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"Of course we can't raise them. They are on the march!" shouted Frank suddenly. "On the motor-sledge bound for the Viking ship," cried Billy, "they should be there to-morrow." "Say, fellows, we have done it now," cried Frank, with a sudden twinge. "What's the matter?" inquired the professor. "Why, they will arrive there to find the others in possession and no sign of us.
Soon the chickens fuzzy little brown creatures appear, and there is a lot of fuss in the rookery; the penguins getting their families mixed and fighting furiously over each small, bewildered chick. It was egg-laying time, however, when the boys rolled up on their queer motor-sledge to the neighborhood of the breeding ground the professor had espied.
"You see, Captain Hazzard and his men can't get here, even with the motor-sledge, for two days." "Well, don't you think we had better abandon the ship and fly back to the camp?" suggested Billy. "And leave that ship for them to rifle at their leisure no," rejoined Frank, with lips compressed in determination, "we won't do that. We'll just go ahead and do the best we can that's all."
The boys pitched in to this occupation with great enthusiasm and, with the aid of the motor-sledge, soon had established three depots, covering a radius of some eighty miles from the camp. This work brought them to the verge of the chain of snow-mountains, beyond whose white crests they believed lay the pole.
The motor-sledge was soon speeding over the snow and in a few minutes was at the edge of the declivity in which lay the penguin rookery. Gazing down into it the boys could hardly keep from laughing.
The Golden Eagle was to carry her wireless and a message was to be flashed to the camp's wireless receiving station if important discoveries were made. In the event of treasure being found, the boys were to at once "wireless" full details and bearings of the find and a relay of men and apparatus for saving the treasure would be sent from the ship to their aid on the motor-sledge.
They found that the specially prepared oil worked perfectly and that, although it changed color in the low temperature, it showed no disposition to freeze. The gasolene, too, was successfully kept at the right temperature by means of the vacuum casing of the tank. "We could go to the pole itself in this motor-sledge," cried Billy, enthusiastically.
The defeated Japs sailed at once for the north, departing as silently as they had arrived. It took many trips of the motor-sledge before the last load of the Viking ship's strange cargo was snugly stored in the hold of the Southern Cross. At Captain Hazzard's command the dead Viking was buried with military honors and his tomb still stands in the "White silence."
As they gazed they broke into a cheer, for advancing toward the other dark object at a rapid rate was another blot on the white expanse, which a moment's scrutiny through the glasses showed them was the motor-sledge packed with men on whose rifles the setting sun glinted brightly.
Arm in arm the two boys left the garage on the upper floor of which they had fitted up their aeronautical workshop. There the Golden Eagle, their big twin-screw aeroplane, had been planned and partially built, and here, too, they were now working on a motor-sledge for the expedition which now occupied most of their waking and sleeping thoughts.
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