But the moment the wolves gave tongue Andy Sudds had started with a whoop for the cache of bear meat. Jack and Phineas Roebach followed with their weapons.
Coming in sight of the slavering pack, as they whined about the open water-hole in the lake, Andy advised his companions as to the situation and they deployed so as to shoot into the pack of wolves without sending their bullets in the direction of the half-drowned Mark.
All using magazine rifles, they were enabled to send such a fusillade into the wolves that the pack was scattered in a few moments. Then they ran on to the edge of the broken ice, finding at least a dozen dead brutes lying about the water-hole.
Jack lay down and reached his gun barrel out to his chum and by its aid Mark got to the edge of the ice and scrambled out of the water. They ran him back to the campfire in short order and then Andy set out to make a second attack upon the wolves, the pack having returned to eat up their comrades.
However, the beasts had already been punished enough. They could not stand before the old hunter, and ran howling down the glacier.
"One thing about it," Andy Sudds said, "we can make up our minds there is an outlet from this field of ice in that direction. To escape we have only to follow the wolf trail."
They were not in shape to travel at once, however. Jack's hand pained him frightfully after his work in helping Mark escape from the water, and Mark, himself had a serious chill before sunrise. Treated by the professor, however, the youth quickly recovered from his plunge into the lake.
But it was decided, nevertheless, to wait over another of the short, torrid days before leaving the trees, for the traveling by night would be much more practicable. So they were leisurely eating another meal of bear steak when the sun touched the horizon with rosy light.
The dawn broke in what Jack termed "record time," and Washington White gave vent to his surprise in characteristic language:
"I done seed de sun rise in eb'ry clime, f'om de Arctic t'rough de tropical to the Antarctic kentries. But de speed wid w'ich disher sun pops up is enough ter tear de bastin 't'reads loose from de Universe—it suah is! I finds mahself," continued Wash, reflectively, "circumnavigatin' ma mind to de eend dat disher 'sperience we is all goin' t'rough is a hallucination ob de brain. In odder words, we is all climbin' trees an' makin' a noise like de nuts wot grows dere. Do you hear me?"