Through the Air to the North Pole Part 23

The boy in the conning tower kept his eye on the two compa.s.ses, the one telling the direction, the other the nearness to the north pole. The latter gradually kept inclining more and more toward the earth.

"If we can only make it," thought Mark. "It will be something no one has ever done before. My! What a story the papers would make of it if they knew!"

"How is she running?" asked the captain, coming into the tower.

"Very well, indeed, sir."

"You might send her up a little," suggested the professor. "Keep her about half a mile high, and I'll be with you again before long."

The professor went to his bunk, and Mark was pleased enough to be left alone in charge of the ship. He held the wheel firmly, and did not deviate half a point from the northern course.

He had been steering for half an hour when he was suddenly aware of a dense gloom that settled down all about him. Then there came a great roaring sound. The air craft rocked violently. The wind whistled shrilly through the cordage and careened the _Monarch_ to one side.

Then the whole atmosphere grew from a dense black to a strange opaque whiteness: a whiteness that shut out the view from every side, and enveloped the ship as if it had fallen into a feather bed. Mark started back in fright and let go his hold on the steering wheel.

CHAPTER XIX

A BLINDING SNOWSTORM

"Quick! Professor!" cried Mark. "Jack, Washington, everybody! Hurry up!"

"What's the matter?" asked the inventor, running to the conning tower.

In answer Mark pointed outside.

"A snow storm!" exclaimed the captain. "We must expect them up north.

But this is worse than I thought!"

He glanced ahead. Nothing could be seen but a wall of white. The wind increased until it blew with almost the force of a cyclone, and the ship swayed fearfully.

"Stop the engines!" cried the professor. "We had better drift than run the chances of hitting an iceberg if we should suddenly take a drop down to the ground."

Washington, awakened from his sleep, turned off the power. Then began a fight between the ship and the elements; a battle between the _Monarch_ and the wind and snow. Which was to win?

The airship was, apparently, in the heart of the storm. It was tossed this way and that, now up and now down, though because of the quant.i.ty of gas in the bag the craft was buoyed up. The gas generating machine had not been stopped, only the machinery that moved the propeller.

How the wind howled! How the snow blew! It was a blinding storm, for from the windows of the conning tower and from those on either side of the cabin nothing could be discerned five feet away. Through the window in the bottom of the ship nothing showed but a sea of white flakes.

The cold was intense, seventy degrees below zero being marked on the thermometer. Even with the gasolene stoves going it was chilling inside the airship, for the cutting, biting wind found many cracks through which to enter.

But, if the propeller no longer urged the ship on, the force of the wind sent it ahead at a fearful pace. The gale careened the _Monarch_ from side to side. Now the bow would be elevated, and, again, the stern. It was like a ship on a rough sea, and the occupants of the craft were tossed from side to side, receiving many bruises.

Old Andy was tied into his bunk, or he never could have stayed there, so violent was the motion.

"Where is Dirola?" asked Mr. Henderson suddenly.

"She was out on the stern a while ago," answered Bill. "She was saying something about it being too hot for her inside. That was before the storm came up."

"We must see to her," said the captain. "She must come inside. The motion of the ship may toss her off!"

Bill volunteered to go out and bring the Esquimaux woman in. It was all he could do to open the door, so strong was the pressure of wind on it.

When he did swing it back such a cloud of snow entered that it seemed as if some one had emptied a feather bed in the cabin.

"She don't want to come in," Bill reported when, after much exertion, he had made his way back again. "She is laughing at this storm, and says it's like what they have where she came from. She is braced against the cabin, and is wrapped up in furs. I guess she is all right."

"I suppose we must let her have her way," remarked Amos Henderson.

"After all she may be used to it."

In anxiousness and apprehension the voyagers waited for the storm to cease. But it showed no signs of abating. More and more violently rocked the _Monarch_.

"We must shut off the gasolene stoves!" exclaimed the inventor after a particularly heavy pitching and tossing motion, when the craft nearly turned over. "If we upset, the fluid will run from the tanks, come in contact with the flames, and we will burn in mid-air!"

Washington set to work turning off all the gasolene, and the larger tanks were lashed fast and securely stopped up.

"Better put our furs on," suggested the inventor. "It will be very cold in here soon."

The lack of heat quickly made itself felt, the ship becoming like an ice-box. Old Andy was warmly covered, for he was asleep in his bunk, having fallen into a slumber after being lashed in. The noise of the storm did not awaken him, since he was somewhat stupid from a fever into which his wound had thrown him.

All that could be done was to wait and hope. No human force could prevail over the storm. Bracing themselves against whatever offered, and clinging by their hands to projections, the adventurers in the cabin expected every moment to be their last. Washington, who had gone out to the engine room, came hurrying back.

"Look, here, Perfessor," he said, sticking his head in the dining cabin door, "de gas machine hab stopped circulatin'."

"Did you shut off the power?"

"No, sah! I ain't done gone and shut off no power!"

Making his way as best he could while the ship pitched and tossed, Amos Henderson reached the engine room. He looked at the gas generator. The power was turned on full, but the apparatus was not working.

"That is strange," he remarked. "I wonder--"

Then he hurried forward to the conning tower. As he did so the ship was whirled quickly around several times, and the sudden motion threw the old man down, his head striking on the edge of one of the bunks. He lay white and still.

"He's killed!" cried Washington.

"We are in a whirlwind!" yelled Bill at the same instant. "We'll be sucked up to the sky!"

The airship was swinging around and around as if in the grasp of some giant. The craft was really caught in the centre of a whirlwind, which spun it around like a top. Every one felt sick and dizzy from the queer motion.

"We must see to the professor!" said Jack. "Washington, get some of the remedy you used before. I think he has only fainted."

At this moment the old inventor opened his eyes.

"What happened?" he asked feebly. "Please give me some water. I am all right."