14 Arctic Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page A

picked out the place where this mountain range of ice could be climbed. It looked impossible to the boys from Long Island. But the huskies were tackling it and set an example of courage for the other climbers.
    Up they went, slipping, sliding, advancing two yards and falling back one, but keeping at it until they reached the peak.
    Now, what a view they had! Away down there by the sea was the city of Thule. Around them they could count seventy nunataks, which was what Olrik called the pyramids of snow and ice.
    Judging by the position of Thule, Roger guessed the direction of the North Pole.
    ‘It must be that way,’ he said. ‘Hal, what does your compass say?’ Hal got out his compass. The needle didn’t point to the North Pole. Instead, it pointed south-west.
    ‘What do you make of that?’ said Hal. ‘This compass must have gone crazy.’
    Olrik grinned. He thought that the crazy one was Hal, not the compass.
    ‘You’re forgetting something,’ he said. ‘A compass never really points to the North Pole.’
    ‘Then what does it point to?’ Hal demanded.
    ‘To the Magnetic Pole.’
    ‘I remember now. The earth is a sort of magnet or bowl of electricity. The electric’ centre is down there to the south-west. But if you were in New York and looked at the compass you would be so far away from both poles that the compass would give you a pretty good idea of due north.’
    ‘But up here’, complained Roger, ‘we just have to guess where the North Pole is. It seems to me we’ve got to do a lot of guessing. We have to guess whether it is morning, noon or night. Look at that silly sun. All summer it never goes up in the sky. And it never sets. It just goes round and round, low down all summer. And up here, summer is like winter.’
    He shivered inside his thick caribou coat.
    ‘Here it is June,’ he said, ‘and it’s a sight colder here than in New York in February. Everything is the wrong way around.’
    ‘Well,’ laughed Hal, ‘that’s what makes it interesting. You wouldn’t want to find Greenland just another New York.’
    They went down the hill of ice and wound their way in and out and over the nunataks.
    A bitter wind came up. Winds could be terrific on the ice cap. Down at Thule they were not so bad. But two miles up winds could tear over the surface of the ice cap at more than 150 miles an hour.
    Soon they were all chilled to the bone.
    To make matters worse, it began to snow. But it was the strangest kind of snow the boys from Long Island had ever known. It did not come down in big flakes. The strong wind ground the flakes into a powder.
    ‘We call it snow dust,’ said Olrik.
    Like dust,.it got into the parkas that covered their heads, inside their fur coats, even into their sealskin trousers, into every pocket, into their boots, and, worst of all, into their eyes, and into their ears, and even their mouths if they dared to open them.
    Roger was lagging behind. He was a strong boy but he couldn’t keep up with his twenty-year-old companions. An especially strong gust knocked him over and he lay in the snow. Oh, how good it was to lie down. He didn’t care if he never got up. He was dizzy, tired, and all his natural energy was whipped out of him by this awful wind.
    Hal looked back. He could not see his brother because of the dense cloud of flying snow dust. He called, but the screech of the wind was stronger than his shout. He would have to go back and find his brother. That should be easy — he need only follow his tracks.
    But he found no tracks. They had promptly been filled by snow. Now, which nunatak had they come around last? He wasn’t sure. He was getting lightheaded.
    ‘Wait a minute, Olrik. We’ve lost the kid.’
    Olrik was only a few feet away but did not hear him. But Olrik saw him stagger. At once he reached out to help him.
    ‘I can’t see anything,’ Hal said.
    ‘I know. You’re having a white-out.’
    ‘What’s a white-out?’
    ‘It’s a dizzy spell because