From this point, the operation was repeated, getting them down 250 feet. But by now the shovelers in the path above had worked ahead, and the snow chunks were whizzing past uncomfortably close. They saw that the ravine narrowed ahead of them into a kind of bottle neck, and all the chunks worked into that neck. They would have to pass right through it. No use in yelling up to the shovelers to quit, either. Their job was to get the trail opened as soon as possible. Besides, they were laughing, and the little party down in the ravine knew that meant they were just waiting to get them into the narrow place and bombard them.
“Keep half an eye up the slope this next drop,” the doctor said, “and watch out for cannon balls. Those fellows up there are going to wing us if they can. The chunks won’t break any bones, but they’ll hurt. Once we’re through the neck, we can get round behind that rock, and be out of range.”
“Let her go!” said Mr. Stone.
Nobody lost any time on that next drop. Mr. Stone went first, and no sooner was he out into the narrow groove of the ravine than a perfect avalanche of snow chunks came whizzing down. Most of them got broken up before they reached him, but every now and then one hung together, as big as a shoveler could lift out of the path, and went whizzing by a mile a minute. One of them bounced up just before it reached him, and landed ker-blam against his camera sack, smashing into a thousand pieces, and nearly taking him off his feet.
“The idiots!” Uncle Billy said. “I’d like to throw ’em all down here head first. Go ahead, Dump. Your father’s round the bend now.”
“You’re an easy mark, Dumplin’!” yelled the boys, as poor Lester slid down the rope into the path of the whirling missiles. “Hi! look out—here comes a big one!”
Lester ducked, and a block of snow bounded right over his head. Bennie had no such luck when he started, though. He dodged a couple, but a third chunk caught him right in the head, smashed wetly around his neck and ears, and he felt the water trickling down inside his shirt as he hurried, half blinded, around the rock to shelter. Spider and the doctor soon joined them, Spider nursing a bump on the leg from a snow chunk with a stone in it.
“Great idea of a joke, those guys have,” said Bennie. “Funny thing, Dumplin’ never got hit at all, and he’s the easiest mark. Where do we go from here?”
The doctor looked around. Straight down below them was a long slope of pumice and gravelly looking stuff, at a very steep angle, with a few trees and lava blocks breaking it up, and patches of snow.
“Here,” he said, and threw out the rope.
Bennie started first. His feet seemed to hold well in this soft ground, and he let his hand just slide along the rope, seeing how fast he could walk down. Suddenly the ground just slipped away under him. He sat down, and began to slide. His hand, held too loosely on the rope, was yanked off. He grasped for the rope again, but it was out of reach. For one sickly, awful moment, he saw the lake and the rocks hundreds of feet below him, and thought he was going to land down there—or what was left of him. Down, down he slid, six feet, eight feet, hit a patch of snow and went faster, while he tried vainly to dig in with hands and heels. Then, as suddenly as the first slip, he realized that in ten feet more he’d hit a tree growing on a tiny flat place by a piece of solid lava. A second, and his feet struck the roots with a thump, and he stopped abruptly.
When the rest got to him, he was still sitting there, trembling a little, and trying to clean off his clothes. His uncle’s face was white, but all he said was:
“I thought you knew how to climb, Bennie. I see you’ve got to be taught to keep a hold on the rope.”
“It—it came so sudden.”
“It always does come sudden,” his uncle answered. That was all he said. That was all he ever said about it the whole trip. But it was all he needed to say. Bennie felt deeply ashamed. He had failed on the very first climb! He resolved then and there that the next time he’d hang on to that rope with a death grip.
“Were you scared?” Spider whispered to him, as they got down to the trail where the snow had melted off, and could walk the last few feet of the way. “Gee, I was scared blue when I saw you goin’, till I spotted the tree, and knew you were goin’ to hit it. Hadn’t been there, though, you’d been a goner. Golly!”
“Sure I was scared,” said Bennie. “Didn’t have time to think much about it, though, before I hit the good old roots.”
Dumplin’ now dropped alongside.
“If it had been me,” he said, “I’d have knocked the tree down, and gone right on.”
“You’d ’a’ made an awful splash in the lake,” Bennie laughed, though his voice still trembled a little.
There were only three boats at the landing, and none of the boatmen had yet come down that day. They were waiting for the trail to be opened. But the hotel manager had told Uncle Billy how to find the oars, and loading the cameras and lunch into a couple of the skiffs, they pushed off, Bennie insisting on rowing one boat, and Lester the other. The lake was very still as they floated out over its blue water.
“It don’t look more’n ten feet deep to me,” said Bennie, glancing over the side. “There’s the old bottom.”
“Look up at the cliffs and take ten more strokes, and then look down,” said Mr. Stone from the other boat.
Bennie did so.
“Jiminy crickets and little jumping hoptoads!” he exclaimed. “Why, there isn’t any bottom!”
Sure enough, the bottom had dropped completely away. They were floating on what seemed like a bottomless blue liquid.
“I feel as if we were sort of hanging in a piece of the sky,” said Spider. “I never had such a funny sensation.”
The doctor smiled. “You’ve got the Crater Lake blues,” he said. “It scares some people.”
“I like it,” said Spider. “Gee, it’s wonderful!”
Bennie glanced over his shoulder at Wizard Island, which looked about a quarter of a mile away, headed his bow for it, and started to pull again.
“We’ll be there in a jiffy,” he said.
“How far do you think it is?” his uncle asked.
“’Bout a quarter of a mile.”
“It’s almost two, in a straight line.”
“Gee!” said Bennie.
From the level of the water, Crater Lake was quite a different place. Instead of looking down from the rim, you looked up, and the cliffs that hemmed you in seemed far higher and far steeper. They looked as steep as they really are. The high points around the rim—Garfield Peak, Dutton Cliffs, Llao Rock, Glacier Peak, the Watchman, were all snow-capped, and in many places the snow came down the rim ravines in great white wedges like capital V’s, almost to the blue water. The hotel looked like a little Noah’s ark.
“Say, if a guy got caught down here and had to go on shore where he couldn’t get to the trail, what would he do? Could he climb out?” Bennie asked.
“There’s a trail out over there on the east, at that lowest place,” said the doctor. “The rim is only 500 feet high there. Those two are the only trails. You might be able to climb out at some other points. A photographer once climbed up under Llao Rock and worked along the base of the lava precipices till he reached the top of the rim. But if I was caught down here in most places, I’d sit tight till a boat came for me.”
“You needn’t die of thirst, anyhow,” Spider laughed.
Slowly Wizard Island drew nearer, and at last Bennie pulled into a little cove, and they hauled the bow up. Lester pulled his skiff in a moment later. Wizard Island, all around the base, seemed to be composed entirely of huge blocks of blackish-brown lava, out of which evergreens mysteriously grew—big, fine trees, too. They scrambled up over these blocks, and soon found a trail winding up the steep slope through the woods. The lava blocks ceased now, and the whole little mountain was composed of a fine material much like cinders from a locomotive. In fact, the baby volcano now resembled nothing so much as a huge cone of cinders, covered with trees. Up and up they toiled, Mr. Stone panting under the weight of his movie camera, and at last reached the summit. Before anybody even looked about, the canteens were unslung and half emptied. Then they looked.
The top of Wizard Island was a perfect circle, like Crater Lake itself, only a tiny circle, two or three hundred feet across. Inside was a crater, about a hundred feet deep, and now filled on the south side, where the sun didn’t hit it, with a huge snow-drift pitching steeply down to the bottom.
“Ah! I thought so!” cried Mr. Stone. “Boys, get busy. I’m going to take a movie of you sliding down a crater on the snow. Try it once standing up, and see if you can keep your feet.”
The Boys Sliding down Wizard Island Crater. (Enlarged from a Movie)
The three boys ran out on the drift to the edge, and stepped over. The snow was soft enough so that they sank in a little and pushed enough snow ahead to bank up after ten or a dozen feet. When it did this, it would pitch you head foremost unless you were spry and jumped over the bank in time. The first try all three boys went headlong a quarter of the way down, and made the rest of the trip on their stomachs. They got up and struggled back up the steep incline.
By this time the camera was set up and focussed.
“Good!” said Mr. Stone. “Now get out of the picture a way, and when I say ‘Shoot’ come walking in to the edge. Stop there a moment and point, as if you were daring each other to go down. Then all slide. Keep your feet if you can. At the bottom, get up quickly, and come scrambling back. Ready? Get on your marks, shoot!”
The three boys came into the picture as the crank ground and the camera clicked. They stopped at the rim, and began to act.
“I dast you to slide down!” said Bennie, forgetting this was a movie, and nobody would hear his voice.
“Ho!” said Dumplin’, “that’s nothin’.”
He tossed off his cap. Spider tossed off his. The three of them stepped over the rim, and shot down. Dumplin’ got a third of the way and spilled, head foremost. A second later Spider followed him. Only Bennie got to the bottom on his feet. He yelled and waved his arms in triumph, and all three started scrambling and slipping back up the drift, digging into the snow with heels and hands. As they came up over the rim again, the camera stopped clicking.
“Good,” said Mr. Stone. “That’s a dandy.”
“Some Douglas Fairbanks, eh?” cried Bennie. “Gee, Dumplin’, you sure did a comic fall. Bet that would get a laugh on the screen.”
“My hands are cold—and I’m sweating,” said Lester. “That’s going some.”
“It’s the climate!” came from three mouths at once.
They now walked around the little rim, and on the west side of the island saw, at the base of the cone, a flat space of a few acres, with a tiny little pond in it.
“This is a volcano within a volcano, and that is a lake inside of a lake,” the doctor pointed out. “You don’t often find that. Now let’s eat some lunch, and go down and see if we can catch a fish or two for supper.”
They sat, hatless and coatless, in the shade of a little tree beside a snow-drift, and ate their lunch, finishing up the last of the water in the canteens, also. Then they descended to the boats. Mr. Stone mounted his camera in the bow of one boat, with Lester to row, while Spider rowed the other, the doctor sat as passenger, and Bennie got out the collapsible rod his uncle had brought, jointed it, and adjusted the tackle.
“Don’t seem fair to fish for trout with a spinner, as if they were nothing but pickerel,” he declared. “Wish we had some flies.”
“We want the fish to eat,” said the doctor, “and Stone wants a picture. We’ll use the surest way to get ’em. Now, Spider, row very slowly and just as steadily as you can, just offshore, around the rocks. Keep an even pace—that’s the main thing. If the spinner yanks, the fish get suspicious.”
Their boat crept softly along, with the Stones’ boat not far behind, Mr. Stone sitting by the camera as if it were a machine gun pointed at them.
Suddenly the line, trailing behind, tightened, Bennie gave a cry, there was a leap and a silver flash in the water astern, and the fight was on!
“Play him, play him!” the doctor shouted. “Keep on rowing, Spider. Give Stone a chance to shoot! Bring him up slowly, Bennie, don’t lose him!”
“I won’t lose him,” Bennie answered grimly. “Gee whiz, what a trout! He pulls like a whale!”
Slowly he reeled in, and then had to play out again, as the fish made a dash past the boat. But the big spinner hook was too much for him, and after three or four minutes he was alongside, giving his last kicks and splashes in the water.
“Swing around, swing around, so the camera can get this!” called the doctor.
As the boat swung, Lester pulled nearer, the camera kept on clicking, and Bennie, reaching over, grabbed the line short and hauled the trout into the boat, holding him up to show his size.
“Some baby!” he cried, breathless with excitement. “He weighs about four pounds. What kind of a trout is he?”
“They put eastern brook trout into this lake,” said Uncle Billy. “There were no fish here till it was stocked.”
“Eastern brook trout!” Bennie exclaimed. “Well, that’s the funniest looking eastern brook trout I ever saw. I guess something happened to ’em.”
“It’s the climate,” Spider chuckled.
“I think it is myself, and no joke,” said the doctor. “They are certainly a different fish, both to look at and to eat, than the brook trout we used to catch back home. You catch one now, Spider.”
Spider took the line, and caught a trout. Then the doctor got one, and the line was passed to Lester, who lost the spinner in a rock on the bottom, but, with a new hook, caught still a fourth fish.
“That’s enough to last us; now for home,” came the orders.
“I wonder if they’ve got the trail cleared yet? Don’t much want to face that bombardment again,” said Mr. Stone.
“They’ll be through digging for the day, anyhow, before we get in,” said Uncle Billy.
The long shadows from the western walls were out across the water when they reached the landing and tied up the boats. There was no sign of shovelers on the trail, but no sign, either, that the gang had got to the bottom. They had to make the first half of the climb as best they could, scrambling up the treacherous slopes with the aid of the alpenstocks and the rope which the doctor dragged up ahead and fastened at convenient points. Half-way up, however, they reached the spot where the trail breakers had quit work, and they were glad enough of the path and the easy grade the rest of the way. Their packs were getting heavier and heavier, and the doctor was taking shifts on the camera, before they finally dragged themselves over the rim, into the sunlight again.
Bennie was carrying the four trout proudly when they passed the hotel, and a crowd came out to see the catch. At least a score more motors had arrived during the day, and the hotel bus was arriving with a load of people. At their camp, they found two new tents pitched close to theirs, the cars bearing California license plates.
“Well, our privacy is gone,” sighed Mr. Stone.
“I don’t care, if they haven’t got a crying child along, to keep us awake,” the doctor said.
“Nothing could keep me awake tonight,” said Bennie, flopping down on the ground.
“And nothing could wake me tomorrow morning,” puffed Lester, flopping down beside him.
“Well, don’t go to sleep till you’ve cleaned those fish for us,” Uncle Billy laughed. “And, Dump, you get water, and, Spider, you make the fire.”
The smell of boiling coffee and sizzling trout brought new life to everybody. And how they ate! The fish meat was reddish in color, more like salmon than eastern brook trout, but it certainly tasted good, and there was enough for everybody, with potatoes, and bread, and coffee and stewed fruit.
When supper was over and cleared away, and they were sitting around the little camp fire, in their sweaters again, for the evening chill had descended with the sun, a man strolled over from the near-by camp.
“Kind o’ cold up here,” he remarked.
“Drained your radiator?” Mr. Stone asked.
“No. What you giving us?”
“Just as you like,” Mr. Stone replied. “If you like a busted radiator, it’s up to you. I don’t care.”
“You mean to tell me it’ll freeze up? Why, it was eighty-eight in the shade in Medford this morning.”
“It was probably hotter than that in Los Angeles,” said Uncle Billy, with a wink at Mr. Stone.
“No, sir!” the other man retorted. “No siree, Bob. We have the finest climate in Southern California there is in the world. Never too hot, and never too cold.”
“It’s the climate,” chuckled Bennie.
“You bet your life it’s the climate, kid,” said the man.
“Funny, another man from California once told me the same thing,” Mr. Stone smiled. “I’ll have to go down there some day and try it.”
“You’d better. No place like it.”
“What are you doing in Oregon?” Uncle Billy suggested.
“Oh, just taking a look around. Pretty nice little lake here, but you ought to see the Yosemite.”
“I’ve been to Coney Island,” Bennie grinned, falling into the game.
“I’ve seen a picture of Venice by moonlight,” said Dumplin’.
“I’ve been up Bunker Hill Monument. It is 224 feet high,” said Spider.
The Californian began to get wise to the fact that he was being guyed, and moved off. They watched him. He went past their cars and glanced at the ground under the hoods to see if they had really been drained. Then he went over and drained his own.
Mr. Stone laughed. “Push any button on a Californian, and you’ll start a record about the finest climate in the world.”
“It’s the climate,” said Bennie, solemnly. “Let’s see, where did I see that? Oh, yes, on a big banner across the road in a city down in California.”
“A hit, son. I admit it,” Mr. Stone answered. “We do a lot of bragging ourselves. At that, we’ve got a pretty nice climate.”
“I move that the next man who says ‘climate’ has to wash all the dishes for the next three days,” said Dumplin’. “All in favor.”
A great shout of “Aye!” went up, and on that they turned in.
“Praises be to the man who invented the air mattress,” sighed Bennie, as he crawled wearily into his sleeping bag. “Oh, you pneumatic kid!”
“Had enough hard work to satisfy you?” his uncle asked.
“Till about eight A. M. tomorrow,” Bennie answered. “Good night, friends. Please tell the bellhop to bring me hot water at 7:30.”
Their friend the California camper and his party were up bright and early. At least, they were up early. As Bennie woke up at their noisy shouting, and listened to their conversation, he didn’t think they were particularly bright.
“Oh, well, Irvin Cobb couldn’t make me laugh at half-past five in the morning,” Dumplin’ said at breakfast. “I heard ’em, but I went to sleep again. I just stayed awake long enough to hear whether they were talking about their cli—ha! you didn’t catch me!—about the atmospheric conditions of California.”
“Did they?” his father asked.
“Not’s I heard. One of ’em was pulling a merry jest. His idea of a joke, I s’pose. He was throwing cold water on the ones that weren’t up.”
“Gee, I’d have killed him!” the doctor said. “Maybe they’ll be gone by night. Well, what shall we do today? I don’t feel like going down to the lake again till the trail is open. It will be done by tonight.”
“Let’s climb Garfield!”
“Good,” said Mr. Stone. “I’d like to get a movie of you all up on that snow cap against the sky.”
“And I’m going to gather all the kinds of wild flowers I can, and identify ’em from those mounted specimens in the hotel,” said Spider. “Might’s well do some work for a botany honor medal, too.”
Bennie was looking up in the tree as Spider spoke.
“Look,” he said, “who’s your friend?”
“Who are your friends, you mean,” added Uncle Billy, also looking up.
Two large birds, fat and sleek, with gray and black plumage were hopping nearer and nearer to the tents, apparently much excited.
“Hello!” cried Spider. “They are new ones on me. Say, aren’t they tame!”
Mr. Stone laughed. “Tame is the word. Everybody look the other way, and pretend to pay no attention.”
They did so, and suddenly there was a flutter close by, a little peep, a flap of wings, and one of the birds was right down on the box by the stove that served as a kitchen table, and up in the tree again with half a slice of bread in his bill.
“Well, I’ll be switched!” Bennie exclaimed. “Can you beat that! What are they?”
“Ever heard of camp robbers?”
“Are those camp robbers, eh? Canada jays is another name, isn’t it? Well, I thought camp robbers were ugly birds. Those are beautiful.”
“They are beautiful, but now they’ve discovered the camps up here, we’ll have to keep everything covered. They can’t take a hint worth a cent.”
“Let’s shoo ’em over to California’s camp,” laughed Bennie.
Presently they started off for Garfield.
“Hey, Uncle Bill, where’s the rope?” Bennie asked.
“Don’t need it today.”
“Aw, can’t we take it along and find a place to use it?”
“Nothing doing. We don’t carry any excess baggage out here, son.”
The climb up Garfield proved to be an easy one. The trail was clear of snow for half the distance, and the rest of the short thousand feet was over drifts that were neither difficult nor dangerous, till they reached a little flat place a hundred feet short of the summit. Here a sheer precipice confronted them, with the summit snow cap hanging out over it like the cornice of a gigantic house roof.
Mr. Stone set up his camera some distance out from the cliff.
“Now, I want you all to go up there, around on the side, where the trail goes, and come out into view on the left end of the top. Then walk in single file, slowly, along the cornice to the right, and then move back out of sight again. When you get to the top, don’t come into view till I yell, ‘Shoot!’”
“You mean you want us to walk out on that snow that hangs over the precipice, Pa?” Lester demanded.
“Sure, why not?”
“Well, if it breaks off with our weight, where do we go from there?”
“It won’t break. You don’t have to get right on the edge of it, of course. But it would hold up a team of horses.”
“Yes, but will it hold up Dumplin’?” said Bennie.
The Boys Walking on the Snow Cornice of Garfield Peak. (Enlarged from a Movie)
“Come on, boys, let’s get this Pearl White stuff over,” the doctor laughed.
They scrambled up around the side to the very peak, and waited till they heard the signal. Then one by one they walked forward toward the edge. The doctor led the way, and sounded with his alpenstock. He stopped five feet short of the extreme edge, however, turned and walked along that line, the rest following him holding their breaths, and half expecting to go pitching down any instant. But they didn’t. The snow cornice was many feet thick, and would probably have held up a far greater weight.
When they were out of the picture again, they looked around. The view was tremendous, and the first one they had got from a high summit. (Garfield is a shade over 8,000 feet.) To the south they saw the glistening white snow cone of Mount McLaughlin, and then far, far away, 150 miles, floating almost like a cloud on the horizon, the great white bulk of Mount Shasta in California, more than 14,000 feet high. To the eastward, they looked out over the desert country of southeastern Oregon, stretching for endless miles. North of them, they looked right down for 2,000 feet into the blue caldera of Crater Lake. North of the lake, beyond the farther rim, they could see Mount Thielsen, which looked like a huge needle of lava sticking straight up into the air, and beyond that the white pyramid of Diamond Peak. Everywhere near by, on the outer slopes of the crater, they looked down into dark mysterious forests marching up the ravines.
“Well, Bennie, is this big enough and wild enough for you?” the doctor demanded.
“I never saw so much land all at once in my life,” said Bennie, “or such a big hole in it. And to think I’ve seen old Shasta, way off in California! This beats the old geography!”
“You loosed a larynxful then,” came from Dumplin’.
“Not very poetic, Dump, but true,” the doctor smiled.
The boys found the steepest drift on the descent, and tried to ski down it on their boot soles, but they hit such a rate of speed that all three of them toppled over, and landed at the bottom head over heels. After they had reached the open trail once more, Spider cut away from the path, and worked down the side slope, through the pumice drifts and the tumbled piles of broken lava, gathering specimens of wild flowers. You would hardly have supposed anything would grow in such unpromising looking soil, but volcanic stuff rapidly breaks up into a soil rich in chemical plant foods, especially potash, and soon his hands were full. Bennie, who had followed him, began to help, and rapidly got interested in the game of finding new varieties. It was a big bunch they finally brought into camp, half an hour after the rest had reached home.
That afternoon Spider took his flowers and a note-book over to the hotel, where a large case of mounted specimens is exhibited, and spent two hours identifying them, and listing the names in his note-book, with his specimens pressed between the leaves. Bennie bought some candy, and a bunch of post-cards, and scribbled messages to his mother and father and friends. Finally he came over to Spider.
“Gee whiz, you’re a studious one,” he said. “Wish I was. How do you get that way?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t help being interested in birds and plants and things like that. You’ve just got to find something you’re awfully interested in, I guess.”
“Well, I’m interested in mountains, but that won’t get me any merit badge. I’m gettin’ kind of interested in supper about now, too. What say we beat it over to camp?”
They walked back along the rim. The snow cap on Garfield was growing pink behind them, and the lake below, ruffled by a little wind, was like a wrinkled carpet of vivid ultramarine blue. The trail, they heard, was now dug out all the way to the landing. Rested by the quiet afternoon, they felt keen for fresh adventures.
“I feel’s if I could walk all the way around this old rim,” Bennie declared. “You know, there’s a motor road runs around it, only it’s full of snow now. Has to cut down behind Dutton Cliffs and Garfield, way down to the road we came up on. But the rest of the way round it’s up on the rim. Uncle Bill says it’s about thirty or thirty-five miles around, he thinks, by the road. Bet you we could do it in a day, right over the old snow. That ought to help toward a merit badge for hiking.”
“I’d rather row around the lake at the base of the cliffs,” said Spider.
“Well, let’s do that tomorrow. Shall we?”
“I guess we’ll do what the rest do. Your uncle will have something good on, sure.”
“Hope so, I need the exercise,” Bennie laughed, plunging across the snow-drift toward the tents.
“Bennie’s feeling awful good,” Spider told the rest. “Says he’s not getting exercise enough.”
“The wood-pile is rather low,” the doctor remarked quietly.
Bennie saluted. “Yes, sir, thank you, sir!” he said, and picked up his ax.
“Seeing that Bennie is such a glutton for exercise,” said Uncle Billy at breakfast the next morning, “what do you say we give him some, Stone?”
“We want to keep him well and happy, surely,” Mr. Stone answered, solemnly.
“Yes, we mustn’t let the little darling pine,” put in Dumplin’.
“Or his mighty muscles get flabby,” added Spider.
“You all think you’re having a great time, don’t you?” Bennie retorted. “Well, I’m all ready. I guess I’ll keep in the procession as long as the band plays.”
“All right,” said his uncle. “Let’s get cleared up here, and we’ll beat it down the trail and row out to the Phantom Ship. Bennie can row us out and back, and climb the mast between whiles, and then tote your camera, Stone, up the trail again home. Maybe that will restore his lost appetite.”
Bennie grinned amiably. “What’s the Phantom Ship?” he demanded.
“You’ll see.”
The boys noted with delight that Uncle Billy was taking his alpine rope. Lunches and cameras were carried, too. The trail down from the rim was now cleared of snow all the way, and the descent was quick and easy. But, at the bottom, they found that so many people had gone down ahead of them that all the boats were out. They had to wait two hours while some of the boatmen, who had gone across to the boat-house on Wizard Island, got the launch in commission over there, and towed back more boats.
“How did they ever get a launch down here?” asked Bennie.
“Brought it down in pieces and assembled it, I suppose,” Spider said. “Didn’t they?”
“Must have,” answered the doctor.
When the fresh supply of boats arrived, they pushed off, rowing in the opposite direction from Wizard Island. Now they passed directly under the jagged red walls of Eagle Crags, which form the north wall of Mount Garfield, and tower 2,000 feet above the water. Rounding Eagle Point, they saw Chaski Bay, invisible from the hotel, with a great snow-drift hanging over it, and beyond that another 2,000-foot cliff headland, with a long, steep talus slope of soft stuff leading up to the precipitous lava.
“What do you see right at the base of that cliff, in the water?” the doctor asked.
“Nothing,” said the boys. “Just some small rocks at the water’s edge.”
“Some small rocks, eh? Well, row on a bit. Keep in nearer shore, Bennie.”
Bennie rowed on another half mile, and again they looked at the rocks at the water’s edge below Dutton Cliff.
“Why,” Spider said, “those rocks are out in the water. They’re an island.”
“That’s the Phantom Ship. They call it a phantom because it looks like part of the cliff from a distance. You’ll see pretty soon why they call it a ship.”
Sure enough, they did see, in a very few moments. For, as the boats drew nearer, the detached rocks were seen to be much larger than they had appeared from a distance, where they had to be measured against the whole 2,000 feet of Dutton Cliff; and not only were they large, but they were really one solid mass of dark brown lava, much more pointed at the end which faced the lake, and with three sharp spires of lava, almost as sharp as an obelisk, sticking up exactly like three masts. To add still further to the illusion of a ship, they saw, as they drew still nearer, that the patches of green on the lava were really pine trees, which now began to look like sails.
“It is just like a ship!” Spider exclaimed. “It’s a ship made of lava, a three-master, sailing right out from Dutton Cliff!”
“Is it one of those masts we are going to climb?” Bennie suddenly demanded, a suspicion striking him.
“You are—for the exercise,” said his uncle.
“Yes, I am! Say, I’m pretty good, but I’m no human fly. Gee, I don’t see even a finger-nail hold on ’em.”
“Don’t get impatient. Look down in the water a minute. Row slowly. Now let her drift.”
The boys looked down as the boat floated in toward the dark, straight sides of the Phantom Ship, down into the deep blue water. No bottom was visible, though the sunlight seemed to penetrate a long way down.
Then, suddenly, there was bottom! The bottom seemed to jump up at them, when the boat was about a hundred feet away from the ship. They had floated right on over the rim of a tremendous sunken precipice. Even here the bottom was apparently fifty feet below surface, yet they could see it clearly.
“Stop the boat a minute,” Spider said.
Bennie stopped it, and then took his oars out again. Spider, meanwhile, had taken a nickel from his pocket, and when the ripples had died down, he laid it carefully overboard, flat on the water. They watched it wabble and flutter rapidly down, but fast as it went, it was a long time reaching bottom, showing the depth. Yet they could see it plainly after it landed and lay shining on the rocks fifty feet below. Then they watched a big trout swim by, five or six feet under the surface, and they could see every detail of his color, his fins—all through water that was bluer than the sky!
“Now look up at the ship,” said Uncle Billy.
It towered above them now like a real ship, a ship 200 feet long, with masts 175 feet tall. Here, on the south side, the walls rose in an almost sheer precipice for many feet, with little clumps of bright flowers growing in the cracks and on the tiny ledges, which Spider instantly coveted for his collection of specimens that was going to help him get a merit badge in botany.
There was one place, however, near the bowsprit, where you could make a landing, and Mr. Stone was already getting out there and setting up his camera. As soon as it was up, he asked the two boats to row around behind the island, and then come into sight again, passing slowly under the side of the ship, so he could show both the boats and the lava cliff. After that he got Spider ashore, and took a movie of him crawling, wherever he could get a finger or toe hold, twenty feet up the ship’s side and picking a large clump of pentstemon from a crevice.
“Don’t you want to take me and Dumplin’ diving off into the water?” Bennie called.
“Sure, if you’ll do it,” Mr. Stone laughed. “Put your arm down as far in as you can get it first.”
Bennie pushed up his sleeve and did so. He pulled his arm out again quickly.
“Thanks, not today,” he said.
“The temperature when you get a ways below the surface remains at 39° winter and summer, the scientists have found,” the doctor smiled.
“It doesn’t feel more’n 29° on top,” said Bennie.
When the pictures were taken, they went around to the north side of the island, where the sides were not so steep, and taking the alpine rope, they all landed and scrambled up into the high saddle between the rear and the central mast—“the deck, this ought to be called,” they said.
When they got up in here, they found it was possible to climb still higher up the tallest mast (the rear mast), till they reached a sharp, complete crack which separated it into two parts. This crack had not been visible from the water.
“It’s a regular chimney,” Bennie exclaimed. “A chimney open at both sides. Do we go up that?”
“I don’t,” Dumplin’ answered. “I couldn’t get into it.”
“I don’t,” said his father. “I wouldn’t get into it.”
“It’s about forty feet from here to the top,” said Uncle Billy. “I know a man who climbed it. It took him an hour and fifteen minutes.”
Bennie wasn’t joking any more. He pulled himself up from the little platform where they were resting till he stood in the crack, and then he felt of the walls of smooth lava, and looked up for hand and foot holds.
“But there aren’t any holds,” he said. “Hanged if I see how anybody can climb up here.”
“Oh, you’ll find a few holds, if I remember right, places where you can get a sort of apology for a rest,” his uncle said, casually.
“Say, are you joshing me or not? Did somebody really climb up here?”
For answer his uncle stepped into the chimney with him.
“This is the way,” he said.
He braced his back against one side of the crack by pressing hard with his hands against the other side. Then he raised both his feet free of the ground, while he held himself wedged by sheer muscle, and set his feet against the wall a little way up. Then he pressed so hard with his legs that they wedged him in, and raised his hands, hunching up his shoulders a few inches at the same time. Again bracing with his arms and shoulders, he got his feet up a few more inches. Then his hands and shoulders again. Progressing in this way, almost crawling, in fact, he was before long so far up in the chimney that Bennie could walk under him. Then, almost as slowly as he went up, he came down.
“You see, it can be done,” he said. “I don’t say it isn’t hard work. But you wanted exercise.”
“Give me the rope!” said Bennie, shortly.
“What’s the idea of the rope?” asked Lester.
“So the rest of you can get up,” Bennie answered.
He tied the rope under his arms, while his uncle held the coil, to play it out. Then he tried his shoes on the wall to see if the nails held, and found they would hold in the lava, where they slipped on granite or other hard rock, and began to work his way up. He worked in silence. Spider and Lester shouted joshing advice at him, advising him to use his teeth, to sit down a while where he was and take a rest, and anything else they could think of, but he was wasting no breath on replies. In fact, he needed all the breath, all the strength and all the attention he had to keep on going. A dozen times he thought he would have to give it up. Once he thought his strength was going to fail him and he would fall. That was when he was about twenty feet from the bottom. But each time he grit his teeth and either seemed to get a kind of second wind, or else found just the faintest hint of a foothold, or a handhold, so he could relieve for a moment the awful tension on his arms and back.
Toward the top, he was literally moving inch by inch, his strength was so far gone. He was just able to get his hands over the rim at last, take a good grip, and hold himself there while his strength came back enough to enable him to pull himself up over the top, and get his weight on to his stomach, where he hung for a full minute, with his legs dangling back into the crack.
Finally he pulled them up, too, and found himself on a tiny little space, hardly large enough to sit on, with the rocks and the lake 175 feet below him. It was like sitting on top of a church spire. Trembling with muscular exhaustion as he was, he didn’t care to sit there long. In fact, he took one good look down, had a feeling as if his stomach turned a flipflop, drew up half of the rope and turned it around the top of the spire, and then grasping both strands of the doubled rope, came sliding down the chimney.
His uncle gave him a pat on the shoulder.
“Good work,” was all he said, but Bennie knew then that he had really done something.
“Why didn’t you wait for us?” Spider demanded.
“Isn’t room on top for more’n one at a time,” Bennie replied. “Go on up and see what it’s like. Keep hold of both strands of the rope, though. How long did it take me?”
“About an hour and twenty minutes,” said Mr. Stone.
“Is that all?” said Bennie. “I felt as if it was day after tomorrow before I got there.”
And he sat down wearily.