Lost in the Air Part 12

The Doctor sighed. "We can't help it, I suppose--but it's a cruel blow."

"There's many a break in a long airplane voyage anywhere," he consoled himself, "and I think the chances for accidents in the Arctic are about trebled. I don't wish our rivals any fatal catastrophe, but a little tough luck--say a wing demolished; or an engine burned out--might not be so much to my displeasure."

The days that followed were spent in various ways. Hunting seals and polar bears was something of an out-the-way pleasure for seafaring men.

Then there were checkers and cards, besides the daily guess as to their position at noon.

Strangely enough, for once in the history of Arctic currents, they found themselves being carried where they wanted to go, in a direct line for Point On-na-tak, and during the entire four days and a half there was hardly a point's deviation from the course. On the evening of the fourth day, Dave thought he sighted land, and the midnight watch reported definitely that there was land to the port bow; two points, one more easily discerned than the other. This news brought the whole crew on deck. And for two hours there was wild speculation as to the nature of the country ahead of them; the possibility of inhabitants and their treatment of strangers. Azazruk, the Eskimo, thought that he had heard from an old man of his tribe that the point was inhabited by a people who spoke a different language from that spoken by the Chukches of East Cape and Whaling, on the Russian side of Behring Strait. But of this he could not be sure. If the old engineer knew anything of these sh.o.r.es other than the facts he had already stated concerning wood and coal, he did not venture to say. And no one asked.

So they drifted on until the bleak, snow-capped peaks showed plainly.

Morning revealed a bay lying between the two points. Toward the entrance to this bay they were drifting. One obstacle remained between them and land. A half mile of the floe in which they were drifting lay between them and the black stretch of open water which extended to the edge of the solid sh.o.r.e ice, upon which the submarine might be dragged and over which the shaft might be carried to land. But how was that stretch of tumbled icefloe to be crossed? This, indeed, was a problem.

It was finally decided that Dave and the old engineer should spend the forenoon exploring the ice to landward for a possible narrow channel that would open a way to the water beyond. For this journey they took only field-gla.s.ses, alpine staffs and a lunch in a sealskin sack. Had they known better the nature of the land they were about to visit, they might have gone more fully equipped.

"H'I don't mind tell' y', lad, that we was 'eaded for this point way back some'ers in the late nineties," said the engineer, "but there come a Nor'wester, an' the cap'in, 'e lost 'is 'ead and turned to run.

We'd froze in for the winter, but we'd a seen things if we 'ad. We'd a seen 'um."

They were struggling over some pressure ridges and neither had breath to spare for further talk just then. But presently, as they paused on a high ridge of ice for a survey of their surroundings, Jarvis said:

"H'I said back there they might be coal in the banks. There is, an' other minerals there are 'ere, too. H'it's a rich land, an' now we're 'ere we'd make our fortunes if that daffy doctor wasn't 'eaded straight fer the Pole, an' n.o.body 'ere to stop 'im."

"What do you make of it?" Dave, who had been studying the sh.o.r.e with the gla.s.s, handed it to Jarvis: "Do you see something like a village?"

"Sure I do!" exclaimed the other excitedly. "Sure, there's a village, a 'ole 'eap of bloomin' 'eathen live up 'ere, h'only they hain't dull and stupid like them down below."

"It's a strange-looking village."

"Sure, it is. Made all of reindeer skins and walrus pelts. Sure it's different. Them natives up 'ere 'ave got reindeer, 'erds and 'erds of 'em."

"I suppose they've got walrus ivory, too," said Dave, warming to the subject.

"Ho, yes, walrus h'ivory a-plenty, them 'eathen 'ave got. But walrus h'ivory hain't so much. Too 'eavy to make a good cargo, an' not 'alf so good as h'elephant h'ivory. But there's minerals, 'eaps of minerals, an'

we'd all be rich men an' it wasn't for the bloomin' doctor."

No channel to the sh.o.r.e having appeared, they were now making their way along the edge of the open water. Suddenly the old engineer started:

"Did you see 'im?" he whispered.

"What? Where?" Dave stared at the old man, thinking he had suddenly lost his head.

"H'it was a man. 'E popped 'is 'ead out, then beat it. One o' them bloomin' 'eathens."

"Probably we'd better turn back."

"Huh!" sniffed the old man. "'Oo cares for the bloomin' 'eathen? 'Armless they is, 'armless as babies."

They continued their travel, but the old man seemed distinctly uneasy. He saw heads here and there. And soon, Dave, who did not have the trained eye of the seaman, saw one also. At once he decided that they must turn back to the submarine.

Hardly had they taken this course, when heads seemed to be peering out at them from every ice-pile. It was when they were crossing a broad, flat pan that matters came to a crisis. Suddenly brown, fur-clad figures emerged from the piles at the edge of the pan and approached them. Their soft, rawhide boots made no sound on the ice. Their lips were ominously silent. There was a sinister gleam to the spears which they bore.

Half-way to the men, at a sign from the leader, they all paused. Then a little knot gathered about the leader. Three men did the greater part of the talking. They appeared to be urging the leader to action.

Dave, who knew that the old seaman was acquainted with several native dialects, said:

"What do you make of it?"

"Can't get 'em straight," said Jarvis. "But them three 'eathen that's talkin' loudest, them's 'eathen from another tribe 'er somethin'.

They're not the right color. Their eyes hain't right an' they don't speak the language right. I think they got it in their 'eads that we h'ought ter be pinched fer trespa.s.sin' 'er somethin' the like. But we'll fight the bloomin' 'eathen, we will, h'if they start a bloomin' rumpus."

"What with?" smiled Dave.

The old seaman looked nonplused for a moment.

"Ho, well," he grinned, then. "Can't be any 'arm in goin' with the bloomin' idgits a piece, h'if they request it."

The horde of natives did, at last, request it in a rather forceful and threatening way. The three men, whom Jarvis had singled out as "'eathen from another tribe," became so insulting that Dave could scarcely restrain Jarvis from braining their leader on the spot.

They were led to the edge of the ice-floe where, hidden in a remote corner, was an oomiak, a native boat of skins.

From here they were quickly paddled over to the sh.o.r.e. They were then led up a steep bank, down a street lined with innumerable dome-like houses covered with walrus-skin, and were finally dragged into the largest of these houses and rudely thrust into an inner room. The door slammed, and Jarvis laughed.

"Humph!" he chuckled. "Fancy putting a man in a bloomin' jail made of deer skin. Much 'ead as the bloomin' 'eathen 'ave. Let's 'ave a look at 'er."

He scratched a match and the look of astonishment that Dave found on his face, as he stared about the inclosure, caused him to laugh, in spite of their dilemma.

"H'ivory, walrus h'ivory! Walls, floor and ceilin' all h'ivory. Who'd ever thought of that!" muttered the old seaman. "Wood'll burn and iron'll rust; but h'ivory! h'ivory! Who'd ever thought of that for a prison?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE WALRUS HUNT

Meanwhile, on the ice-locked sh.o.r.es of Great Bear Lake, preparations for departure were being made by the airplane party. The gasoline must all be strained through a chamois-skin to insure them against water in the engines, and this, with the temperature at thirty to forty below, was no mean task. There was a careful selection of foodstuffs to be taken along.

It was decided also that the five dogs should go, for they would provide transportation, in case of accident, and could be killed and eaten as a last resort. The entire equipment was given a thorough overhauling. All this took three days of arduous toil.

When, at last, all was in readiness, and the earth began to drop away beneath them, the dogs put their noses in the air and chorused a canine Arctic dirge. But their howls were lost in the noise of the engines.

As for the boys, their cheeks burned. Truly, this was to be their greatest adventure--"An adventure quite worthy the heart of a true soldier," as the Major had expressed it. Many problems they left behind unsolved, but these were quite crowded out of their minds by the one supreme problem: Would they reach the Pole, and would they reach it first?

Somewhere on the sh.o.r.es of Melville Bay, near the banks of Melville Island, frozen in the ice for the winter, was the little gasoline schooner which had engaged to furnish them fuel for the last lap of the journey north and the return. The gas would cost a pretty penny, to be sure, for it would compel the trader to return to Nome earlier than he had intended doing, but money seemed no object to the zealous explorer.

Setting their course a little east of north, they shot directly away.

Bruce, who was driving, settled back easily in his place. The machine was soaring beautifully. The engines worked in perfect time. Everything promised a safe and speedy trip. Now and again a belated flock of snow-geese, as if drawn by an invisible thread, shot by them; and now, far below, they caught sight of moving brown specks, which told of caribou still pa.s.sing southward from the summer pasture in the unexplored lands far to the North. The fleeting panorama was of constantly changing interest and beauty.

Soon they left the land behind. They were pa.s.sing over Prince Albert Sound. Its surface was already white with ice. Land again, then Melville Sound--last lap on this three hundred mile journey. Bruce found himself unable to believe they were over a great body of salt water. Surely these squares, rising from the surface, white and glistening in the moonlight, were village roofs covered with snow. Surely, these other squares lying flat upon the surface were town lots, and the broader ones stretches of field and meadow, where grain would ripen in summer and flowers bloom.

And the spots of open water, made black by the whiteness about them, were fishing-ponds where one might lazily dip his line and dream.