The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash or Facing Death in the Antarctic   By: John Henry Goldfrap (1879-1917)

OR

FACING DEATH IN THE ANTARCTIC

BY

CAPTAIN WILBUR LAWTON (pseudonym for John Henry Goldfrap)

Boy Aviators' Series

By Captain Wilbur Lawton

1 THE BOY AVIATORS IN NICARAGUA; or, In League with the Insurgents.

2 THE BOY AVIATORS ON SECRET SERVICE; or, Working with Wireless.

3 THE BOY AVIATORS IN AFRICA; or, An Aerial Ivory Trail.

4 THE BOY AVIATORS' TREASURE QUEST; or, The Golden Galleon.

5 THE BOY AVIATORS IN RECORD FLIGHT; or, The Rival Aeroplane.

6 THE BOY AVIATORS' POLAR DASH; or, Facing Death in the Antarctic.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. The Polar Ship II. A Mysterious Robbery III. Off for the South Pole IV. A Message from the Air V. A Tragedy of the Skies VI. A Strange Collision VII. Adrift on a Floating Island VIII. Caught in the Flames IX. A Queer Accident X. The Professor is Kidnapped XI. A Battle in the Air XII. Adrift XIII. The Ship of Olaf the Viking XIV. Marooned on an Ice Floe XV. Dynamiting the Reef XVI. A Polar Storm XVII. The Great Barrier XVIII. The Professor Takes a Cold Bath XIX. Facing the Polar Night XX. A Mysterious Light XXI. A Penguin Hunt XXII. The Flaming Mountain XXIII. Adrift Above the Snows XXIV. Swallowed by a Crevasse XXV. The Viking's Ship XXVI. Caught in a Trap XXVII. The Fate of the Dirigible XXVIII. The Heart of the Antarctic

THE BOY AVIATORS' POLAR DASH

OR

FACING DEATH IN THE ANTARCTIC

CHAPTER I.

THE POLAR SHIP.

"Oh, it's southward ho, where the breezes blow; we're off for the pole, yo, ho! heave ho!"

"Is that you, Harry?" asked a lad of about seventeen, without looking up from some curious looking frames and apparatus over which he was working in the garage workshop back of his New York home on Madison Avenue.

"Ay! ay! my hearty," responded his brother, giving his trousers a nautical hitch; "you seem to have forgotten that to day is the day we are to see the polar ship."

"Not likely," exclaimed Frank Chester, flinging down his wrench and passing his hand through a mop of curly hair; "what time is it?"

"Almost noon; we must be at the Eric Basin at two o'clock."

"As late as that? Well, building a motor sledge and fixing up the Golden Eagle certainly occupies time."

"Come on; wash up and then we'll get dinner and start over."

"Will Captain Hazzard be there?"

"Yes, they are getting the supplies on board now."

"Say, that sounds good, doesn't it? Mighty few boys get such a chance. The South Pole, ice bergs sea lions, and and oh, heaps of things."

Arm in arm the two boys left the garage on the upper floor of which they had fitted up their aeronautical workshop. There the Golden Eagle, their big twin screw aeroplane, had been planned and partially built, and here, too, they were now working on a motor sledge for the expedition which now occupied most of their waking and sleeping thoughts.

The Erie Basin is an enclosed body of water which forms at once a repair shop and a graveyard for every conceivable variety of vessel, steam and sail, and is not the warmest place in the world on a chill day in late November, yet to the two lads, as they hurried along a narrow string piece in the direction of a big three masted steamer, which lay at a small pier projecting in an L shaped formation, from the main wharf, the bitter blasts that swept round warehouse corners appeared to be of not the slightest consequence at least to judge by their earnest conversation.

"What a muss!" exclaimed Harry, the younger of the two lads.

"Well," commented the other, "you'd hardly expect to find a wharf, alongside which a south polar ship is fitting up, on rush orders, to be as clean swept as a drawing room, would you?"