"You're wrong, Professor," said Roebach. "This ice is spongy even now—at least, a good deal of it is. We can't make secure footholds in that wall. We're beaten, I tell you—beaten!"
"No. Only balked in one way. There are other means of escape," declared
Professor Henderson.
"I'd be glad to have you tell us what those means are," cried the oil man. "I've racked my brains to think of some other way of getting out. I'm beaten, I tell you!"
"We will not give up so easily," insisted Professor Henderson. "There is no sense in that. We must struggle on. Wait until this fog is dissipated. It will soon rise, for the air is becoming extremely cold and the fog cannot long endure the frost."
They were indeed suffering much from the increasing cold. The change—and so sudden a change—from the tropical heat of the short day to the bitter cold of this ice-gulf was hard to bear.
The fog thinned perceptibly three hours after the sun had set. Meanwhile all but Jack and Washington White had piled up in the cabin for some much-needed sleep. Jack's wounded hand would not let him rest, so he offered to keep watch, while the black man had been reposing most of the time in which Andy and the oil man had dug so strenuously at the cliff.
"Disher proves, Massa Jack, how contrariwise disher world do go," Wash grunted. "Here we starts out ter hunt fo' dat Dr. Todd's chrysomela bypunktater plant, an' we don't find it, but nothin' but trouble—lashin's ob trouble! I'se nigh erbout descouraged ober de perfesser. He suah do lead us all inter sech tribbilations. I done lose heart 'bout him."
"Oh, I wouldn't," said Jack. "The professor can't help it if an old volcano comes along and blows us off the earth. You can't really blame him for that, Wash."
"Well, now," said the darkey, "if he hadn't taken us so far away from home, it wouldn't have happened. We don't nebber have no earfquakes, nor no volcanoes in Maine. It's against de law, I reckon—like sellin' gin. No, sah I disher awful catastriferous conglomeration ob fortituitous happenings dat's put us where we is right now would nebber hab got at us if we'd minded our own business an' stayed to home. No, sah!"
"There may be some truth in what you say—barring your use of the big words, Wash," admitted Jack Darrow. "But we certainly can't blame the old professor for any freaks of Nature that may happen."