e struts. We were flying
above the weird ice-mountains of the Enderby quadrant of Antarctica.

That was a perilous flight, across the blizzard-whipped bottom of the
world. In all the years of polar exploration by air, since Byrd's
memorable flights, this area had never been crossed. The intrepid
Britisher, Major Meriden, with the daring American aviatrix whom the
world had known as Mildred Cross before she married him, had flown
into it nineteen years before--and like many others they had never
returned.

Faintly, above the purring drone of the motor, I heard Ray Summers'
shout. I drew my gaze from the desolate plateau of ice below and
leaned forward. His lean, fur-hooded face was turned back toward me. A
mittened hand was pointing, and thin lips moved in words that I did
not hear above the roar of the engine and the scream of the wind.

I turned and looked out to the right, past the shimmering silver disk
of the propeller. Under the blue haze of ice-crystals in the air, the
ice lay away in a vast undulating plain of black and yellow, broken
with splotches of prismatic whiteness, lying away in frozen desolation
to the rim of the cold violet sky. Rising against that sky I saw a
curious thing.

It was a mountain of fire!

Beyond the desert of ice, a great conical peak pointed straight into
the amethystine gloom of the polar heavens. It was brilliantly white,
a finger of milky fire, a sharp cone of pure light. It shone with
white radiance. It was brighter, far brighter, than is the sacred cone
of Fujiyama in the vivid day of Japan.

* * * * *

For many minutes I stared in wonder at it. Far away it was; it looked
very small. It was like a little heap of light poured from the hand of
a fire-god. What it might be, I could not imagine. At first sight, I
imagined it might be a volcano with streams of incandescent lava
flowing down the side. I knew that this continent of mystery boasted
Mt. Erebus and other active craters. But there was none of the smoke
or lurid yellow flame which accompanies volcanic eruptions.

I was still watching it, and wondering, when the catastrophe took
place--the catastrophe which hurled us into a mad extravaganza of
amazing adventure.

Our little two-place amphibian was flying smoothly, through air
unusually good for this continent of storms. The twelve cylinders of
the motor had been firing regularly since we took off from Byrd's old
station at Little Americ