk-chunk, chunkitty-chunk of oars in rowlocks, until the boat grated against the ship’s side.

“Wherever have you been, boys?” said Mayne Brace. “I was just going to sound the syren to say supper was ready.”

“Ah, Captain Brace, we’ve had a wonderful time of it, all among the mermaids, though at first we saw a terrible apparition.

“But really, sir, the shriek of your hooter would have dispelled all the romance and mystery. Only I’m hungry now. Aren’t you, lads?”

“Rather,” said Charlie; and Walter nodded and smiled.

Come to think of it, there is no country in the world like the Antarctic for making people hungry. If we could send off our dyspeptic millions there, they would all come back with appetites which would speedily put up the price of meat.

* * * * *

I think it really was very good of Ingomar to put himself about in pleasing the boys, which he did in every way he could and at every opportunity.

Older people than he would say that he was not much past his own boyhood, being only about three and twenty. But listen, lads, I myself and many others are believers in young blood. Youth has spirit, dash, and go.

At the University, in which I was reared and nurtured, no student considered himself a boy at seventeen. If you had called me a boy in those days, you would have had to strip, and then you would have had to depend a good deal on your muscle and science to get yourself out of the scrape. I’m not going to preach. That isn’t my form, but if a lad of seventeen doesn’t begin to look ahead and find out that he wasn’t put into this world just for the fun of the thing, then, bother me, if I think he’ll ever be a real man. So at twenty-three, the ages of both Ingomar and Lieutenant Curtis, the mind should be fairly moulded.

As for Curtis, I never met a sailor of greater promise, from a really scientific point of view. Naturalist, meteorologist, hydrographist (photographist, too, if there be science in that), and any number of other “ists” thrown in to make up the weight.

Bold and determined was he, too. He liked to get to the bottom of things, just as with his newest dredging machines and sounding gear he liked to get in touch with the bottom of the sea, whether it were but a few fathoms deep, or miles.

Ingomar was a splendid setting off to him. Curtis, with his spare body, his extreme vitality, his noble mind and grasp of soul. Ingomar, with his splendid physique and king-like form. But Ingomar knew the rudiments of most sciences, and he had the rare gift of picking up just the main points of a subject. Hide a few small nuggets of gold in a gravel heap, and Ingomar would soon have found them for you, and wouldn’t have bothered much about the gravel. That’s the sort of man Ingomar was. With all this there was a deal of romance in his character, and he had one set purpose in this expedition, which, if he could but fulfil, he felt would make his austere father proud of him.

Curtis and he were nearly always together during the thorough exploration--from a scientist’s and surveyor’s point of view--of that great tract of water far inside the Antarctic circle called Ross’s Sea. The mariners of old did not take much time to study science. It was the surface of the sea they dealt with, and the land around it.

After passing Ringgolds Knoll, _vide_ map, you will steer east and south, and after Cape Adare is passed, south into this sea, and its simplest exploration would take months.

It has Victoria Land on the right, a land of wondrous interest, a land of fire in the frozen ocean, land of volcanoes, extinct and extant, of awful icebergs, of more terrible, yet beautiful ice-barriers, and in summer a land of birds in millions.

To explore and survey this sea was one of the chief objects of the voyage.

And now that they had reached Cape Adare, they set about the work in good earnest.

I think you know that Charlie was a boy of many fads--that is the low name for his studies, perhaps--for Charlie’s fads were a step or two above keeping rabbits and guinea-pigs. We have seen how when at sea he used to delight to swing away aloft in the crow’s-nest, and all the marvels he saw from that eyrie of his would, if described in print, fill a biggish book. There was poetry and romance, too, in his life in the nest, and I’m not sure that his thoughts did not take a nobler turn, and that up there at night, swinging among the stars and planets, as one might say, he did not believe himself to be nearer to God--the God of infinity, mind you, not of this insignificant earth alone.

Anyhow, when he used to come down of a night, after a spell up yonder, his eyes had a happier look, and his face seemed to shine, while his thoughts seemed far away.

He was a harder student than Walter, though had you asked Captain Mayne Brace, he would have told you straight that the latter might possibly make the better sailor, as sailors go nowadays.

“But, bless you, sir,” Brace would have added, “your smutty, rattling steamships, all bustle and filth, have almost frightened good old Neptune off his own blue throne.”

Well, anyhow, now that work had begun in earnest, Charlie was never tired of studying every new instrument used on board the ship and on shore. That was his new fad. The more he studied geology and meteorology, for instance, the more he wanted to. Had he possessed fifty minds, fifty storehouses for information, Charlie would have set about filling them.

“Look at that,” Charlie said, exultantly, to Walter one day.

“Well, what is it? A bit of black greyish stone with some spangles in it.”

“That’s granite.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

Walter was in a teasing mood that day.

“And this?”

“Some exceedingly black and dirty clay.”

“No; but books both, or rather pages from the great Book of Nature.

“All scientists in the present age,” added Charlie, “are busy in their own particular branch, and in writing or building chapters of that Book, and when they have finished their works, these chapters will be pieced together, and then we’ll have the story of the world.”

“Charlie,” cried Walt, “come down off there. I hate your giving yourself side. I hate science as much as I hate lawyers’ musty old parchments. Climb down off your high horse. The sunlit surface of the sea is good enough for me; the earth’s crust is strong enough to walk on, and I don’t want to go down in under, nor back to the realms of millions of years ago. Are you aware we are going to have young seal’s liver and bacon for luncheon?”

Nick and Nora came bounding up at this moment. Collie wasn’t far behind, with his bright eyes and bonnie wise face, and next moment the whole five were united in a daft and delightful game of romps.

And the liver and bacon were excellent.