"See wot yo' done done!" wailed Washington White, rising gingerly and with a hand upon the small of his back. "Yo' come near ter spilein' Perfesser Henderson's most impo'tant assistant. How do you 'speck de perfesser c'd git erlong widout me?"
This was certainly an unanswerable question, and the boys admitted it. They were sorry Wash had been so badly frightened, but they were delighted at the possession of the tusks of the walrus. The whalers secured the body, too, and made a very good quality of oil out of the blubber.
In hunting adventures, and in the labor of trying-out the whale blubber, several weeks passed. The marooned scientist and his friends, with the crew of the whale ship, experienced some bad weather during this time. For three entire days a terrible snowstorm raged—a blizzard that drifted the snow about the Orion (which had chanced, when she was stranded, to settle on a perfectly even keel) until one could walk over her rail out upon the bottom of the sea.
But when this storm passed over the sun came out and shone as tropically as ever. The snow melted very rapidly and the old sea bed was soon awash. The beasts and fish still alive in the sinks were enabled to reach the streams running out of the various mouths of the Coleville, and these creatures took to deep water.
"By Jo!" ejaculated Captain Sproul, "give us a leetle more water and we'd sail the old Orion after them, and reach the open sea again."
He had every belief that the ocean would return to its former bed, and his crew believed it, too. But Professor Henderson and the boys seriously discussed making some move from this locality.
It was plain that there was still plenty of game 'along the shore of the old ocean, and they had about made up their mind to follow the edge of the shore toward Bering Sea and if possible find the revenue cutter Bear, when another storm broke over them. No snow fell this time. There was almost continual thunder and a downpour of rain and hail that was sufficient to smother anybody that ventured out upon the deck of the Orion. The new planet seemed to be in the throes of another eruption, too.
Lightning lit the waste about them with intermittent flashes. They had lost sight entirely of the old earth, of the moon, and of the sun. It seemed to Jack and Mark as though this tiny island in the air must be flying through space again, buffeted by every element.
The wind wailed and screamed about the whaleship. There were more than sixty souls aboard and they crouched in the cabin and in the forecastle and knew not what to make of such a foray of the elements. At one moment the rain flooded down upon the decks as though a cloud had burst directly above them; then great hailstones fell, drumming on the planks like musket balls.
The calmest person among them all was Professor Henderson. Captain Sproul had given the aged scientist the use of the small chart-room. There he had set up certain of his instruments, and he hovered over these most of his waking hours, making innumerable calculations from time to time. During the awful turmoil of the elements he watched his instruments without sleep. The boys remained with him most of the time, for they realized that some catastrophe was threatening which the scientist feared but did not wish to explain at once.