The Call of Cthulhu / Зов Ктулху. Говард Лавкрафт

of the evil plateau of Leng[128] which appear in the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I was rather sorry, later on, that I had looked into that monstrous book at the college library.

      On the 7th of November, we passed Franklin Island[129]; and the next day the cones of Mts. Erebus and Terror[130] on Ross Island appeared, with the long line of the Parry Mountains[131] beyond. There was a white line of the great ice barrier, rising perpendicularly to a height of two hundred feet like the rocky cliffs of Quebec, and marking the end of southward navigation. In the afternoon we entered McMurdo Sound and stood off the coast[132] near Mt. Erebus. Beyond it rose the white, ghostlike height of Mt. Terror, ten thousand, nine hundred feet in altitude.

      One of the graduate assistants – a brilliant young fellow named Danforth[133] – noticed lava on the snowy slope. On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the background, myriads of grotesque penguins walked.

      Using small boats, we landed on Ross Island shortly after midnight on the morning of the 9th, preparing to unload supplies. Our camp on the frozen shore below the volcano’s slope was only a provisional one, headquarters were situated aboard the Arkham. We landed all our drilling apparatus, dogs, sledges, tents, provisions, gasoline tanks, experimental ice-melting outfit[134], cameras, both ordinary and aerial, aeroplane parts, and other accessories, including three small portable wireless devices – besides those in the planes – capable of communicating with the Arkham’s large device from any part of the Antarctic continent that we would be likely to visit. The ship’s radio, communicating with the outside world, was able to convey press reports to the Arkham Advertiser’s powerful wireless station on Kingsport Head, Massachusetts[135]. We hoped to complete our work during an Antarctic summer; but if this became impossible, we would winter on the Arkham, sending the Miskatonic north for another summer’s supplies.