The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. H. P. Lovecraft

waiting plane than was the great terraced building we had entered, and any further sub-glacial exploration we might make on this trip would lie in this general region.Oddly, we were still thinking about possible later trips—even after all we had seen and guessed.Then as we picked our way cautiously over the debris of the great floor, there came a sight which for the time excluded all other matters.

      It was the neatly huddled array of three sledges in that farther angle of the ramp’s lower and outward-projecting course which had hitherto been screened from our view.There they were—the three sledges missing from Lake’s camp—shaken by a hard usage which must have included forcible dragging along great reaches of snowless masonry and debris, as well as much hand portage over utterly unnavigable places.They were carefully and intelligently packed and strapped, and contained things memorably familiar enough—the gasoline stove, fuel cans, instrument cases, provision tins, tarpaulins obviously bulging with books, and some bulging with less obvious contents—everything derived from Lake’s equipment.After what we had found in that other room, we were in a measure prepared for this encounter.The really great shock came when we stepped over and undid one tarpaulin whose outlines had peculiarly disquieted us.It seems that others as well as Lake had been interested in collecting typical specimens; for there were two here, both stiffly frozen, perfectly preserved, patched with adhesive plaster where some wounds around the neck had occurred, and wrapped with patent care to prevent further damage.They were the bodies of young Gedney and the missing dog.