"It beats me what's happened here since I was across last," muttered
Roebach, scratching his head in bewilderment.
The yawning ice was right beneath the flying machine. It was a hundred yards across at the surface. They seemed to be looking down for five hundred feet, or more, into its greenish depths.
Jack had turned the Snowbird's prow and they were drifting toward the western cliffs which guarded the glacier. Here the rocky heights were at least seven hundred feet above the ice.
Out of a crack in the high wall—from its eyrie without doubt—a huge female eagle suddenly shot down toward the drifting aeroplane. The flying machine seemed not to startle the great bird at all; it only angered her. Perhaps she had young up there in the cliff and she feared her hereditary enemy, Man, was coming on wings to deprive her of them.
With a scream of rage the eagle dashed herself directly into the face of Jack, strapped to the operator's seat. For once Andy Sudds had not his rifle at hand; and, the attack was so unexpected, it is doubtful if he could have come to the rescue in season.
With beak and claws the bird endeavored to tear at the youth's face. Jack jerked loose the transmitter and beat it to pieces over the bird, but without making her desist.
Again and again the feathered creature darted in, claws expanded and beak snapping. With one talon she raked Jack's right arm and shredded the heavy coatsleeve, the sleeve beneath, and scratched his arm. The next instant her iron beak snapped upon his left hand.
Jack Darrow was plucky, but the pain of the wound brought a scream to his lips. It was answered by the wild shrieks of the eagle.
And then, ere any of his friends could reach him (for the professor had gone back to the cabin), the boy, fighting for his sight—indeed, for his very life—by some unfortunate movement depressed the planes. Like an arrow from the bow the Snowbird shot downward into the yawning crevasse which split the glacier from wall to wall. With a yell of terror Mark Sampson sprang forward to the operator's bench. But he was too late—if he could have done any good at all.
The Snowbird swung to one side. Her right forward plane crashed against the wall of ice, shattering some of the hard crystal. But on the rebound the fluttering flying machine sank lower. Jack tried to make her rise. She refused to obey the lever.