On a Torn-Away World Part 19

"But the flying machine?" queried Jack. "It seems too bad to let it go."

"We won't let it go, Jack," declared Mark.

"Andy is right, boys," said the professor. "Let us first make our own escape sure. Then, if it be possible, we will hoist the flying machine as well as the instruments and our remaining provisions out of this chasm."

"I'm afraid we'll never be able to hoist the _s...o...b..rd_," said Jack, sadly. "I reckon we'll have to say good-bye to it."

"Don't lose heart," repeated Professor Henderson. "Lead the way, Andy.

Let us try chipping the ice away."

Cold it indeed was down there in the maw of the ice-field; but Wash made some more hot drink and the hunter and the oil man went at the ice-wall with vigor. They chipped out good, wide steps, two feet apart, two working together, and mounting upward steadily. The lightness of their bodies aided not a little in the speed at which they worked.

Before an hour had pa.s.sed they were forty feet above the shelf on which the crippled flying machine rested.

By that time the earth had rolled out of sight and the moon itself had paled into insignificance. There was a bright glow in the sky and the party knew that the sun had risen into view. Deep down as they were in the cavity, they soon felt the difference in the temperature. For several days it had been cold on the earth; but now the sun's heat seemed to strike more directly upon the island in the air.

The wall of ice on the other side of the creva.s.se began to glisten, and soon streams of water were trickling down it, falling with a gentle murmur into the abyss. The workers threw off some of their heavy clothing. The sun's rays began to creep down the other wall, and the ice melted rapidly.

Jack and Mark took the places of Andy Sudds and Mr. Roebach with the hatchets. The ice on this side of the chasm was still cold and brittle, but the sun was mounting very rapidly toward the zenith and the trickling rills upon the opposite wall of the creva.s.se became torrents.

"We are in serious danger," Professor Henderson warned them. "Since being shot off the world, we have begun a course around our parent planet which brings this portion of the island, at least, in much closer juxtaposition to the sun than Alaska ever was before. I fear that the heat will become tropical in due season."

"And this whole glacier will melt?" cried Mark, jumping to that conclusion instantly.

"Not all at once, we will hope," said the professor. "If the length of the day on this island in the air was as long as the earth's day, the sun might melt the ice so rapidly that we would be washed off this wall and drowned in the abyss."

"Gollyation! We's done for den, fo' suah!" groaned Was.h.i.+ngton White.

"But the island will doubtless circle the world in such a way that the sun will only strike upon us directly for a few hours at a time--the entire circuit we make around the world may be of considerable duration; but the sun will s.h.i.+ne directly upon us--at the rate those rays are traveling down that opposite wall--for only a short time. Do you see?"

The boys had resigned their turn at the chopping and returned to the shelf by now. Again Andy and Mr. Roebach were high above their heads, clinging to the slippery wall.

For the ice on this side, while it was in the shade still, was becoming moist. The heat of the day was intense. Down the opposite wall of the creva.s.se tumbled a sheet of water which fairly hid the ice itself.

Occasionally huge blocks of the melting crystal were broken off by the action of the water and fell into the chasm with thunderous crashes.

There was good reason for the party being worried over their situation.

The heat increased and over the edge of the wall they sought to climb the water began to pour. Andy Sudds and the oil man were driven down from their perch. The sun appeared, blazing directly down into the creva.s.se and the melted ice rained in torrents about them, falling upon the _s...o...b..rd_ as though a heavy rainstorm was in progress.

They fled to the roofed cabin to escape this downpour. But they were fearful that at any moment the flying machine, resting so insecurely upon the shelf of ice, would be washed into the depths.

A terrible hour followed. The heat became torrid. The splas.h.i.+ng of the water and thunder of huge pieces of ice falling into the crack almost deafened them.

Just as the sun had crossed the narrow arc above the creva.s.se there came a thunderous roar. Used as they had been for some hours to explosions of sound, this one made all tremble. The ice-wall seemed to crack and stagger from base to summit. The flying machine shook as though it were about to take flight. But they all knew that the only flight it could take was to the bottom of the abyss.

The thunder of falling ice continued for some minutes. A mighty avalanche had fallen into the depths. But whether it had fallen from their side of the creva.s.se or from the other, they could not at the moment tell.

The sun was out of sight. Its rays, however, still played upon the wall above their heads, while from the lower part of the gulf there rose a steam, or fog, which wrapped the flying machine around and smothered all in its embrace.

The light disappeared from above. The heat of the torrid sun departed.

The chill of the fog bit in like a knife. They were glad in an hour to get into their furs, and there remained s.h.i.+vering in the damp, cold fog, while the streams of water which had poured down the ice-wall congealed again into the hardest of crystal.

Roebach and Andy possessed themselves of two storage battery lamps and went cautiously to examine the wall up which they had climbed for more than a hundred feet.

It was now as smooth as gla.s.s!

The wash of the falling water had worn away the ice so that the steps of their ladder had disappeared. The work they had done toward escape had gone for naught.

They were just as much prisoners of the ice now as they had been when first the _s...o...b..rd_ had settled upon this ledge in the creva.s.se.

And now they lost hope. There seemed no possibility of their escaping from the gulf by cutting their way out.

CHAPTER XIX

A NIGHT ATTACK

It was the aged scientist who again put heart in the party when Andy Sudds and Phineas Roebach brought back the report of this catastrophe.

"We must not give up hope," declared Professor Henderson, cheerfully.

"We have lost what work has been done on the ice-wall, it is true. But we can begin again."

"And of what use will that be?" demanded Mark Sampson. "The sun will melt away the ladder again."

"We have many more hours of night here than we have of daylight--you can all see that, eh?" said the professor.

"The sun seemed to s.h.i.+ne on us not more than six hours," admitted Jack.

"Less than that, I believe. The rays were not hot more than four and a half hours. If we begin our work of cutting steps the moment the heat of the short day departs, we will be able, I am convinced, to get to the top of the ice cliff."

"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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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, Ma.s.sa 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--las.h.i.+n'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 fort.i.tuitous 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!"