The Elder Ice: A Harry Stubbs Adventure Read Online Free PDF Page A

Like the explorers, I was heading out into trackless wastes, with no map to guide me but simply following a bearing.
    I need not have worried that Brown would be taciturn. He was a gentleman but not one of the stuffy sort. He was more like the sporting gentlemen who talk avidly about the fancy to anyone without regard for social distinctions. Brown soon engrossed me in his story of the Antarctic expedition. I drank it in and tried to remember to ask questions and make notes when I could. There was a good buzz of conversation around us, and I had little concern about being overheard.
    “He knew how to keep morale up and jolly us all along,” mused Brown. “Always starting a round of songs or games, or story-telling. And poetry, too—he could quote reams of the stuff, mainly Browning. ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp’ and that... he wouldn’t put up with gloom.”
    “Did he ever talk about fossils?” I asked.
    “Fossils? He wasn't much interested in that sort of science stuff.”
    “Not even if it meant important new discoveries?”
    “That wasn't his idea of discovery! The Boss wanted lost cities and palaces piled high with treasures. King Solomon's Mines were more in his line. I suppose he might have been satisfied with a valley full of dinosaurs, if we could have brought a few of them back alive.” Brown’s mouth twitched into a smile. “As I recall, he tried to tell us there were giant pterodactyls nesting in the crater of Mount Erebus.”
    “He actually told you that?” I asked, bemused.
    “I imagine they were just albatross, but you needed field glasses to tell. Oh yes, the Boss would spin six impossible stories before breakfast. He was a great one for tall tales and practical jokes. Ribbing us about penguins that talked like parrots, or saying to look out for ice goblins. You know he once came limping back from a seal hunt, covered in blood, saying he'd been mauled half to death by a sea elephant? Of course it was just seal blood he’d smeared all over himself, but he didn’t half give us a fright.”
    “Wasn't it confusing, never knowing what you could believe?”
    “It was part and parcel of his magic. With him, you always believed that the fantastic might just happen.” He took a swig of beer. “Polar expeditions are always against the odds. A realist would give up before he started. But a man like the Boss… it's men like him who make it to impossible places, even when the others are saying it can't be done.”
    “But he was a practical man—”
    Brown laughed and slapped the table. “He was never practical! His schemes never worked out, like those ridiculous motor sledges. He never mastered driving dogs or even skiing, or anything technical. He was brilliant at improvisation, though. Give him a piece of rope, a broken chisel, and a banjo, and he’d lead an expedition over the Himalayas. And the banjo would be the important thing. He jollied us all along with promises of the riches of Fata Morgana—”
    “Of what?”
    “Fata Morgana. A fairy city of spires and towers in the distance you see quite often down South. It's an optical illusion, caused by refraction off seawater or ice or something.  It can make whole phantom mountain ranges. The Boss could tell you all about it. The Arabs call it the City of Genies, I remember that.”
    “‘A beautiful dazzling city of cathedral domes, spires and minarets,’” I quoted, to show I knew what he was talking about. Only his pronunciation of the name Fata Morgana, which I had not heard spoken aloud before, had confused me. “But surely there can’t be any cities there?”
    “Who knows? The Boss said there was a genuine Fata Morgana, and that the mirages were projections of it—like seeing an oasis from dozens of miles away.”
    “The Antarctic seems like an unlikely place for a treasure hunt.”
    “The Boss didn't think so. He loved treasure hunts. He once hid his mother’s jewellery in the garden shed and had the whole