“This beats pushing,” he said. “Good boat, good crowd, good cigar. What is joy without a jews-harp!”
By nightfall—it fell much later now—the snowbanks on either side were no more than ten feet high on a level, and when we stopped for camp we found the country above almost more black than white—the bare rocks showing in masses in all directions.
We rejoiced greatly, and fondly hoped to be out of the snow altogether by the following evening, though I was a bit uneasy about the rock. If the Antarctic Continent proved to be nothing but barren granite it would be of as little value as if it were a waste of snow. Still, a circle of nearly a thousand miles in diameter could hardly be the same throughout.
Our failing telephone, however, was a real sorrow. Though still distinct, the voices were very faint, now. Unless Ferratoni could do something, it would fail us altogether, soon. He believed its condition due mainly to our lower altitude, and the vast obstruction that was now lying between us and the Billowcrest. But it had been a great comfort to us all through our hardest hours, and I would be content. The mental vibrations from the vessel, Ferratoni said, were similarly affected, and much confused.
Another day of discovery followed. The wind and weather being too good to waste, by five o’clock we were on our way up the river. The snow crust thinned out rapidly, until, by ten o’clock, there was no more than a foot on the banks above, and we were sailing between shores of genuine stone and clay, the first soil we had seen for a year. Flocks of birds became plentiful, and at one place we saw some strange, brown animals, about the size and shape of rabbits, but with very long hind legs and with a method of locomotion similar to that of a frog. Gale named them “Skipteroons” because of their lightsome mode of travel, and shot at them, without success.
The temperature was barely freezing, now, and we were altogether happy. So much so that we confessed to Edith all the affair of the balloon, and our subsequent difficulties. She was less surprised than we had expected. She had suspected, it seems, that all was not so well as we had pretended, and of course our statements _had_ been a trifle contradictory at times. But she rejoiced now in the reality of good fortune that had come to us, the genuineness of which could not be mistaken, even through our fast failing telephone.