Spitzbergen—Foyn! Land that guarded the European gateway to the Pole! How mighty was the river of the winds! Caught in its currents, an exploration expedition had been hurled from the American Arctic, across the top of the world, to the polar regions above Europe.
“If the wind carries the drift aright,” Scotty pointed to a distant white height, “we may come near Foyn Island and we may be able to make it to that piece of land by crossing from floe to floe.”
“Foyn—land—uninhabited! This nearest land might be the South Pole, for what good it’ll do us!” thought Lee Renaud bitterly. Why had he forced himself to live? Why hadn’t he let himself go in that first quick, merciful stupor? What if they did ever reach that barren, ice-sheathed island? They might eke out their little store of food to last a few weeks. They might catch seals, shoot a bear—get food for a month, for a year. But in the end starvation, exposure, death must claim these forlorn castaways.
Need to work for another helped Renaud shake off some of the black hopelessness that enveloped him. Granger, who was ill, had to be warmed and fed, and made comfortable as far as was possible on this insecure haven of drifting ice. Cooking a scanty meal, melting snow for water, cutting a crude eye-shade out of wood to protect Granger’s vision from the snow glare—just such homely tasks as these braced Lee Renaud and set him on his feet. Shame for the weakling thoughts in which he had let himself indulge now swept over him. He was young, he had strength. He would keep his courage up. If he had to die—well, he would die. But he would go like a man, master of himself.
Determination and courage seemed to color the pitiless, white frozen waste with some glow of hope. The frozen drift felt solid to the feet, anyway. They were here, and they were alive. Might as well settle themselves in what comfort they could, and hold on to life as long as possible.
Out of the jumbled mass of wreckage, he and Scotty picked such things as might add to the comfort of their Arctic housekeeping.
“Well, here are knives and forks for our banquets.” Scotty Mac held up some aluminum splinters gathered from around the crashed gondola. “With a little twisting and bending, we might convert ’em into fish hooks, if that’d be more to the point.”
“And here’s something we’ll convert into a drinking glass for ice water. My, aren’t we magnificent up here in the Arctic!” Renaud laughingly dug out a glass shade that had once adorned a light in the Nardak’s lost cabin. “Cut glass and very chic! Bet when it made that pleasure trip around the world, it never dreamed it would some day be turned upside down to hold drinking water for a trio of derelicts on an ice island! This felt, from under the engine base, might—might—” What he was going to do with the strip of felt, Lee Renaud failed to say. Something else caught his attention. “Why—why—” the boy gasped, then went to digging into a mass of chocolate and tinfoil wrapping. Something had buried itself down in the very midst of that great bundle of brown sweet.
Lee worked his hands into the mass, then lifted out some tubes, capped in a white metal.
“My radio accumulators!” he shouted. “Thought every fraction of the thing was smashed—but here’s this much, anyway!” He carefully wiped them off, ran his hands over every part, shook them. The liquid within was safe.