On a Torn-Away World Part 26

"And the rooster's that lean he wouldn't be anything but skin and bone if we killed and cooked him," Jack wickedly proposed.

Wash looked upon his young friend in extreme horror.

"Eat b.u.t.tsy?" he finally gasped. "Why Ma.s.sa Jack! I'd jest as lief eat a baby--dat I would!"

But the matter of eating was past the joking stage now. The dogs fell on the ice and could not get up again. It was a mercy to put them out of their misery, and this is what Phineas Roebach and Andy did--shooting each faithful creature through the head and leaving the carca.s.ses for the wolves which had, all this time, followed the little party at a respectful distance.

"If wolf meat was fit to eat we'd certainly live on the fat of the land," quoth the oil man.

"I wouldn't mind meeting a bear--savage as that other fellow was,"

said Andy Sudds.

And before they were through with this adventure they saw all the bear meat--and that very much alive--that the party ever wished to behold.

First, however, came Mark's invention. They dragged the empty sleds--after the dogs were killed--for several miles and then went into camp beside the stream, while the sun rose and warmed them most uncomfortably.

Roebach suggested abandoning the sleds as they could carry the little stock of movables they now owned. But Andy was opposed to this as he feared the professor might break down, in which event they would have to drag him.

"We must keep one of the sleds, at least," the old hunter insisted.

"I have a scheme," quoth Mark, suddenly. "Why not use the sleds--both of them?"

"True enough--why not?" scoffed Jack. "Let's keep them to slide down hill on. Do you realize that the professor says we are still three hundred miles from Nigatuk and the mouth of the Coleville?"

"That is the reason I suggest traveling by sled instead of dragging them behind us," said Mark, unruffled. "I've got an idea."

Jack stopped then. When Mark said he had an idea his chum knew it was probably worth listening to, for Mark possessed an inventive mind.

"We will have to strap the robes and blankets on our shoulders if we abandon the sleds," Mark Sampson said, quietly. "Let us utilize them to better advantage and save the sleds in addition."

"How?" asked Phineas Roebach.

"Make sails of the robes and propel the sleds, riding on them, too,"

declared Mark. "Such wind as there is is pretty steadily at our backs.

Why not?"

"Why not, indeed?" shouted Jack. "Hurrah for Mark!"

"A splendid thought, my boy," declared the professor.

Poles were cut for masts and Andy rigged a stout one on each sled, with cross-pieces, or spars, to hold the blankets spread as sails.

Andy even rigged sweeps for rudders with which to steer these crude ice-boats. They got off under a fair wind as soon as the river was pa.s.sable again, and ran fifty miles straight away without stopping.

This was a great lift toward the end of their journey, and all plucked up courage. The Shanghai seemed to share the feeling of renewed hope, and began to crow again.

They were obliged to rest over the sunlit day, as before, for the ice became covered with a sheet of water an hour after sunrise, and they were afraid the sled runners would cut through and let them all down into the stream.

However, they saw very well that--barring some unforeseen accident--they would be able to reach the mouth of the river before the last of their scanty food supply ran out. All the way now they looked for signs of the traders from Aleukan, who had started for the coast ahead of them.

These men, however, seemed to have left the rough path along the bank of the Coleville, and were either traveling on the ice ahead, or had struck off into the wilderness.

When they set sail for a second time the heavens, for the first time since the final cataclysm that had shot them off into s.p.a.ce, were beginning to be overcast.

"There is so great an evaporation while the sun is shining that I am surprised that we have not had snow before," the professor observed.

"These mists rising from the earth and the bodies of water would become heavy nightly rains in any other climate. Here they will result, now that the atmosphere has become saturated with moisture, in heavy hail storms and much snow. It is nothing more than I have looked forward to."

The remainder of the party were not so much interested in the natural phenomena as he, however; they looked forward mainly to reaching some safe refuge--some place where there were supplies and the fellowship of other human beings.

The wind increased, but its keenness the party did not mind. They were only glad that it remained favorable to their line of travel. They swept down the frozen river at a speed not slower than ten miles an hour.

The wolves had followed them on the ice, or along the edge of the river, up to this time. They saw, indeed, a pack of the ugly creatures on a wooded point ahead of them, at a distance of a couple of miles.

But before the sleds reached this point (which served to hide the icy track beyond) the wolves suddenly disappeared.

"Something has scared them fellers," Andy declared.

"The traders?" suggested Jack, who traveled with the old hunter and Mark on one sled, while Roebach, Wash and Professor Henderson sailed on the other. "Not hardly. Men wouldn't scare them critters so.

Something bigger and uglier than the wolves themselves, I reckon."

To prove how true Andy's guess was, Mark shouted the next moment:

"A bear--two of them! Three! See that crowd of bears, will you? No wonder the wolves skedaddled."

Several of the huge bears, like the one they had had the fight with on the glacier, appeared out of the woods and waddled on to the ice.

They had evidently sighted the sailing party, and they roared savagely and tried to head off the sleds. That they were wild with hunger, there could be no doubt.

"I have heard the Indians say that, in bad seasons, the bears travel in packs like wolves, and will attack villages and tear the huts to pieces to get at the inmates," Roebach said, from the other sledge.

"How fortunate that we are not afoot, then," Professor Henderson remarked.

The next moment the two sleds shot around the wooded point and the river below lay before them. The bears were galloping after the party and shut off all way of escape to the rear.

"Oh, gollyation! Looker dat mess ob b'ars!" shrieked Washington White.

And there was a good reason for the black man's terror. Strung out across the frozen river, as though they had been waiting for the coming of the exploring party, was a great herd of Kodiak bears--monsters of such horrid mien that more than Washington were terror-stricken by their appearance.

There were more than half a hundred of the savage creatures, little and big, and they met the appearance of the two sailing sledges with a salvo of bloodthirsty growls.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE ABANDONED CITY

It was too late for our heroes and their friends to escape giving battle to the bears. They could not steer the sleds clear of the monsters, nor could they retreat. There were enough of the savage beasts in the rear to make this last impossible.

"Come ahead!" yelled Andy Sudds to Phineas Roebach, who guided the second sled. "Don't stop."

Jack and Mark, with the old hunter, were on the first sled. They were armed with magazine rifles, and all seized these and prepared to fight for their lives.