“Ah-boom-ah!” It sounded like guns, but it could be only the roar of some glacier avalanche, or an ice peak splitting asunder.
“Ah-boom-ah! Ah-boom!” There it came again, almost at hand.
Puffs of white smoke, fur-jacketed men running, dropping on knee to aim, to fire, leaping up to run on again. These were Goode, Millard, Harrison, and a score of armed men from the dirigible. At their onslaught, the wolf-pack leaped snarling into action, faced the hail of lead for a moment, then fled, leaving their dead behind. The snarling call and hunger wail of a pack cheated of its prey drifted back on the wind.
Numb and stiff in their frost-rimed furs, the cave refugees had to be lifted down from the ice ledges. Hot soup, and many hands to rub up circulation in numb forms soon brought them back to normal.
“How—how’d you ever find us so quick?” asked Renaud. “Radio wouldn’t work—”
“Like thunder, it wouldn’t!” ejaculated Tornado Harrison, whirling on his heel. “Why, your voice came sliding in on that ship’s instrument like greased lightning. Simms tuned in to your voice soon as that buzz signal zipped in. He answered you a dozen times, telling you that help was coming. Didn’t you get that?”
“Got nothing, not a sound, till those guns boomed. They were powerful welcome, though,” Renaud grinned, then sobered down. “Something wrong with my instrument. Next time it might not work even one way. Got to look into that.”
The next few days saw mighty changes at the ice cave. Instead of slinking wolves and flapping owls, it now housed a settlement of humankind. A very modern settlement it was. Man had brought electricity into the wastes of the Arctic,—electricity for heating, for cooking, for running various mechanical devices.
Before the explorers moved into this vast, ready-built, triangular abode, however, some precautionary steps were taken. No telling whether bear as well as wolf had made this a den. Smoke bombs and gas rockets were hurled in to drive out any dangerous inmates. Then when the atmosphere cleared, thorough investigation was made by the light of electric torches. They found themselves in a mammoth shelter. A great opening back into the mountain that must have been full three city blocks deep by a block wide. So high was its pointed ceiling that our National Capitol and a couple of skyscrapers besides could have been housed beneath it.