CHAPTER XIX
A NIGHT ATTACK
It was the aged scientist who again put heart in the party when Andy
Sudds and Phineas Roebach brought back the report of this catastrophe.
"We must not give up hope," declared Professor Henderson, cheerfully. "We have lost what work has been done on the ice-wall, it is true. But we can begin again."
"And of what use will that be?" demanded Mark Sampson. "The sun will melt away the ladder again."
"We have many more hours of night here than we have of daylight—you can all see that, eh?" said the professor.
"The sun seemed to shine on us not more than six hours," admitted Jack.
"Less than that, I believe. The rays were not hot more than four and a half hours. If we begin our work of cutting steps the moment the heat of the short day departs, we will be able, I am convinced, to get to the top of the ice cliff."
"You're wrong, Professor," said Roebach. "This ice is spongy even now—at least, a good deal of it is. We can't make secure footholds in that wall. We're beaten, I tell you—beaten!"
"No. Only balked in one way. There are other means of escape," declared
Professor Henderson.
"I'd be glad to have you tell us what those means are," cried the oil man. "I've racked my brains to think of some other way of getting out. I'm beaten, I tell you!"
"We will not give up so easily," insisted Professor Henderson. "There is no sense in that. We must struggle on. Wait until this fog is dissipated. It will soon rise, for the air is becoming extremely cold and the fog cannot long endure the frost."
They were indeed suffering much from the increasing cold. The change—and so sudden a change—from the tropical heat of the short day to the bitter cold of this ice-gulf was hard to bear.
The fog thinned perceptibly three hours after the sun had set. Meanwhile all but Jack and Washington White had piled up in the cabin for some much-needed sleep. Jack's wounded hand would not let him rest, so he offered to keep watch, while the black man had been reposing most of the time in which Andy and the oil man had dug so strenuously at the cliff.
"Disher proves, Massa Jack, how contrariwise disher world do go," Wash grunted. "Here we starts out ter hunt fo' dat Dr. Todd's chrysomela bypunktater plant, an' we don't find it, but nothin' but trouble—lashin's ob trouble! I'se nigh erbout descouraged ober de perfesser. He suah do lead us all inter sech tribbilations. I done lose heart 'bout him."
"Oh, I wouldn't," said Jack. "The professor can't help it if an old volcano comes along and blows us off the earth. You can't really blame him for that, Wash."
"Well, now," said the darkey, "if he hadn't taken us so far away from home, it wouldn't have happened. We don't nebber have no earfquakes, nor no volcanoes in Maine. It's against de law, I reckon—like sellin' gin. No, sah I disher awful catastriferous conglomeration ob fortituitous happenings dat's put us where we is right now would nebber hab got at us if we'd minded our own business an' stayed to home. No, sah!"
"There may be some truth in what you say—barring your use of the big words, Wash," admitted Jack Darrow. "But we certainly can't blame the old professor for any freaks of Nature that may happen."
"No. But I hasn't gotter encourage him in disher foolishness ob runnin' up an' down de world, huntin' fo' new t'ings. I don't like new t'ings," declared Wash. "Looked disher now! Whoeber said Washington White wanted ter transmogrify hissef to a new planet? Nobody, not dat I hears on."
"I reckon we none of us had much choice in the matter," returned Jack, with a sigh.
"Glory! Dar's dat moon again!" cried Wash, suddenly.
"No; it's the earth in sight," returned his youthful companion. "The mist is being dissipated, just as the professor said. Let's go out and look about."
"We done wanter be mighty careful walkin' on dis ice," admonished the darkey. "It jest as slippery as it kin be."
Which was true enough, as Jack found the moment he stepped down upon the shelf from the flying machine frame. Where the ice had melted and then its surface had congealed again, it was as smooth as a mirror. The reflected light from the huge globe that now began to traverse the small arc of their heaven gave them plenty of light. They could see down into the green depths of the crevasse, but not far along the shelf on which the Snowbird rested, in either the one direction or the other.
"Whar you goin', Massa Jack?" demanded Wash, as the boy started away from the flying machine toward the nearest wall of rock that shut in the glacier. "I want to see what lies beyond that turn," replied the youth. "Perhaps we may learn something to our advantage by exploring a bit."
Washington White followed him very cautiously. Before he came to the turn himself, Jack had rounded it. The next moment the darkey was startled by a yell from Jack.
"Fo' de goodness gracious gollyation sakes!" bawled Wash. "What done gone an' disturbed de continuity ob your sagastuations? Yo' done frighten me inter a conniption fit if yo' hollers dat way."
Here he rounded the turn himself and almost bumped into Jack. Even the darkey's volubility was stilled at the sight before them.
A great part of the wall of the crevasse—the wall which they had hoped to climb, had broken off and fallen into the gulf. A wide crack, or gully, was opened in this side of the chasm, leading in an easy slope to the surface of the glacier.
Although their attempt to reach the surface had been foiled, here was a way which the sun, melting the ice and causing a great avalanche, had made for them. It was plain that all could easily mount to the top by this sloping gulch.
Jack dashed back to announce the discovery and Wash came after him, intent upon seeing that Buttsy was carried, in his well wrapped-up coop, out of the crevasse. The youth awoke his friends instantly and in ten minutes all had taken a look at the way of escape and preparations were at once made for departure from the flying machine.
Everybody save the professor was laden with stores or instruments, or extra clothing and blankets, as they filed away from the crippled Snowbird. The two youthful inventors and builders of the flying machine bade good-bye to her with full hearts. It was not a certainty that they could recover the flying machine, and Jack and Mark felt pretty bad about it.
The first thought of all, however, was centered in standing once more upon the surface of the glacier. The fact that the upper part of the ice field might move at any time, and the crevasse be closed while they were held in it, had troubled them all.
In half an hour, however, all that danger was past. Other perils might immediately face them; but the chance of being snapped between the jaws of ice was no more to be feared.
The golden ball of the earth, around which the island in the air was following its orbit, gave them plenty of light as yet, for the sun was still in such a position that its light was reflected from the earth upon the fast-traveling island in the sky.
The party, shaking with cold now, for the night was really arctic in temperature, made for the nearest morainial deposit where trees grew, under the shelter of the cliff which rose so high above the face of the glacier. As the river of ice had pushed its way downward during the past ages, it had scraped earth and stones from the walls of its bed, and this deposit, falling on the ice, had given root to trees and shrubs, while grass had sprung up and birds had doubtless nested there.
"They are like the oases in the desert," Mark said.
"They will afford us shelter and firewood," the professor added.
And in short order they were encamped in a clump of fir trees with a huge fire of dry branches burning before them, its warmth diffused over the whole party.
This grove of sturdy trees was backed close against the base of the cliff, and the rocky wall was sheer, mounting at least eight hundred feet above their heads.
"I suppose no life could exist higher than this cliff, eh, Professor?" Jack Darrow asked, as they became comfortable in the fire's warmth and threw back their fur wraps.
"I am not sure of that, Jack," returned the scientist. "From our experience in the Snowbird, since the eruption that threw us off into space, and while on the higher levels of air, we cannot doubt that at a thousand feet above this ice, at least, animal life would become extinct."
"I reckon there isn't much animal life left in these parts now, at any rate," Andy Sudds said. "I don't see what we're going to do if something doesn't turn up for food. We're going to be on short commons."
Wash had set his "bird cage," as the oil man called the Shanghai's coop, within the warmth of the fire, and the rooster evidently felt the grateful glow of the flames. He had been picking up some corn that Wash flung him, grain by grain. Now he suddenly stopped, raised his head, and uttered a loud and apparently frightened squawk.
"What dat?" demanded the darkey, his eyes rolling. "Buttsy hear sumpin'—he suah do."
"What do you reckon he hears?" queried Jack, idly.
"I dunno dat. But he's some disturbed—yo' kin see it's so," returned
Washington, nervously. "Does yo' hear anything yit?"
"You think he can smell out an enemy, do you?" chuckled Jack.
"He done gotter great head, Buttsy has," declared the black man. "If dere is anyt'ing prowlin' aroun' permiscuous like, he's de boy to hear 'em—yes, sah!" "By the same token it was a flock of geese that saved Rome," Mark said.
Wash had his back to the thick clump of firs. Jack was facing him.
Suddenly the boy, raising his eyes to look across the fire at the
darkey, beheld a huge black object rise out of the brush directly in
Washington's rear.
One glance told Jack what the creature was. There was no mistaking the gleaming eyes, the pointed, slobbering muzzle, and the hairy, yellowish breast of the gigantic Kodiak bear as it poised its huge body over the unconscious darkey.
Like a ghost the bear had crept to the camp of the explorers and was now on the eve of an attack, totally unheralded!