The men were going crazy with inactivity. Worst of all, to Lamoureux, was the way they looked at him. They seemed to feel that, as leader of the expedition, he was responsible for the weather. Lamoureux almost found himself agreeing with them.
On the tenth day, he could stand it no longer. He called the men together and made a short speech. "Men, this rain seems able to go on forever. We can't stay here waiting for it to clear up."
Somebody cheered hopefully, and the others, for the sake of exercising their lungs, joined in.
Lamoureux held up his hand. "McCracken has reported that he saw the mountains we were looking for, with the saddleback ridge between them. Rain or no rain, we're going to find them."
Somebody yelled, "Three cheers for Big Muscles McCracken!" The three cheers were roared. Then there came, "Three cheers for our brave and heroic captain!" and, "Three cheers for the mountains!" and even, "Three cheers for the lousy rain and snow."
Lamoureux began to feel uncomfortable. This was too much like a high school football rally, with burlesque overtones, to suit him. The men were bursting with pent-up energy, and it had to get out somehow.
"I'm leaving only a half dozen of you behind to stay with the ship. The rest are coming with me. Any volunteers?"
He had expected what followed. They all volunteered. He made his choices rapidly. McCracken went along because he had actually seen the mountains. Carvalho would make an intelligent assistant. Gronski, Marsden, Sprott--he reeled off the names rapidly, and in less than a minute had his group, leaving a disgruntled half dozen who would have nothing to do but continue to sit around the ship.
Lamoureux himself carried a two-way radio transmission set capable of receiving intelligible signals over a distance of 12,000 miles. He gave another of the sets to McCracken, and ordered the man to hang on to it no matter what happened. In the rain, it would be their only way of maintaining communications with the ship. He put McCracken and the radio in the second squad under Carvalho, and himself took charge of the first. The two squads would stick together unless some emergency demanded that they separate.
When they set out in the snow, wearing the heaviest clothing they had, the men were singing. McCracken's voice, like the croaking of a huge bullfrog, supplied an unharmonized but ear-filling bass. It sounded so impressive to Lamoureux that not until McCracken had reached the third song did he perceive that the man didn't know any of the melodies at all. He just oom-pahed as the spirit moved him, evidently feeling that, on Mercury, noise and good spirits were more important than any tune.