Lost in the Air Part 11

The Major, limbering up his wireless instruments, sent a message snap-snapping across the frozen expanse.

"What you doing?" asked Barney.

"Just letting that foxy old rival of mine know I got his message and that I'm on the job," chuckled the Major. "I'll get off other messages every three hours for a time."

"Would you mind mentioning my name in the message?" asked Barney. "You see, I've got a date for a little jazz with Dave up at the Pole, and I'd like him to know I'm planning to keep the appointment."

The Major chuckled again, and included this in his message:

"Barney Menter, pilot."

The party at the Aleutian station caught the Major's second sending of the message. The Doctor's face grew gray, as he realized its meaning.

"Great Providence!" he exclaimed. "Will he beat me again?" Then striking the table with his fist. "He will not! We're crippled by the loss of an important member of our party. He has the swiftest conveyance, but it is not the surest. We will win! We start to-morrow. The race is on!"

As for Dave, he was more than glad at the prospect of meeting Barney at the Pole. He was confident that both expeditions would succeed. The only question in his optimistic young mind was, which would arrive first? If his trying could decide it, the sub would get there first. He and Barney had been chums since boyhood, but they had been keen compet.i.tors in all their play, study and work. Now their wits were once more fairly matched.

"It's the army and the navy!" he exclaimed. "A fair, square race. And may the best one win."

"I might say," remarked the Doctor, "that there is a bountiful prize offered to the first person who next reaches the Pole, and who brings back three witnesses who can make readings of lat.i.tude and longitude to testify to the facts. Should we win, the prize will go to you and the crew."

"I'll go tell them," said Dave, donning his cap. A moment later the Doctor heard cheers which sounded like:

"Rah! Rah! Rah for Doctor! Rah! Rah! Rah for the North Pole!"

The race was on!

Her secret service days over for the present, the "sub" had been given a coat of black paint. Now, as she scudded through the dark waters of Behring Sea, Dave, standing in the conning-tower, thought how much she must resemble a whale. During the war many a leviathan of the deep had met death because he resembled a submarine. Now, in peace times, in this feeding ground of the greatest of all prey, the tables might be turned, the submarine taken for whale.

The race was on. Across Behring Sea they sped through foam-flecked waves and driving mists. Pausing only a day at Nome, they pushed on past Port Clarence, rounded Cape Prince of Wales, and entered boldly into the great unknown, the Arctic Ocean. A million wild fowl, returning to the Southland, shot away over their heads. Here and there they saw little brown seals bob out of the water to stare at them. Once they ran a race with a great white bear, and again they sighted a school of whales. They gave these a wide berth, for should they grow friendly and mix their great flippers with the sub's propeller, trouble would follow. Walrus, too, were avoided, for they had a playful habit of b.u.mping the under-surface of any craft they might chance to meet.

At last, far to the North there appeared a glaring white line. They had reached the ice. Their days of merry sailing on the surface were well-nigh over. From this time on life would be spent in stuffy, steel-lined, electric-lighted compartments. But for all that, it would not be so bad. Openings in the floes would offer them opportunities to rise for a breath of fresh air, and dangers seemed few enough, since the ocean everywhere was deep, and ice-bergs, sinking dangerously to a great depth below the surface, were few. Only the piles of ice and great six-foot-thick pans would make a white roof to the ocean, which was not without its advantage, for here the water would always be delightfully calm.

Shutting off the engines, dropping the funnel, closing the hatch, they sank quickly beneath the water's surface, and were soon pa.s.sing below a marvelous panorama of lights and shadow. Through the thick gla.s.s of the observation windows there flooded tints varying from pale-blue to ultramarine and deep purple. No sunset could vie with the color schemes that kaleidoscoped above them. Here a great pile of ancient ice gave the whole a reddish tinge; and here a broad pan of transparent new ice cast down the deep-blue of the sky; and again a thicker floe admitted a light as mellow as expert decorators could have devised.

"It's wonderful!" murmured the Doctor.

CHAPTER VII

A STRANGE PEOPLE

Ten hours after the start of the submarine, Dave Tower's eye anxiously watched the dial which indicated a rapidly lessening supply of oxygen, while his keenly appraising mind measured time in terms of oxygen supply.

They were still scudding along beneath that continuous kaleidoscopic panorama of green and blue lights and shadows, but no one noticed the beauty of it now. All eyes were strained on the plate-gla.s.s windows above, and they looked but for one thing--a spot, black as night itself, which would mean open water above.

"There it is to starboard!" exclaimed the Doctor. Careful backing and steering to starboard brought merely the disclosure that the Doctor's eye-strain had developed to the point where it produced optical illusions.

The oxygen was all this time dwindling. To avoid further waste of time, Dave told his first mate to close his eyes for three minutes while he kept watch, then to open them and "spell" him at the watch.

"Straight ahead! Quick!" muttered the mate, as the dial hung fluttering at zero.

Seizing a lever here and there, watching this gauge, then that one, Dave sent the craft slanting upward. Like some dark sea monster seeking air, the "sub" shot toward the opening.

And now--now the prow tilted through s.p.a.ce. Another lever and another, and she balanced for a second on the surface. For a second only, then came a crash. Too much eagerness, too great haste, had sent the conning-tower against the solid six-foot floe.

With lips straight and white Dave grasped two levers at once. The craft shot backward. There followed a sickening grind which could only tell of interference with the propeller. Too quick a reverse had sent it against the ice astern. Shutting off all power, Dave allowed her to rise silently to the surface. Then, as silently, one member of the crew opened the hatch and they all filed out.

"Propeller's still there," breathed one of the gobs in relief.

"'Fraid that won't help," said Dave.

"Jarvis," he said, turning to the engineer, "go below and start her up at lowest speed."

In a moment there followed a jangling grind.

The engineer reappeared.

"As I feared, sir," he reported. "It's the shaft, sir. She'll have to go to sh.o.r.e for repairs. Only a hot fire and heavy hammering can fix her.

Can't be done on board or on the ice."

"Ash.o.r.e!" Dave rubbed his forehead, pulled his forelock, and tried to imagine which way land might be after ten hours of travel in the uncharted waters of the great Arctic sea.

"I'll leave it to you, Jarvis," he smiled. "If you can locate land, and show us how to get there across these piles of ice with a disabled submarine, you shall have a medal from the National Geographic Society."

The engineer was not a gob, strictly speaking. He was an old English seaman, who had often sailed the Arctic in a whaler. Now he went below with the words:

"I'll find the nearest land, right enough, me lad; but as to gittin'

there, that's quite another matter."

Thereafter the engineer might be seen from time to time das.h.i.+ng up the hatchway to take an observation, then back to the chart-table, where he examined first this chart, then that one. Some of the charts were new, just from the hands of the hydrographic bureau. These belonged to the craft. Others were soiled and torn; patched here and there, or reinforced by cloth from a discarded s.h.i.+rt. These belonged to Jarvis, himself; had been with him on many a journey and were now most often consulted.

"Near's h'I can make it, sir," he said, at last, "we're some two hundred miles from Point Hope on the Alaska sh.o.r.es and a bit farther from a point on the Russian sh.o.r.e, which the natives call On-na-tak, though what the place is like h'I can't say, never 'aving been there. Far's h'I know, no white man's been there, h'either; leastwise, not in our generation."

He studied the charts and made one further observation:

"Far's h'I can tell, sir," he smiled, "On-na-tak's h'our only chance.

Current sets that way h'at three knots an hour. That means we'll drift there in four or five days. There'll be driftwood on the beach, and, with good luck, we can fix 'er up there. Mayhap there's coal in the banks by the sea, and that's greater luck for us if there is."

The Doctor, who had sat all this time in silence, smoking his black cigars, now rose and began pacing the deck.

"Four or five days? Four or five, did you say? Great Creation! That will mean the losing of the race!"

Jarvis nodded his head.

"H'anything less would mean that and more," said the old engineer. "Going down with such a shaft would mean death to all of us."