On it came from the south. The pilot must have seen them and was heading their way—no, no, he was passing too far to the left. He was missing them!
Like statues, the two on the drift ice stood rooted to their tracks. From within the cabin, Granger’s weak voice called fretfully, wanting to know what the shouting was, what was happening?
Nothing—nothing was happening.
Ah, yes, it was! The ship of the air was coming back, coursing in the sky trails like some trusty hunter on the scent. Ola, it must locate them this time! Wasn’t that the engine slowing, the pilot “cutting the gun” for a swoop to their floe?
But above, and still far away to the left of the three on the great white waste, the pilot in his silver and orange craft kept on his way, unseeing.
After him rose hoarse shouts, that the wind whipped to nothing before they could ever reach him. Somewhere below him, two humans flung up their arms and dropped in the snow. Hope had gone.
CHAPTER XXIII
FIGHTING THROUGH
Radio had brought ships of the air and ships of the sea into the Arctic to search for the lost crew from the great Nardak. Radio must now be the guide to focus the eyes of the searchers upon these dots that were freezing, starving humans on the boundless wastes.
Like one demented, Lee Renaud hung over his crude sending machine, tap-tapping his call into the air. He ate next to nothing, slept only in snatches. He must get in touch with Spitzbergen, with the base ship, the Kravassin, anchored there.
Since that first disappointment, two other planes had circled in and passed on, unseeing. These were two seaplanes, sturdy white-winged biplanes, with black fuselage. They had come that close, near enough for men on the ice to see, yet not to be seen. Frantic efforts to signal from the ice had been all in vain. One plane had hung in the air for an hour’s reconnaissance, then had disappeared in the grim Arctic horizon, flying back toward Spitzbergen.