18
The flurry quickly became a determined snowfall. The beautiful big flakes swirled round them dizzily, all but obscuring the Sphere entirely from view. However, the ice would serve to guide them in case the Sphere became invisible.
Resort to this method of guidance soon was a necessity. It proved to be not so simple as expected; for, as the flakes fell faster and faster, the great cakes of ice were not visible until they were almost upon them, and then they had an awkward habit of appearing only after the adventurers had fallen over them.
Stumbling along, with Professor Palmer keeping pace with difficulty beside him, Robert felt that surely they must have passed the Sphere already. It seemed to him that they had walked two miles or more since they had turned back, and still the Sphere could not be seen. He turned an instant and looked back half expecting to catch a glimpse of it behind. Taggert trudged along a few feet back; the others were strung out two or three yards in the rear.
A minute later Robert heard a muffled cry behind him. He turned just in time to see Taggert fall and slip from view in the blinding snow. Robert took a quick step to the reporter’s aid. The next instant his feet shot from under him and he tobogganed down the slippery incline of ice toward the sea.
One thought reassured him as he felt the smooth surface racing past him: the level, unbroken expanse of ice over the sea would surely stop him when he reached it. But, hard on the heels of this thought, came the realization that, with all sense of direction lost out on the expanse of ice in a blinding snow, he might blunder farther and farther away from the Sphere. He earnestly hoped that the end of his slide would at least bring him close to Taggert.
Presently he reached the bottom of the incline and shot out over the smooth, frozen surface of the sea. Here his momentum was quickly checked. As soon as he could regain his feet he stood up and peered round him. But only the driving snow, which all but obscured his hand before him, rewarded his gaze. He shouted several times, listening intently after each call. The snow seemed to muffle his cries in the making. Nothing was visible round him but a mil of snowflakes. His ears tingled with the bitter cold even under the fur cap he wore. He shouted again, removing his cap to listen afterward.
A faint answering cry floated back to him; but whether this was simply the rebound of his own cry from the dense wall of snow he did not know. As he continued to listen the same faint cry again came to him, this time a bit stronger, seemingly from away to his left. He clapped his cap on and strode off in that direction.
Several times he called out again, stopping to listen each time. Again that faint echo mocked him, but this time it seemed to come from behind. The well-known difficulty of determining the direction from which a sound comes in a fog came to Robert’s mind, and he despaired as he realized the same difficulty in attempting to find a distant call in the falling snow.
Just then the cry sounded again, and this time it was undeniably plainer. Robert shouted in reply and was overjoyed to hear it once more increased in volume. He hurried toward it, shouting and listening alternately.
A moment later Taggert strode from out of the white veil.
“The wandering echo found at last,” Robert greeted him, while they pounded each other on the back in joyous relief.
“Where in Sam Hill are we?” Taggert wanted to know.
“Question is, in which direction is the Sphere?” cried Robert.
“Well put. What’s the answer?”
“Have you any idea from what direction you slid out here?”
“Nope. Have you?”
They stared at each other blankly. Then the ridiculousness of their cross-questioning struck them and they laughed together. For the moment the seriousness of their plight was forgotten. The white flakes swirled about them, settling upon their heads and shoulders till they looked like snow-men.
An idea suddenly occurred to Robert.
“This storm arrived from ahead of us when we were on our way back to the Sphere, didn’t it?” he asked.
“Believe it did,” agreed Taggert.
“Well, then, unless the direction of the wind has changed, we have only to push on at right angles to it, with it blowing on our left, to eventually come upon the shore which we left.”
“Right you are!” exclaimed Taggert, after a moment’s reflection.
So they pushed ahead in the direction indicated for several minutes, making fair progress in spite of the rapidly increasing wind which swept the smooth ice clean, leaving a difficult footing. Each minute they expected to come upon the slope up the shore, where they hoped to find a crevice in the raised cakes which would offer sufficient footing to scramble up the slick incline to the ground beyond. Still the blank wall of driven white revealed nothing but the level floor of ice, ever stretching a few feet ahead of them as they shuffled along.
“Seems as if we should have raised something by this time,” said Taggert presently.
“The wind must have shifted,” said Robert. “If it hasn’t changed much, though, we should reach the shore anyway soon.”
So they continued onward, half blinded by the snow, the bitter wind whipping round their bodies. With each step the hope of reaching the Sphere became weaker. The princess’ anxiety recurred to Robert as he plodded doggedly on ahead of Taggert. He wondered dully whether he should ever see her again. Well, at any rate, she was once more safely within her own country. He was thankful for that much. His reflections were cut short suddenly as he sprawled forward upon the ice, tripping up Taggert, who was following him closely. Caught unawares, Robert fell on all fours, knocking the breath out of him.
“’T’ell!” spluttered Taggert, scrambling up.
As Robert also struggled to his knees he saw that he had tripped over a crevice in the ice. It was the edge of a slightly higher block which sloped upward. The realization came to him suddenly that they had finally reached their first goal!
After some difficulty they managed to clamber up one of the perpendicular cracks between the slippery blocks.
Upon reaching the ground, where the snow had now collected several inches deep, they looked about eagerly but in vain for some sign of the Sphere, or of their erstwhile companions.
“There is nothing for us to do but to plod on against the wind until we reach the point where we left the Sphere,” said Robert. “We should be near where we slipped down before.”
“Lead on,” said Taggert.
Once more they plodded ahead, keeping close to the ice blocks on their left. The now fine snow drove directly into their faces with stinging force, making it almost impossible to keep their eyes open enough to see.
For half an hour they pursued their way painfully. Only the exertion kept them from freezing in the increasing cold. The fierce wind whined about them hungrily, pitilessly, as if eager to make an end of them, while the eddies and drifts of snow round each depression or rock grew steadily deeper and more nearly impossible for them to plow through as their strength waned.
Robert realized that ere this they should certainly have reached the vicinity of the Sphere, but the snow restricted their view to a radius of less than ten feet. Unless they were fortunate enough to run right up on the Sphere, their chances of sighting it were remote. Even now they had lost touch with the border of ice, and, but for the uniform slope of the ground, and the general direction of the wind, would not have known whether they were still following the shore in the original direction or not. They shouted together many times but got no response. The snowfall and howling wind so muffled their cries that they despaired of being heard. Having continued on for some minutes longer they decided finally to go no farther, as they were convinced that they had already passed the point where they had left, the Sphere. A convenient rock, some ten feet high and of about the same breadth, offered temporary shelter.
“If Professor Palmer fired a shot we should hear it here,” Taggert suggested.
“I doubt it,” replied Robert. “This hubbub and the muffling effect of the snowfall might drown a report within a hundred yards.”
Here a startling thought occurred to Robert. What if the Martians took advantage of Professor Palmer’s isolation and made off with the Sphere?
“Why the silence and corrugated brow?” queried Taggert “An idea?”
“An idea, but no good,” Robert responded, forcing a grin.
“Well, you needn’t grin about it. I don’t see anything comical about the prospect of being buried under several tons of snow,” chided Taggert.
The wind had fashioned a sheltered hollow in the lee of the rock where they had taken refuge. The intense cold which prevailed in spite of the heavy snowfall, however, made it imperative that they keep in motion to avoid being frozen. Already Robert recognized a warning feeling of drowziness. He shook himself alert with an effort.
“Can’t sit here,” he said, suiting the action to the word by rising and stamping his feet. Stabbings as of a thousand needles seemed to run through them at first. If only there were some fuel! Matches they had in plenty.
Taggert struck a listening attitude. A familiar humming was faintly audible above the whine of the blizzard!
Together they listened with bated breath as the humming grew plainer. Alas, a few moments later it passed away, and with it went their hopes.
“Missed us,” ejaculated Taggert, with an involuntary oath.
The realization that the Sphere had just passed them by in a vain search for them brought their already drooping spirits to zero for a while. Here had been safety and comfort within perhaps a few rods, and they had been unable to make their presence known. Robert pictured Professor Palmer’s anxious gaze as he peered downward into the veil of flying snow.
“Cheer up, Tag,” Robert admonished, with an attempt at enthusiasm which his feelings belied. “The professor will be doubling back trying to find us. He’ll run up on us yet.”
“Maybe he will—if he doesn’t bounce the old ball into the lake,” replied Taggert, doubtfully. “Say, I wish one of us had brought a ‘gat’ along so that we could signal him if he gets near us again.”
For several minutes they stamped about their cramped shelter, beating their arms round their bodies in an effort to keep up their circulation. As the time slipped by without further sound of the Sphere their hopes dropped still lower. The situation was becoming desperate.
Their dismal reflections were abruptly interrupted by a resumption of the humming sound, heralding the approach of the Sphere again. Both men stiffened, listening intently, the spark of revived hope burning again within their breasts as the fleeting moments passed. Would the Sphere come close enough in this game of blind man’s buff to discover them? Or would it pass them by again, leaving them finally to their doom?
The prospect of freezing to death in the arctic region of a strange planet seemed a dreadful thing. In the heat of battle a man may find death in the midst of wild enthusiasm and patriotism. But here, hemmed in by a wall of beautiful, but deadly, flying flakes, there was no excitement to mask the death awaiting them—only a fearful realization of their fate, millions of miles away from their countrymen—alone! Yet in those fateful moments Robert’s thoughts were mainly of Zola. Would he ever see her again?
With leaping heart he realized that the Sphere was coming closer—closer than before. He strained his eyes as he endeavored to pierce the intangible walls of their vast prison. Ah, what was that dark blur hurtling through the white froth? It was passing them by again. He joined with Taggert in his shouts. Fools, to think their muffled cries could rise above the tumult of the gale and the whir of the Sphere’s machinery, piercing its thick, metal walls!
The fast-fading blur seemed to pause in its flight a moment. But even as they dared to hope, it passed out of sight again. Then quite abruptly it appeared again, this time moving toward them slowly, less than a dozen feet above the ground. The Sphere’s bulging walls plowed through the snow as it swooped down, sending up a great flurry of the fine flakes. Robert caught himself idly likening it to a cannon ball fired into a great bin of flour.
His next recollection was of stumbling up the short flight of metal stairs into the comfortable warmth of the Sphere’s main chamber, aided by Professor Palmer.
The Martians seemed genuinely concerned over their plight, and offered a confusion of advice. Fortunately, neither Robert nor Taggert had suffered any serious damage from their severe buffeting in the elements and were soon quite comfortable.
Robert, unable to shake off a strange feeling that the princess was in danger, and anxious to return to her in all haste, insisted on operating the Sphere again. The big metal ball fairly quivered as he utilized its maximum power to reduce the distance between them and the capital as rapidly as possible.
Exerting the full power of the disk, Robert shot the Sphere upward. Suddenly they emerged from the gray twilight of flying flakes into the sunshine. Beneath them the turbulent mists boiled and tumbled as if with anger over the escape of their prey.
A few minutes later Robert checked the Sphere’s upward flight, darting southward toward the metropolis and his princess at a terrific speed.
Darkness came on quickly after leaving the pole as they passed into the night which had long since enveloped that part of the planet toward which they were headed. Like a cannon ball the Sphere roared southward, the dim topography of the planet swaying dizzily below.
Prevailed upon by Robert, the others had decided to snatch some rest after a light repast. But he felt no fatigue in his anxiety to reach the princess.
The sun’s edge was peeping over the horizon once more as they neared Svergad. The others woke up and watched their approach interestedly. Soon the spires and domes of the northern metropolis appeared in the distance. A few minutes later they were drifting preparatory to landing.
Suddenly one of the Martians gasped.
“The enemy!” he cried, pointing.
All eyes followed his outstretched arm. Thousands of tents dotted the level plain beyond the city’s distant boundary, extending in all directions and partly encircling the city!