"Forty degrees," he murmured to himself. "And in New York it's eighty-four in the shade. The ice must be colder still because it's dry and hard."
The party toiled on. Presently small snow crystals crunched underfoot.
"Frozen mist," said Teddy, and glanced at his thermometer. "H'm! Twenty-two degrees. Ten below freezing."
"I hope you men smoke," said Teddy, "because it's going to be cold a few hundred yards farther on. We'll come clear of this mist presently. If you smoke, and inhale, it'll probably warm up your lungs a little. You don't need it yet, though. Any of you who haven't pulled down the flaps of your helmets had better do so now."
A moment or so later they took up their march again. The sledges, with their heavy loads, were cumbersome things to drag over the uneven surface of the ice. The men panted and gasped as they threw their weight on the ropes. Teddy felt the air growing colder still, and presently noticed that the mist no longer seemed to be as thick as before. He glanced down at the front of his heavy fur coat. It was covered with tiny white crystals. He held up his hand with the thick mitten on it to form a dark background, and saw numberless infinitesimal snowflakes drifting slowly toward the ice under his feet. His thermometer showed two degrees above zero--and New York, six miles away, was sweltering in August heat!
"Not much farther," he called cheerfully. "We're almost there."
They panted and tugged on, a hundred and fifty yards more. Then they stopped and stared.
Three hundred yards away the great column of steam was issuing from the ice. A hollow hillock of snow and ice rose to a height of twenty feet, like the miniature crater of a volcano. From it, in an unbroken stream, the mass of steam emerged with a roaring, rushing sound. It rose five hundred feet before it broke into the plumelike formation that was so characteristic. There was a space, perhaps six hundred paces across, in which there was no mist. The cold was too intense to allow of the formation of fog. Water vapor condensed instantly in that frigid atmosphere. But around the clearing the mist rose from the surface of the ice. It became noticeable when it was merely waist-high, then rose to the height of a man, and climbed to a height of fifty feet in a circular wall all about the strange white open space. Teddy, looking at the top of the wall of vapor, saw that it undulated gently, as if waves were flowing back and forth around the tall column of steam.