Put to the severest sort of test, the Winged Arrow was making good. How proud his father would be when he told him of this jump-off from the bottom of the cleft in the huge iceberg! And Mary! Aside from the exploration party finding and rescuing her father, Tom knew that Mary Nestor would comprehend the feelings of the inventor of the flying boat which had made this success possible.
On a short slant skyward, the plane rose higher and higher. The long Arctic day was just ended, the sun had dropped below the horizon’s edge, and a number of pale stars were showing in the vault above.
The flying boat scaled the heights of the ice cliffs and finally poised over the deep cleft in which they had spent so many uncertain hours. Tom believed that his task here was done. He meant to fly now to Iceland, as he had promised Captain Karofsen, and leave the schooner captain and his men at some handy port.
The young inventor had no intention of being entangled in any plot engendered by the Russian Government or its agents. Let all that be explained from America. He was sure that Monsieur Polansky had never obtained his credentials from the Navy Department by fair means and that there would be no real trouble awaiting him when he got back to Shopton.
He smiled upon Ned, who stood beside him, and began to wheel the flying boat till her nose pointed to the east. Somewhere in that direction—so far away that he could not see it—lay Iceland.
“What is that?” demanded Mr. Wakefield Damon suddenly. “Look at that smoke. Why, you’d think that ice mountain was a crater of a volcano! Bless my smokepipes! it is the equal of old Mount Hekla.”
The phenomenon to which Mr. Damon pointed startled them all. A spiral of smoke seemed to be rising, as he said, out of the higher pinnacle of ice. The Winged Arrow was circling that peak. How was it possible for smoke to come out of a hole in the ice when, as far as they knew, there was no living human being on the berg they were leaving?
“Let’s get around to the other side,” cried Ned. “Goodness me! maybe there are other folks cast away here.”
“It nefer is dem?” questioned Captain Olaf Karofsen excitedly.
Tom changed the controls. The great flying boat heeled over a little as her nose drove into the wind. As she passed out from the shelter of the pinnacle of ice the power of the gale smote upon the seaplane as it had not before. The wind howled and whistled.