Wild Adventures round the Pole. Stables GordonЧитать онлайн книгу.
over the sea, so intensely indeed that his looks almost frighten the honest doctor.
“The glass, the glass,” he hisses, holding round his hand, but not taking his glance for a moment off the southern horizon.
The glass is handed to him, he adjusts it to his eye, and takes one long, fixed look; and when he turns once more towards the doctor his face is radiant with joy and excitement.
“It is she,” he cried, “it is she, it is she!”
The doctor really looked scared.
“Man!” he said, “are ye takin’ leave o’ your wuts? There, tak’ a hold o’ my hand and dinna try to frighten folk. There’s never a ‘she’ near ye.”
“It is she, I tell you,” cried Rory again; “take the glass and look in under the land yonder, and heading for Stromsoe. It is the pirate herself, – the pirate we fought in the Snowbird. Hurrah! hurrah!”
Chapter Nine.
Mount Hekla – The Great Geyser – A Narrow Escape – The Search for the Pirate – McBain’s Little “Ruse de Guerre” – The Battle Begun
“That puts quite another complexion on the matter,” said Dr Sandy McFlail, with a sigh of relief, when Rory explained to him that he had spied the pirate, “quite another complexion, though, for the time bein’ ye glowered sae like a warlock that I did think ye had lost your reason; so give me the glass, and I’ll e’en take a look at her mysel’.
“Eh! sirs,” he continued, with the telescope at his eye, “but she is a big ship, and a bonnie ship. But, Rory boy, just catch a hold o’ my coat-tails, and I’ll feel more secure like. I wouldn’t wish to go heels o’er head out o’ the car. A fine big ship indeed – square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft; a vera judeecious arrangement.”
“Now,” cried Rory, “the sooner we are landed on old mother earth the better. Bend on to the valve halyards, De Vere. Down with her.”
“Sirs! sirs!” cried the doctor, in great alarm; “pray don’t be rash. Be judeecious, gentlemen, be judeecious.”
De Vere looked from one to the other, then laughed aloud. He was amused at the impetuosity of the Irishman and at the canniness of the Scot.
A very pleasant little man was this De Vere to look at, black as to hair and moustache, dark as to eyes; thoughtful-looking as a rule were these eyes, yet oft lit up with fun. He never spoke much, perhaps he cogitated the more; he seldom made a joke himself, but he had a high appreciation of humour in others. Taking him all and all he gave you the impression of one who would be little likely to lose his presence of mind in a time of danger.
“Gentlemen,” he said, quietly, “you will leave the descent in my hands, if you please. We are now, by my calculation, some ninety miles from the city of Reikjavik. You see beneat’ you wild mountains, ice-bound plains, frozen lakes, rivers and waterfalls, deep ravines and gorges, but no sign of smoke, no life. Shall I make my descent here? Shall I pull vat Monsieur Rory call de valve halyard? Shall I land in de regions of desolation?”
“Dinna think o’t,” cried Sandy. “Never mind Rory; he is only a laddie.”
“It’s yourself that’s complimentary,” quoth Rory.
“Ah! ver’ well,” said De Vere; “I will go on, for since you have been gazing on de ship, de current have change, and we once more get nearer home.”
An hour went slowly by. Both the doctor and Rory were gazing at the far-off mountain, Hekla, that lay to the south and east, though distant many miles. The vast hill looked a king among the other mountains; a king, but a dead king, being still and quiet in the sunshine, enrobed in a shroud of snow.
Sandy was doubly engaged – he was talking musingly, and aloud; but at the same time he was doing ample justice to the venison pie that lay so confidingly on his knee, for Sandy was a bit of a philosopher in his own quiet way.
“Mount Hekla,” he was saying; “is it any wonder that these Norsemen, these superstitious sons of the ancient Vikings, look upon it as the entrance-gate to the terrible abode of fire and brimstone, gloom and woe, where are confined the souls of the unhappy dead? Hekla, round thy snow-capped summit the thunders never cease to roll – ”
“Hark,” said Rory, holding up his hand; “talk about thunder, list to that.”
Both leant over the car and looked earthwards. What could it mean, that low, deep, long-continued thunderpeal? Was a storm raging beneath them? Yes, but not of the kind they at first imagined. For see, from where yonder hill starts abruptly from the glen, rise immense clouds of silvery white, and roll slowly adown the valley. The balloon hangs suspended right above the great geyser, which is now in full eruption.
“It is as I thought,” said De Vere; “let us descend a little way;” and he opened the valve as he spoke.
The balloon made a downward rush as he did so, as if she meant to plunge herself and all her occupants into the very midst of the boiling cauldron. The steam from the geyser had almost reached their feet; the car thrilled beneath them, while the never-ceasing thunder pealed louder and louder.
“My conscience!” roared honest Sandy, losing all control over himself; “we’ll be boiled alive like so many partans!”
(Partans: Scottish, crabs.)
De Vere coolly threw overboard a bag or two of sand, and the balloon mounted again like a skylark. And not too soon either, for, awful, to relate, in his sudden terror Sandy had made a grab at the valve-rope, as if to check her downward speed. Had not Rory speedily pulled him back, the consequences would have been too dreadful to think of.
De Vere only laughed; but he held up one finger by way of admonishing the doctor as he said, “Neever catch hold of de reins ven anoder man is driving.”
“But,” said Rory, “didn’t you go a trifle too near that time, Mister de Vere?”
“A leetle,” said the Frenchman, coolly. “It was noding.”
“Ach! sure no,” says Rory; “it was nothing at all; and yet, Mister de Vere, it isn’t the pleasantest thing in the world to imagine yourself being played at pitch and toss with on the top of a mighty geyser, for all the world like a nut-gall on the top of a twopenny fountain!”
Sandy resumed the dissection of his venison pie. He would have a long entry for his diary to-night, he thought.
Luck does not always attend the aeronaut, albeit fortune favours the brave, and the current of air that was carrying the balloonists so merrily back to Reikjavik, ceased entirely when they were still within ten miles of that quaint wee place. It was determined, therefore, to make a descent. Happily, they were over a glen. Close by the sea and around the bay were many small farms, and so adroitly did De Vere manage to attach an anchor to the roof of an old barn, that descent was easy in the extreme.
Perhaps the happiest man in the universe at the moment Sandy McFlail’s feet touched mother earth again was Sandy himself. “Man!” he cried to Rory, rubbing his hands and laughing with glee, “I thought gettin’ out meant a broken leg at the vera least, and I haven’t even bled my nose.”
There was some commotion, I can tell you, among the feathered inmates of the barnyard when the balloonists popped down among them; as for the farm folks, they had shut themselves up in the dwelling-house. The geese were particularly noisy. Geese, reader, always remind me of those people we call sceptics: they are sure to gabble their loudest at things they can’t understand.
But convinced at last that the aeronauts were neither evil spirits nor inhabitants of the moon, the good farmer made them heartily welcome at his fireside, and assisted them to pack, so that, by the aid of men and ponies, they found themselves late that evening safely on board the Arrandoon; and right glad were their comrades to see them again, you may be sure, and to listen to a narration by Rory of all their adventures, interlarded by Sandy’s queer, dry remarks, which only served to render it all the more funny.
But before they sat down to the