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 quantity 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."
They brought him a drink, and he managed to sip a little of it. Then he attempted to sit up. But the effort was too much for him.
"What—what is the matter?" he asked. "I feel so strange. I am dizzy.
Has anything happened?"
"Somebody am a-playin' 'Ring around de Rosy' wid dis airship!" exclaimed
Washington, "My head am a-swimmin' so I can't stand."
"I must get to the conning tower!" muttered the old inventor. "I must get there."
"Let me go, you can never make it," said Jack. "What is it you want to see?"
"Look at the deflecting needle!" was the answer. "See how the needle points and come back and tell me! It may be we are at the north pole!"
Jack started forward, crawling on his hands and knees. Indeed, this was the only way he could advance. The professor watched him with anxious eyes. The ship spun around even faster. Old Andy had awakened and was gazing around with fear-stricken eyes.
Then, just as Jack reached the door of the conning tower, and started inside, the Monarch gave a violent motion. She seemed to stop for a moment, and then, with a great lurch, turned completely over, throwing the occupants to the ceiling. Then she plunged straight down to the earth, through the centre of the whirlwind, like an arrow falling!