On a Torn-Away World Part 23

"Another earthquake?" cried Mark.

"Oh, gollyation! I suttenly hopes not," wailed Wash.

"No. I do not think we need apprehend any further seismic disturbance.

Such gaseous trouble as there is in the heart of this island will find escape--if I do not mistake--through Mr. Roebach's oil well."

"Then what is troubling you, sir?" queried the boys in chorus.

"The knowledge I possess of the nature of glaciers leads me to fear this peril," replied the aged scientist. "Under the immediate conditions this vast river of ice may move forward at any moment."

"Impossible, I tell you!" interrupted Phineas Roebach. "I tell you this is a 'dead' glacier. It has not been in motion for ages. I have seen the face of it at the lower end of this valley. There is only a small stream of water trickling from under it, and the forest has grown right up to the base of the ice wall."

"And how big a stream do you suppose is flowing from beneath the glacier now, and working its way toward what was once the Arctic Ocean--or Beaufort Sea?" queried the professor.

"Why--why---"

"Exactly," concluded Mr. Henderson, sharply. "You had not thought of that. You see this vast amount of water pouring into yonder creva.s.se?

Water cannot run up hill. It is bound to seek a lower level. It must force its way down the valley, beneath the glacier, and so stream out from beneath the ice at the far end.

"Gradually this flow of water is going to wear away the ice--is going to loosen the entire glacier. And then, suddenly, with no warning at all, the field will plunge forward--break up, sink, grind itself to powder against these cliffs! And where will we be?"

"My goodness gracious gollyation!" cried Washington White. "I wants to git out o' disher right away--me an' b.u.t.tsy is ready ter go ter onct, an' no mistake!"

"What will you do--swim?" queried Jack, pointing to the river that was now washing the sh.o.r.e of the strip of soil on which they stood--a river which seemed to stretch the entire breadth of the glacier.

Jack and Mark were deeply impressed by the good sense of the professor's observations; and both Andy and Roebach were disturbed. They watched the disintegration of the ice with considerable worriment. It seemed to melt away much quicker during these hours of sunshine than it had on the previous occasion when the orb of day shone fully upon the surface of the island in the air.

The soil they had camped upon began to crumble away, too, for the heat was insidiously melting the ice under the morainial deposit. At the time which should be high noon--when the sun was directly overhead in its course--one end of the patch of soil, forest and all, slumped into the water with a loud crash, and at once the fierce current tore the rubbish apart and carried it onward to the brink of the creva.s.se, into the maw of which it fell.

"Wash is perfectly right in his statement," Jack Darrow said. "This is no place for any of us. As soon as the ice freezes up after the sun sets we must travel as fast as we can after the wolves."

"And I wish we could travel as fast as they can," muttered Andy Sudds.

"I wish we had Mr. Roebach's dogs and sleds," said Mark.

"All right. As long as you're wishing, though, why not wish for the right thing?" demanded Jack.

"And what is that, Master Jack?" asked the oil man.

"Wish we were aboard the _s...o...b..rd_ and that she was all right. That's what _I_ wish."

"And I reckon the boy's right," said Phineas Roebach, with a sigh. "As much as I object to flying through the air, an airship now would be a G.o.d-send indeed."

What bear meat the wolves had not destroyed the water now washed away.

The party had only that which Andy had smoked over the fire. But this was easily carried and their packs were not heavy when they prepared to leave the camp as soon after sunset as the frost would allow.

The terrific change from the heat of midsummer to the cold of midwinter, and all within something near twenty-four hours, was hard indeed to bear. The professor calculated that the drop in temperature from high noon was, two hours after sunset, exactly seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

"Human life will become extinct upon this fragmentary planet, if nothing further happens to it, in a very few years," he said, thoughtfully.

"We are not attuned to such frightful changes."

They had eaten, and had packed their supplies. The earth had long since appeared again and the radiance she reflected fell softly upon the ice-field. It glistened like silver, stretching, miles and miles away before them when they climbed down from the fringe of trees in which they had encamped, and set out down the glacier.

They traveled carefully at first, for there were sinks in the ice which had barely skimmed over since sun-down. The thermometer registered 18 above zero, however, and the biting cold was congealing all lakes and pools very rapidly. Where they tramped through the slush their footprints froze behind them. In an hour the mercury had fallen ten degrees more and they were beating their gloved hands across their b.r.e.a.s.t.s to keep up the circulation.

They tramped on at good speed for several hours. Here and there along either edge of the glacier, were groves of fir trees like the one they had encamped in. But in places the ice had melted from under and around these patches of rock and soil and the roots of the trees were exposed, while the earth had slumped away in small land-slips until nothing but a heap of debris was left.

The old professor grew weary and Andy insisted upon making camp again and resting. While they were warming themselves over the fire the old hunter built, and Wash was boiling some coffee, Jack suddenly beheld several shining points of light in the little wood on the edge of which they had halted.

"Look out! We're being watched," he whispered in Andy's ear.

The hunter grabbed his rifle and looked where Jack pointed. At once he seemed relieved.

"The wolves," he said. "They know their way out of this valley. I don't want to travel on this ice any longer than I can help."

With a word to the professor, and taking Roebach with him, the old hunter made a determined charge into the brush at the lurking wolves.

The pack scattered at first, but finding themselves determinedly followed, and both hunters having been wise enough to take torches with them (for wolves are very much afraid of fire) the pack finally gathered once more and trailed away up a narrow path upon the rocky wall close at hand.

In the white light furnished by the earth-planet Andy counted thirty and more of the beasts climbing this rugged path. He was sure it was no mere lair they went to among the rocks, but a path leading out of the valley altogether. Therefore, when the party was again refreshed, they took up their line of march, in single file, following the wolf trail.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE FIGHT AT ALEUKAN

Phineas Roebach knew nothing about this narrow defile through which the party traveled. But he agreed that they were breaking through the wall of the glacier on the right side. Aleukan, the big native settlement, was in this direction.

There seemed to be a narrow crack through this cliff which had guarded the river of ice. It had never been used by man as a right of way, but the beasts of the wilderness had used it from time immemorial, as the marks along the way proclaimed.

The scurrying feet of the wolf pack, were long since out of the way.

But yonder a mountain sheep had been killed by a puma, or other big feline, and the wolves had picked its bones after the Master of the Chase had eaten his fill.

Where a little rill of sweet water sprang from between two boulders, boiling out white sand from the depths of its spring, was the print of a bear's paw. Many of these marks Jack and Mark saw for themselves; but Andy was quick to point them out as he led the way up the steep path.

Their progress was necessarily slow because of the aged professor.

Although the scientist was not the man to r.e.t.a.r.d the party, Andy would let n.o.body take the lead but himself, so that he could watch the old man's flagging steps and call a halt whenever he thought it best for Mr. Henderson to rest.

"You are babying me, Andy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the professor, with some irritation.

"You're the most important person in this party, sir," declared the hunter. "We can lose any other person and not miss him much. But without you we'd be without a head."

Therefore, when they had clambered through the last steep cut and reached the farther slope of the cliff, the hunter called a halt and built a camp, determined to bivouac here although the oil man a.s.sured him that they were now less than twenty miles from Aleukan.

A few hours later they awoke to find the sun rising once more and the heat of the exposed hillside becoming unbearable. Were it not for the wonderful clearness of the air they could not have stood the heat at all. But all agreed that they would better descend the hill to the forest and so be sheltered from the direct rays of the sun.

The bearing of their extra clothing in this tropical heat was an effort, and they were all glad to find shelter beneath the huge-limbed trees at the foot of the slope.