Straight toward the north, day and night, our destination compass led us after the fleeing flier upon which it had remained set since I first attuned it after leaving the thern fortress.
Early in the second night we noticed the air becoming perceptibly colder, and from the distance we had come from the equator were assured that we were rapidly approaching the north arctic region.
My knowledge of the efforts that had been made by countless expeditions to explore that unknown land bade me to caution, for never had flier returned who had passed to any considerable distance beyond the mighty ice-barrier that fringes the southern hem of the frigid zone.
What became of them none knew--only that they passed forever out of the sight of man into that grim and mysterious country of the pole.
The distance from the barrier to the pole was no more than a swift flier should cover in a few hours, and so it was assumed that some frightful catastrophe awaited those who reached the "forbidden land,"as it had come to be called by the Martians of the outer world.
Thus it was that I went more slowly as we approached the barrier, for it was my intention to move cautiously by day over the ice-pack that I might discover, before I had run into a trap, if there really lay an inhabited country at the north pole, for there only could Iimagine a spot where Matai Shang might feel secure from John Carter, Prince of Helium.
We were flying at a snail's pace but a few feet above the ground--literally feeling our way along through the darkness, for both moons had set, and the night was black with the clouds that are to be found only at Mars's two extremities.
Suddenly a towering wall of white rose directly in our path, and though I threw the helm hard over, and reversed our engine, I was too late to avoid collision.With a sickening crash we struck the high looming obstacle three-quarters on.
The flier reeled half over; the engine stopped; as one, the patched buoyancy tanks burst, and we plunged, headforemost, to the ground twenty feet beneath.
Fortunately none of us was injured, and when we had disentangled ourselves from the wreckage, and the lesser moon had burst again from below the horizon, we found that we were at the foot of a mighty ice-barrier, from which outcropped great patches of the granite hills which hold it from encroaching farther toward the south.
What fate! With the journey all but completed to be thus wrecked upon the wrong side of that precipitous and unscalable wall of rock and ice!
I looked at Thuvan Dihn.He but shook his head dejectedly.
The balance of the night we spent shivering in our inadequate sleeping silks and furs upon the snow that lies at the foot of the ice-barrier.
With daylight my battered spirits regained something of their accustomed hopefulness, though I must admit that there was little enough for them to feed upon.
"What shall we do?" asked Thuvan Dihn."How may we pass that which is impassable?""First we must disprove its impassability," I replied.
"Nor shall I admit that it is impassable before I have followed its entire circle and stand again upon this spot, defeated.The sooner we start, the better, for I see no other way, and it will take us more than a month to travel the weary, frigid miles that lie before us."For five days of cold and suffering and privation we traversed the rough and frozen way which lies at the foot of the ice-barrier.
Fierce, fur-bearing creatures attacked us by daylight and by dark.
Never for a moment were we safe from the sudden charge of some huge demon of the north.
The apt was our most consistent and dangerous foe.
It is a huge, white-furred creature with six limbs, four of which, short and heavy, carry it swiftly over the snow and ice;while the other two, growing forward from its shoulders on either side of its long, powerful neck, terminate in white, hairless hands, with which it seizes and holds its prey.
Its head and mouth are more similar in appearance to those of a hippopotamus than to any other earthly animal, except that from"the sides of the lower jawbone two mighty horns curve slightly downward toward the front.
Its two huge eyes inspired my greatest curiosity.They extend in two vast, oval patches from the center of the top of the cranium down either side of the head to below the roots of the horns, so that these weapons really grow out from the lower part of the eyes, which are composed of several thousand ocelli each.
This eye structure seemed remarkable in a beast whose haunts were upon a glaring field of ice and snow, and though I found upon minute examination of several that we killed that each ocellus is furnished with its own lid, and that the animal can at will close as many of the facets of his huge eyes as he chooses, yet I was positive that nature had thus equipped him because much of his life was to be spent in dark, subterranean recesses.
Shortly after this we came upon the hugest apt that we had seen.
The creature stood fully eight feet at the shoulder, and was so sleek and clean and glossy that I could have sworn that he had but recently been groomed.
He stood head-on eyeing us as we approached him, for we had found it a waste of time to attempt to escape the perpetual bestial rage which seems to possess these demon creatures, who rove the dismal north attacking every living thing that comes within the scope of their far-seeing eyes.
Even when their bellies are full and they can eat no more, they kill purely for the pleasure which they derive from taking life, and so when this particular apt failed to charge us, and instead wheeled and trotted away as we neared him, I should have been greatly surprised had I not chanced to glimpse the sheen of a golden collar about its neck.