“Put radios on the rescue planes. Put radios on the rescue planes, short-wave, telegraphic type. Sending station F-O-Y-N on the drift ice can then communicate direct and give signals to bring the planes to the refugees. S. O. S. to the world! Help! Relay the word to Spitzbergen. F-O-Y-N can’t make the touch to its nearest station.” Thus, hour after hour, Renaud sent his call.
For forty hours now, there had been no radio connection between the refugee camp and the rest of the world. Atmospheric disturbances, most likely,—a storm brewing and rolling up interference between the makeshift station and the stations of a listening world! The snow haze was creeping over the horizon, forerunner of evil weather. And out in the water lanes, dark forms rose now and again with a swish and a puff, rolled to blow, and sank again. Killer whales come back, like under-sea vultures, to await what storm and death might fling to them.
On and on went Renaud with his tapping. There was nothing else to do. Answer or no answer, his fingers kept doggedly to their task. Tap—listen—tap—and the snow haze closing down.
Then through the dimness to the southwest, a puff of smoke rose slim and tall, and then spread out on the damp air in a long wavering line. Another smoke puff, closer this time! Smoke bombs! Signals dropped from a plane! With a sudden chitter-chatter that sent his heart pounding up into his very throat for joy, Renaud’s little radio picked up a call out of the near air. The plane—it was sending the radio call! It was carrying a wireless set, as Renaud had pleaded!
With flying fingers, Renaud tapped out his location. “Here—to the east of the smoke bomb! More to the east! Now to the north!”
On came the plane. It was so easy now, with connection between ground and air. The plane was the splendid silver and orange monoplane that had searched in vain for them a day ago. Now it swept in a direct line above them, flew low over the ice pack—lower, lower, but did not land.
“Major Ravoia in the SD-55. No chance to land. Break of the ice would sink us all.” It was a message that sent Renaud reeling across his machine.
But if the SD-55 could not land, something else could. From over the edge of the plane, as it hovered low, an object was dropped. This fell free for a space, then fluttered open into a parachute to which was attached a large box. As gently as a hand setting a fragile glass on a table, the broad, inverted chalice of the parachute let its weight down and down till it eased against the ice.
Renaud had raised his head to watch. Now he went across the ice to the box with its draping of collapsed parachute. With a piece of metal he beat open the top—began lifting out the contents. It was enough to stir the heart of any half-starved marooner—food, clothing, snow glasses, bandages and medicines, rifles and ammunition and a collapsible rubber boat.
“Dry clothing! Something to eat! Medicine for your eyes!” he called out huskily to poor Scotty, who, scarce seeing at all now, came wavering across the snow slush.