Chapter III: Explorers in a Weird World

"Nick," asserted Scarface, still covering the other with his gat, "you haven't even the first instincts of a gentleman, so I shan't bother to reply to your insinuations. Arty, will you go and tell this girl's father to stop the ship for a minute, and that I wish to see all hands in the mess-room? Miss Ferreira, please be seated."

"Gee," exclaimed Terry, slumping into a chair.

When all fourteen had gathered in the mess-room, Scarface returned his gun to his pocket, and addressed them:

"Little Terry Ferreira is a girl."

He paused for the import of this announcement to sink in. Captain Ferreira's face went ashy gray.

Scarface continued grandiloquently: "We are honored by the unsuspected presence of a lady on this trip, and must treat her with due respect. From now on, I shall bunk with the rest of you. Miss Theresa will occupy, alone and exclusively, what formerly was my stateroom. She is to be treated like a lady. If any member of this crew annoys her in the least way, there'll be one less of us. Is that understood? Then you may all go, Captain Ferreira, start up the ship again."

"Gee, Mr. Jimmy, but you're grand!" said Theresa admiringly. "To think what I've been missing all this while, by your not knowing I was a girl!"

The boat got under way again. Scarface moved his belongings into the bunk room, then went to the bow, where Captain Ferreira was directing the navigation. Murphy was standing beside him.

"What time is it now, sir?" asked Mike, as he approached. "This is worse than daylight saving. There seems to be nothing but daylight up here. The sun stays in one spot in the sky, and it never gets to be any other time of day. This must be where they send all the daylight to, that they save up, back in the United States."

"I've always said," added Ferreira, "that if the Lord had wanted daylight saving, he would have made the clocks that way in the first place."

Scarface glanced at his wrist watch.

"It's 4 P.M.," he announced. "Time to change the watch; think I'll rearrange the shifts a bit. We must keep some one on guard all the while, for there's no telling when some strange creatures may attack us in this lost world, according to what we've read of it. Ferreira, you can have Arty, Si, Mike, George, Swede and Cicero. I'll sit up for another watch, and take the wheel. Scutari can run a gas-engine fairly well; he used to be a chauffeur, Nick the Rat can take your post. Tom and the Eskimo and your daughter can help watch for trouble. Let's go on farther inside the earth. If anything exciting happens, I'll call you."

Nick Fratelli was considerably mollified by being placed over Scarface, by Scarface himself. Also at having little Miss Terry in his shift. But he would have preferred to have had the latter pleasure, unadulterated by the former honor.

As they changed shifts, Antone Ferreira drew their leader aside.

"Sir," said he, "will you pardon me for suggesting, sir, that you're making a big mistake in trusting that Fratelli person? When he mutinied, back there in the ice, you'd ought to have put him in irons. Instead, you give him the run of the ship, and insult and trust him by turns. I can tell by the nasty look in his eye that he's just waiting for a chance to do you dirt."

"My dear captain," replied Scarface suavely, "you don't understand how to handle men. I've known Fratelli for years. I've managed him, and dozens of others like him. There's only one way to treat that type: trust them, and bully them, and make them like it. Then they will fear you and love you. That's the way Julius Cesar used to do, and it's the secret of his and my success. Nick may bluster occasionally, and give me black looks, but he wouldn't dare try to 'do me dirt,' as you say."

As they separated, the navigator sadly shook his head, and muttered to himself: "Not merely dumb, as I had thought he was, but swell-headed. Oh, so swell-headed. It amounts to the same thing, in the end. I see trouble ahead for him--for all of us."

* * * * *

Later that watch they were coasting some land on their right, when Scarface Jimmy suddenly exclaimed: "Look! See that crescent-shaped beach, with the cliffs behind it, and the woods on top? I'll bet that's where Eric Redmond first met the beautiful Viking girl. Remember about it in 'The Radio Flyers'? If so a path from the summit of the cliffs must lead to the plateau city, the northernmost outpost of Viking civilization. Let's land, and find out."

So the Miami swung her bow to starboard, and nosed gently in to the beach.

"It must be the place!" asserted Tom hopefully. By this time he had carefully read the story in question. "I believe that that long low rock to the right is the one that Eric hid behind, in his fight with the Eskimo-like natives, Skraelings."

Tom and Scarface had been navigating the ship together. They rushed on deck. The change in the course and the subsequent bump against the shore diverted the crew from their various preoccupations, and they now crowded out to see what was up.

Their leader ran his eye over them. Then he announced briskly:

"I want to tell you boys--and the young lady--that I think we have arrived at the landing-place of one of the cities of the Vikings. You all have read the story. Doesn't this look like the beach from which runs the path to the plateau, where Angus Selkirk rules as yarl? 'Beyond the Alps lies Italy.'"

"You don't mean to say that these are the Alps?" asked Nick Fratelli hopefully.

"Of course not, you dumb idiot!" scornfully replied Jimmy. "I was merely quoting some remarks that another great man--Napoleon--once made under similar circumstances."

"Well, try to keep down to earth as much as possible," grumbled the Italian. "We ain't all of us read books like you, you know."

Jimmy went on unabashed. "When I told you about the polar hole and my idea of hunting up a new racket down here, I didn't fully let you in on my plans. The world was invited here to colonize, but we have come here to stick up these squareheads. According to the story, there are only two civilized persons in this whole place, namely, the two Milwaukee boys, Eric Redmond and Angus Selkirk. Their plane is out of gas. Their rifles must be pretty near out of ammunition. We have plenty of both, and our gats and machine guns besides. With your help, I can put myself at the head of the government, make these Vikings fight for me, and conquer this whole new world. Stick to me, boys, and you'll all wear diamonds."

His announcement did not meet with the unanimity of approval that he had expected.

"Ay tank you ban make wan great mistake," enunciated Swede Johnson slowly. "T'ose Viking von't be so easy, I tank not."

"Do you call this exactly square?" added Tom Jones. "Two of your own fellow-countrymen come down here, win the love and affection of these people, and lead them to victory. They publish a general invitation to the U. S. A. to follow them and colonize. With the whole center of the earth open to you, do you call it exactly decent to pick on these two young men, and try to oust them from control, and enslave their people?"

"Jones!" snapped Jimmy, his scar showing dangerously red. "That will be just about all from you. You're not the chaplain of this trip."

Tom struggled to control his wrath, while Mike Murphy interposed his objection: "I don't know, chief. What's the use of shooting up some perfectly peaceful squareheads, when there seems to be plenty of land to go around, without doing that? I don't know."

"Murphy!" interrupted Jimmy, his scar still red. "When a policeman enlists under a gun-runner, he may expect to have to do things which do not exactly constitute preserving the peace. Any one else got any objections?"

Murphy, too, subsided, and the others hastened to register their approval.

* * * * *

"I shall take a small force, and reconnoiter," announced the masterful Scarface. "Murphy, Ferreira, Greene, Jones and Cicero. Nick, you are left in command in my absence. I wish you'd get busy teaching that Eskimo some English. You've been at it for days now, and we may need him at any moment as an interpreter to the savages here."

Nick Fratelli smiled a crafty smile to himself. He had purposely taught Friday little or no English. But he had managed to get Friday to teach him considerable of the Eskimo language--of which fact, however, no one else except Cicero had as yet any suspicion.

All hands turned in for a sleep.

After breakfast the next "morning," the members of the scouting party were each fitted out with rifle, automatic pistol, cartridge belt, and condensed rations.

Terry begged to be taken, but Jimmy told her: "I couldn't bear to risk your life."

She pouted and replied: "Gee, Mr. Scarface, does that mean that I'm going to miss all the fun of this trip? I wear boy's clothes still. Why can't you treat me as a boy again for a while?"

She begged so insistently that finally she was promised a place on the very next adventure.

Then the six pioneers set out. At the top of the cliff they found a path, as expected, and pressed on along it, uphill through the woods.

Nothing of moment happened, until about an hour later, when the bushes ahead of them at one side of the trail suddenly parted, and out stepped a gigantic black leopard, crouched low and tense.

The horrified explorers stopped dead in their tracks. Several started to draw their futile automatics--all the rifles were strapped across their backs--but Scarface signalled them down with a single peremptory gesture, for the beast was so near that to fire would be but to invite immediate and disastrous attack.

The leopard seemed intent on something across the path ahead of him. He stood motionless, except for his twitching tail, with his side toward them--the very picture of deadly feline grace and peril. They did not breathe as they stood motionless, and waited, too.

Finally, after what seemed ages, the head of the beast swung slowly around, until his yellow eyes regarded them squarely. The invaders wilted, unsure whether to stay "frozen" or make a frantic effort at defense or escape.

Then, as slowly, the leopard's head swung back to its original position, and it gave a tremendous bound, off the path into the tropical undergrowth. A moment or two later there came the death-scream of some smaller creature.

The six men unslung their rifles, and rushed past the haunted spot, and on up the mountain trail, as fast as their legs would carry them. After a run of several hundred yards, they paused, out of breath.

"You know," panted Cicero, "I prefer Chicago. It's a much safer place to live in. Look at the size of the black cat that just crossed our path!"

"And darn lucky for you that he crossed it, me lad," said Murphy, "instead of coming down it."

This quip somewhat restored the spirits of the party, and they started on again up the trail.

* * * * *

At last, after many hours, they emerged upon open land, but it was not what they expected. Instead of a level plain they had read about, carpeted with red-pollinated flowers, and the massive cliff of the plateau rising in the distance, the field before them sloped sharply upward to a rugged and rocky mountain-top.

And when they reached the summit, there was no plateau to be seen ahead. Instead, the land sloped downward on all sides. The mountain on which they stood was the crowning eminence of a long peninsula. On three sides of them lay the island-dotted sea; while to the south there was a gradually descending ridge of lower peaks, and a widening of the land, which stretched off and up, without a break of sea, until it blended with the sky in the dim gray distance.

"Where's your Viking city, chief?" asked Murphy with a grin that took all the sting out of the taunt.

Tom was sincerely glad that they hadn't found it, with Scarface's racketeer intentions; but he hastened to console their leader.

"It would really have been too much to hope for," said he, "to have stumbled on the place right off the bat."

"Of course!" Ferreira suddenly interjected. "Eric and Angus went over the edge at longitude 30° off the northern tip of Greenland. We went over at longitude 60° up through Smith Sound. They headed due south. So did we. Our route must be about two hundred and fifty miles from theirs and rapidly diverging. We ought to head southwest to find them."

"Don't you mean southeast?" suggested Tom.

"Oh, hang this back-handed compass-system that they have down here!" snorted the ship-captain. "What I mean is, turn our bows to starboard. You can figure out the direction, and name it whatever you please."

"Look!" interrupted Cicero. "Isn't that an airplane off there to the south?"

All stared in the direction in which he was pointing. It certainly looked like a plane. And yet not quite.

"It must be one of those huge flying reptiles," asserted Scarface. "_Skwaas_, they call them. Bat-winged lizards seem to take the place of birds, when you get far enough into this country."

Then, for a while they stood in silence, taking in the view on all sides, while the motionless central sun beat down on them from exactly overhead. The rocks about them were covered with mosses and lichens. The sky was strangely off color, a dark and velvet blue, graying where it met the land or sea on every side.

It was easy enough to realize that they were inside a huge ball. In fact, the effect of blending of earth and sky made the ball seem infinitely smaller than it really was--gave them a sort of cooped-up feeling, hard to describe.

Turning their eyes to things nearer at hand, they scanned the dark green forests which surrounded them almost without a break.

"All this land will one day be covered by farms, and cities, and railroads, and concrete roads," exulted Scarface, but it was plain to see that he was talking more to himself than to his companions.

"Oughtn't we take possession in the name of the United States of America?" suggested Tom.

"No such thing!" retorted Scarface. Then, striking his foot on the rock, he declaimed: "I hereby take possession in the name of James Lefavour, alias Scarface Boston Jimmy."

"A lot of good it will do us, chief," Murphy cried out sharply. "There goes the Miami, leaving us high and dry in this God-forsaken spot!"