Sherman, Pabodie, and McTighe made an exhaustive aëroplane cruise over
all the surrounding territory in the afternoon, sweeping the horizon
with field glasses in quest of Gedney and of the various missing
things; but nothing came to light. The party reported that the titan-barrier range extended endlessly to
right and left alike, without any diminution in height or essential
structure. On some of the peaks, though, the regular cube and rampart
formations were bolder and plainer, having doubly fantastic similitudes
to Roerich-painted Asian hill ruins. The distribution of cryptical cave
mouths on the black snow-denuded summits seemed roughly even as far as
the range could be traced. In spite of all the prevailing horrors we were left with enough sheer
scientific zeal and adventurousness to wonder about the unknown realm
beyond those mysterious mountains. As our guarded messages stated, we rested at midnight after our day of
terror and bafflement--but not without a tentative plan for one or more
range-crossing altitude flights in a lightened plane with aërial camera
and geologist's outfit, beginning the following morning. It was decided that Danforth and I try it first, and we awaked at seven
a.m. intending an early trip; though heavy winds--mentioned in our
brief bulletin to the outside world--delayed our start till nearly nine
o'clock. I have already repeated the noncommittal story we told the men at
camp--and relayed outside--after our return sixteen hours later. It is now my terrible duty to amplify this account by filling in
the merciful blanks with hints of what we really saw in that hidden
transmontane world--hints of the revelations which have finally driven
Danforth to a nervous collapse. I wish he would add a really frank word about the thing which he thinks
he alone saw--even though it was probably a nervous delusion--and which
was perhaps the last straw that put him where he is; but he is firm
against that. All I can do is to repeat his later disjointed whispers
about what set him shrieking as the plane soared back through the
wind-tortured mountain pass after that real and tangible shock which I
shared. This will form my last word. If the plain signs of surviving elder
horrors in what I disclose be not enough to keep others from meddling
with the inner antarctic--or at least from prying too deeply beneath
the surface of that ultimate waste of forbidden secrets and unhuman,
æon-cursed desolation--the responsibility for unnamable and perhaps
immeasurable evils will not be mine. *       *       *       *       *

Danforth and I, studying the notes made by Pabodie in his afternoon
flight and checking up with a sextant, had calculated that the lowest
available pass in the range lay somewhat to the right of us, within
sight of camp, and about twenty-three thousand or twenty-four thousand
feet above sea-level. For this point, then, we first headed in the
lightened plane as we embarked on our flight of discovery. The camp itself, on foothills which sprang from a high continental
plateau, was some twelve thousand feet in altitude; hence the
actual height increase necessary was not so vast as it might seem. Nevertheless we were acutely conscious of the rarefied air and intense
cold as we rose; for, on account of visibility conditions, we had
to leave the cabin windows open. We were dressed, of course, in our
heaviest furs. As we drew near the forbidding peaks, dark and sinister above the
line of crevasse-riven snow and interstitial glaciers, we noticed more
and more the curiously regular formations clinging to the slopes; and
thought again of the strange Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich. The ancient and wind-weathered rock strata fully verified all of
Lake's bulletins, and proved that these pinnacles had been towering
up in exactly the same way since a surprisingly early time in earth's
history--perhaps over fifty million years. How much higher they had
once been, it was futile to guess; but everything about this strange
region pointed to obscure atmospheric influences unfavorable to
change, and calculated to retard the usual climatic processes of rock
disintegration. But it was the mountainside tangle of regular cubes, ramparts, and cave
mouths which fascinated and disturbed us most. I studied them with a
field glass and took aërial photographs while Danforth drove; and at
times I relieved him at the controls--though my aviation knowledge was
purely an amateur's--in order to let him use the binoculars. We could easily see that much of the material of the things was a
lightish archæan quartzite, unlike any formation visible over broad
areas of the general surface; and that their regularity was extreme and
uncanny to an extent which poor Lake had scarcely hinted. As he had said, their edges were crumbled and rounded from untold
æons of savage weathering; but their preternatural solidity and tough
material had saved them from obliteration. Many parts, especially
those closest to the slopes, seemed identical in substance with the
surrounding rock surface. The whole arrangement looked like the ruins of Macchu Picchu in
the Andes, or the primal foundation walls of Kish as dug up by the
Oxford-Field Museum Expedition in 1929; and both Danforth and I
obtained that occasional impression of separate Cyclopean blocks which
Lake had attributed to his flight-companion Carroll. How to account for such things in this place was frankly beyond me, and
I felt queerly humbled as a geologist. Igneous formations often have
strange regularities--like the famous Giants' Causeway in Ireland--but
this stupendous range, despite Lake's original suspicion of smoking
cones, was above all else nonvolcanic in evident structure. The curious cave mouths, near which the odd formation seemed most
abundant, presented another, albeit a lesser puzzle because of their
regularity of outline. They were, as Lake's bulletin had said, often
approximately square or semicircular; as if the natural orifices had
been shaped to greater symmetry by some magic hand. Their numerousness
and wide distribution were remarkable, and suggested that the whole
region was honeycombed with tunnels dissolved out of limestone strata. Such glimpses as we secured did not extend far within the caverns, but
we saw that they were apparently clear of stalactites and stalagmites. Outside, those parts of the mountain slopes adjoining the apertures
seemed invariably smooth and regular; and Danforth thought that the
slight cracks and pittings of the weathering tended toward unusual
patterns. Filled as he was with the horrors and strangenesses discovered at the
camp, he hinted that the pittings vaguely resembled those baffling
groups of dots sprinkled over the primeval greenish soapstones, so
hideously duplicated on the madly conceived snow mounds above those six
buried monstrosities. *       *       *       *       *

We had risen gradually in flying over the higher foothills and along
toward the relatively low pass we had selected.