sions."

"Not a shot! Too bad to disappoint Captain Harper." Ray grinned wanly.
"He ought to have the _Albatross_ around there by this time, waiting
for us." The _Albatross_ was the ship which had left us at Little
America a few months before, to steam around and pick us up at our
destination beyond Enderby Land. "We're in the same boat with Major
Meriden and his wife--and all those others. Lost without a trace."

"You've read Scott's diary--that he wrote after he visited the pole in
1912--the one they found with the bodies?"

"Yes. Not altogether cheerful. But we won't be trying to get out. No
use of that." He looked at me suddenly, grinning again. "Say, Jim, why
not try for that shining mountain we saw? It looks queer enough to be
interesting. We ought to make it in a week."

"I'm with you," I said.

* * * * *

I did not speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather
near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender
black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the
ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately
skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We
glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just short of a yawning
crevasse.

"Suppose," said Ray, "that we spend the first night in the plane. We
are tired already. We can keep warm here, and sleep. We've plenty of
ice to melt for water. Then we're off for the shining mountain."

I agreed: Ray Summers is usually right. We got out the sledge, packed
it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the
luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The
thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in
our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of
the plane.

We started promptly the next morning, after draining the last of the
hot chocolate from our vacuum bottles, which we left behind. We had a
light but powerful sporting rifle, with telescopic sights, and several
hundred rounds of ammunition. Ray put them in the pack, though I
insisted that we would never need them, unless a quick way out of our
predicament.

"No, Jim," he said. "We take 'em along. We don't know what we're going
to find at the shining mountain."

The air was bitterly cold as we set out: it was twenty-five below and
a sharp wind was blowing. Only our toiling at the sledge kept us warm.
We covered e