Arm in arm the two boys left the garage on the upper floor of which
they had fitted up their aeronautical workshop. There the Golden
Eagle, their big twin-screw aeroplane, had been planned and partially
built, and here, too, they were now working on a motor-sledge for the
expedition which now occupied most of their waking--and
sleeping--thoughts.

The Erie Basin is an enclosed body of water which forms at once a
repair shop and a graveyard for every conceivable variety of vessel,
steam and sail, and is not the warmest place in the world on a chill
day in late November, yet to the two lads, as they hurried along a
narrow string-piece in the direction of a big three-masted steamer,
which lay at a small pier projecting in an L-shaped formation, from
the main wharf, the bitter blasts that swept round warehouse corners
appeared to be of not the slightest consequence--at least to judge by
their earnest conversation.

"What a muss!" exclaimed Harry, the younger of the two lads.

"Well," commented the other, "you'd hardly expect to find a wharf,
alongside which a south polar ship is fitting up, on rush orders, to
be as clean swept as a drawing-room, would you?"

As Harry Chester had said, the wharf was "a muss." Everywhere were
cases and barrels all stenciled "Ship Southern Cross, U. S. South
Polar Expedition." As fast as a gang of stevedores, their laboring
bodies steaming in the sharp air, could handle the muddle, the
numerous cases and crates were hauled aboard the vessel we have
noticed and lowered into her capacious holds by a rattling, fussy