The silver and orange of the monoplane was lifting above their heads now, but its wireless was pouring out a staccato message that came sliding briskly into the radio base on the drift ice: “Don’t despair. The ice-breaker Kravassin is fighting through to you. By radio connection I can locate you again; can pilot the ice ship on.”
With a zooming roar, the SD-55 was gone. So quickly did the flash of orange and silver disappear into the lowering haze, that it seemed almost a dream that it had ever hovered within hailing distance. Only, here was the food, the clothing, the strange rubber boat, the parachute that had eased them to the ice.
And on the air still seemed to hang the SD-55’s message: “Don’t despair—Kravassin fighting through!”
On the great Russian ice-breaker hung their last hope.
CHAPTER XXIV
ON TO GLORY
The little group huddled close on their piece of drift. In the past hour, winds had swept a huge tableland of frozen white so near that it had verged on riding down the castaways. But instead a veer of the wind had sent it scraping by, and shearing off the whole eastern edge of their domain. A few more such vast, unwelcome visitors and their island would be ground to bits.
Young Renaud, the only one of the three whom exposure had not crippled in some way, had hastily gathered together portions of their supplies in packs that could be strapped to each person. The queer rubber boat was ready for launching though it seemed beyond reason to hope that this frail craft could live for even a moment in that grinding, crashing, ice-strewn sea.
With a sudden hoarse cry, Lee Renaud leaped to his feet, seized the half-blind Scotty by the shoulder. “Quick! Help me lift Granger to the boat! In it yourself! I’ll stand ready to push off if—if what’s coming strikes!”
Whatever the thing was, tornado or waterspout, a crash seemed imminent. Straight toward the piteous group on their drift island, the stormy line of white moved. Tons of ice were hurled up in great masses that crashed back to churn the sea in gigantic geyser spouts of turmoil.
Lee Renaud shivered and closed his eyes. It would soon be the end. God give him strength to meet that end like a man! Shoulders squared, head up, young Renaud stood beneath his wireless aerial with its fluttering bit of flag that was a little piece of America up here in the Farthest North.