A Thousand Degrees Below Zero

CHAPTER III.

Teddy Gerrod was stuffing his feet into heavy, fur-lined arctic boots. Ten or twelve soldiers were loading clumsy, awkward-looking engines on improvised sledges resting on the ice at the foot of the fort embankments. Others were putting equally ungainly iron globes with winged metal rods attached to them on other sledges. A dozen befurred and swathed figures came down the slope of the embankment and examined the preparations. A naval launch ran smartly alongside the edge of the ice, and a messenger came over at the double to the commandant of the fort, who stood by Teddy Gerrod. The messenger saluted.

"Sir, the object dropped from the black flyer was a tin float having a message attached. The smoke was from a smoke fuse, lighted to attract attention."

He handed over the letter, saluted again, and retired. The commandant tore open the letter and read it through, then swore frankly.

"A threat to freeze the Croton reservoir and cut off New York City's water supply if an answer to his previous demands is not given within forty-eight hours! And he can do it! Mr. Gerrod, you've simply got to settle this business. New York would go crazy if the people knew this. There'd be no way to supply the water the city has to have. And seven million people without water——"

Teddy smiled grimly.

"I'm going to try. Professor Hawkins is usually right, and we ought to be able to do something about this berg."

A second messenger came up and saluted.

"Sir, Lieutenant Davis reports that the plane has been recovered and Lieutenant Curtiss' body examined. There are no bullet marks, and the body seemed to be frozen solidly. He cannot say, as yet, what caused Lieutenant Curtiss' death."

"Frozen," said Teddy laconically.

"In mid-air?" asked the commandant sharply. "And in a fraction of a second, wearing heavy aviator's clothing?"

Teddy nodded, and buttoned up the huge fur coat in which he was enveloped.

"I'm ready to start off now, if the sledges are."

The little party moved away from the shore. The heavy mist still hung over the expanse of ice, but near the shore the ice was thinner. The sledges were roped together, and Teddy walked at the head. The party tugged at the ropes on the sledges, puffing out clouds of frosty breath at every exhalation. Teddy had taken the compass bearings of the steam plume, and after he had gone a hundred yards from the shore the wisdom of his course became apparent. They were completely surrounded by a thick fog in which objects five yards off were lost to view. Teddy, leading the small column, could not be seen except as a dim and shadowy figure by the men hardly more than two paces in his rear. He referred constantly to his compass, and once or twice glanced at the thermometer he had strapped on the sleeve of his great coat.

"Forty degrees," he murmured to himself. "And in New York it's eighty-four in the shade. The ice must be colder still because it's dry and hard."

The party toiled on. Presently small snow crystals crunched underfoot.

"Frozen mist," said Teddy, and glanced at his thermometer. "H'm! Twenty-two degrees. Ten below freezing."

The party stopped for a breathing spell.

"I hope you men smoke," said Teddy, "because it's going to be cold a few hundred yards farther on. We'll come clear of this mist presently. If you smoke, and inhale, it'll probably warm up your lungs a little. You don't need it yet, though. Any of you who haven't pulled down the flaps of your helmets had better do so now."

A moment or so later they took up their march again. The sledges, with their heavy loads, were cumbersome things to drag over the uneven surface of the ice. The men panted and gasped as they threw their weight on the ropes. Teddy felt the air growing colder still, and presently noticed that the mist no longer seemed to be as thick as before. He glanced down at the front of his heavy fur coat. It was covered with tiny white crystals. He held up his hand with the thick mitten on it to form a dark background, and saw numberless infinitesimal snowflakes drifting slowly toward the ice under his feet. His thermometer showed two degrees above zero—and New York, six miles away, was sweltering in August heat!

"Not much farther," he called cheerfully. "We're almost there."

They panted and tugged on, a hundred and fifty yards more. Then they stopped and stared.

Three hundred yards away the great column of steam was issuing from the ice. A hollow hillock of snow and ice rose to a height of twenty feet, like the miniature crater of a volcano. From it, in an unbroken stream, the mass of steam emerged with a roaring, rushing sound. It rose five hundred feet before it broke into the plumelike formation that was so characteristic. There was a space, perhaps six hundred paces across, in which there was no mist. The cold was too intense to allow of the formation of fog. Water vapor condensed instantly in that frigid atmosphere. But around the clearing the mist rose from the surface of the ice. It became noticeable when it was merely waist-high, then rose to the height of a man, and climbed to a height of fifty feet in a circular wall all about the strange white open space. Teddy, looking at the top of the wall of vapor, saw that it undulated gently, as if waves were flowing back and forth around the tall column of steam.

The men began to unload their sledges. The awkward little trench mortars were set in place and careful measurements made of the distance to the steam plume. While the men labored, Teddy moved forward toward the central cone. Five degrees below zero, fifteen degrees below zero, thirty degrees below zero——His breath cut sharply when it went into his lungs. Teddy put his mittened hand over his nose and face to partially warm the air before he breathed it in. Now, even through the heavy, arctic clothing he wore, he felt the bitter cold. He detached the thermometer from his sleeve and clumsily tied it to a cord. He had hoped to be able to lower it down the rim of the crater, but that was impossible. He flung it toward the hillock of snow and ice, let it remain there an instant, then hastily drew it back to read it. The ether in the thermometer had frozen into a solid mass in the bulb of the instrument.

Teddy went back to where the men had made ready. Four of the wicked little guns would fling their three-hundred-pound bombs into the center of the column of steam. If all went well, at least one charge of T.N.T. would explode far down the orifice.

The propelling charges had been inserted, and now the slender rods were put into the muzzles of the short, squat weapons. The winged bombs were balanced on the muzzles like top-heavy oranges on as many sticks. At half-second intervals, the four guns went off one after the other.

Before the last had exploded, or just as the flame leaped from its muzzle, the hillock of ice rose as in an eruption. Four cracking detonations blended into one colossal roar that half stunned the little fur-clad party. The rush of air threw them from their feet. When they rose again a huge hole showed in the center of the clearing, a gaping chasm that went down deep into the heart of the ice. A cloud of yellowish smoke floated above them. And the column of steam had ceased! Only a few stray wisps of white vapor floated up from the opening.

"It's done!"

Teddy gave orders for a quick return to the fort. The mortars could be returned for. At the moment the important thing was to send the news to England and Japan.

The return trip was made quickly, and Teddy made hurried explanations to the commandant of the forts of what should be done. Men should bore deep holes twenty feet apart, the holes to be along the edges of clearly defined sections of the ice. Simultaneous blasts should be set off, and the sections would float free. The iceberg would not grow again. It was done for.

Cablegrams were prepared and rushed through to Folkestone, Yokohama, and Gibraltar. If men took trench mortars and fired shells that would fall down the holes from which the steam issued, the cause of the ice cakes would be destroyed and the ice itself could be blasted off and towed out to sea to melt.

Teddy rushed back to the professor's home to report to him the full verification of his theories, and it was there and then that the first authentic explanation of the ice floe was given to the world. Word of his effort and of the disappearance of the steam plume had preceded him, and as he sped uptown in the taxicab newsboys were already on the streets with their extras. Only the front pages—showing signs of having hastily been hacked to pieces to make room for the story—had anything about the latest development, and those extras are singularly perfect reflections of the public attitude at that time.