The Second Deluge Part 41

As hour after hour pa.s.sed with no further communication from below the anxiety of the mult.i.tude became almost unbearable. Some declared that the adventurers would never be able to re-attach the bell to the cable, and the fear rapidly spread that they would never be seen again. Captain Arms strove in vain to rea.s.sure the excited pa.s.sengers, but they grew every moment more demoralized, and he was nearly driven out of his senses by the insistent questioning to which he was subjected. It was almost a relief to him when the lookout announced an impending change of weather--although he well new the peril which such a change might bring.

It came on more rapidly than anybody could have antic.i.p.ated. The sky, in the middle of the afternoon, became clouded, the sun was quickly hidden, and a cold blast arose, quickly strengthening into a regular blow. The Ark began to drift as the rising waves a.s.sailed its vast flanks.

"Pay out the cable!" roared Captain Arms through his trumpet.

If he had not been instantly obeyed it is probable that the cable would have been dragged from its precarious fastening below. Then he instantly set the engines at work, and strove to turn the Ark so as to keep it near the point of descent. At first they succeeded very well, but the captain knew that the wind was swiftly increasing in force, and that he could not long continue to hold his place. It was a terrible emergency, but he proved himself equal to it.

"We must float the cable," he shouted to his first a.s.sistant. "Over with the big buoy."

This buoy of levium had been prepared for other possible emergencies. It was flat, presenting little surface to the wind, and when, working with feverish speed, aided by an electric launch, they had attached the cable to it, it sank so low that its place on the sea was indicated only by the short mast, capped with a streamer, which rose above it.

When this work was completed a sigh of relief whistled through Captain Arms's huge whiskers.

"May Davy Jones hold that cable tight!" he exclaimed. "Now for navigating the Ark. If I had my old _Maria Jane_ under my feet I'd defy Boreas himself to blow me away from here--but this whale!"

The wind increased fast, and in spite of every effort the Ark was driven farther and farther toward the southwest, until the captain's telescope no longer showed the least glimpse of the streamer on the buoy. Then night came on, and yet the wind continued to blow. The captain compelled all the pa.s.sengers to go to their rooms. It would be useless to undertake to describe the terror and despair of that night. When the sun rose again the captain found that they had been driven seventy-five miles from the site of New York, and yet, although the sky had now partly cleared, the violence of the wind had not diminished.

Captain Arms had the pa.s.sengers' breakfast served in their rooms, simply sending them word that all would be well in the end. But in his secret heart he doubted if he could find the buoy again. He feared that it would be torn loose with the cable.

About noon the wind lulled, and at last the Ark could be effectively driven in the direction of the buoy. But their progress was slow, and night came on once more. During the hours of darkness the wind ceased entirely, and the sea became calm. With the sunrise the search for the buoy was begun in earnest. The pa.s.sengers were now allowed to go upon some of the decks, and to a.s.semble in the grand saloon, but no interference was permitted with the navigators of the Ark. Never had Captain Arms so fully exhibited his qualities as a seaman.

"We'll find that porpoise if it's still afloat," he declared.

About half after eight o'clock a cry ran through the s.h.i.+p, bringing everybody out on the decks.

The captain had discovered the buoy through his gla.s.s!

It lay away to the nor'ard, about a mile, and as they approached all could see the streamer, hanging down its pole, a red streak in the suns.h.i.+ne.

"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" The Ark echoed with glad cries from stem to stern. A thousand questions were shouted at the captain on his bridge, but he was imperturbable. He only glanced at his watch, and then said, in an undertone, to Joseph Smith, who stood beside him:

"Forty-seven hours and twenty minutes. By the time we can get the cable back on the drum it will be full forty-eight hours since they started, and the air in the bell could be kept in condition no longer than that.

It may take as much as two hours more to draw it up."

"Can you do it so rapidly as that?" asked Smith, his voice trembling.

"I'll do it or bust," returned the captain. "Perhaps they may yet be alive."

Smith turned his eyes upward and clasped his hands. The Ark was put to its utmost speed, and within the time estimated by the captain the cable was once more on the great drum. Before starting it the captain attached the telephone and shouted down. There was no reply.

"Start gently, and then, if she draws, drive for your lubberly lives,"

he said to the men in charge of the big donkey engine.

The moment it began to turn he inspected the indicator.

"Hurrah!" he exclaimed. "She pulls; the bell is attached."

The crowded decks broke into a cheer. In a few minutes the Ark was vibrating with the strokes of the engine. Within five minutes the strong, slender cable was issuing out of the depths at the rate of 250 feet a minute. But there were six miles of it! The engineer controlling the drum shook his head.

"We may break the cable," he said.

"Go on!" shouted Captain Arms. "It's their only chance. Every second of delay means sure death."

Within forty minutes the cable was coming up 300 feet a minute. The speed increased as the bell rose out of the depths. It was just one hour and forty-five minutes after the drum began to revolve when the anxious watchers were thrown into a furore of excitement by the appearance of a s.h.i.+ning blue point deep beneath. It was the bell! Again there broke forth a tempest of cheers.

Rapidly the rising bell grew larger under their eyes, until at last it burst the surface of the sea. The engine had been skillfully slowed at the last moment, and the rescued bell stopped at the level of the deck open to receive it. With mad haste it was drawn aboard and the hermetic door was opened. Those who were near enough glanced inside and turned pale. Tumbled in a heap at the bottom lay the six men, with yellow faces and blank, staring eyes. In an instant they were lifted out and two doctors sprang to the side of each. Were they dead? Could any skill revive them? A hush as of death spread over the great vessel.

They were not dead. The skill of the physicians brought them, one after another, slowly back to consciousness. But it was two full days before they could rise from their beds, and three before they could begin to tell their story--the story of the wonders they had seen, and of the dreadful struggle for breath in the imprisoned bell before they had sunk into unconsciousness. Not a word was ever spoken about the strange outbreak of Blank at the sight of the gold, although the others all recorded it in their notebooks. He himself never referred to it, and it seemed to have faded from his mind.

As soon as it was evident that the rescued men would recover, Captain Arms, acting on his own responsibility, had started the Ark on its westward course. It was a long and tedious journey that they had yet before them, but the monotony was broken by the undying interest in the marvelous story of the adventures of the bell.

Three weeks after they left the vicinity of New York, the observations showed that they must be nearing the eastern border of the Colorado plateau. Then one day a bird alighted on the railing of the bridge, close beside Cosmo and Captain Arms.

"A bird!" cried Cosmo. "But it is incredible that a bird should be here!

How can it ever have kept itself afloat? It surely could not have remained in the air all this time, and it could not have rested on the waves during the downpour from the sky! Its presence here is absolutely miraculous!"

The poor bird, evidently exhausted by a long journey, remained upon the rail, and permitted Cosmo to approach closely before taking flight to another part of the Ark. Cosmo at first thought that it might have escaped from his aviary below.

But close inspection satisfied him that it was of a different species from any that he had taken into the Ark, and the more he thought of the strangeness of its appearance here the greater was his bewilderment.

While he was puzzling over the subject the bird was seen by many of the pa.s.sengers, flitting from one part of the vessel to another, and they were as much astonished as Cosmo had been, and all sorts of conjectures were made to account for the little creature's escape from the flood.

But within an hour or two Cosmo and the captain, who were now much oftener alone upon the bridge than they had been during their pa.s.sage over the eastern continents, had another, and an incomparably greater, surprise.

It was the call of "Land, ho!" from the lookout.

"Land!" exclaimed Cosmo. "Land! How can there be any land?"

Captain Arms was no less incredulous, and he called the lookout down, accused him of having mistaken a sleeping whale for a landfall, and sent another man aloft in his place. But in a few minutes the same call of "Land, ho!" was repeated.

The captain got the bearings of the mysterious object this time, and the Ark was sent for it at her highest speed. It rose steadily out of the water until there could be no possibility of not recognizing it as the top of a mountain.

When it had risen still higher, until its form seemed gigantic against the horizon, Captain Arms, throwing away his tobacco with an emphatic gesture, and striking his palm on the rail, fairly shouted:

"The Pike! By--the old Pike! There she blows!"

"Do you mean Pike's Peak?" demanded Cosmo.

"Do I mean Pike's Peak?" cried the captain, whose excitement had become uncontrollable. "Yes, I mean Pike's Peak, and the deuce to him! Wasn't I born at his foot? Didn't I play ball in the Garden of the G.o.ds? And look at him, Mr. Versal! There he stands! No water-squirting pirate of a nebula could down the old Pike!"

The excitement of everybody else was almost equal to the captain's, when the grand ma.s.s of the mountain, with its characteristic profile, came into view from the promenade-decks.

De Beauxchamps, King Richard, and Amos Blank hurried to the bridge, which they were still privileged to invade, and the two former in particular asked questions faster than they could be answered.

Meanwhile, they were swiftly approaching the mountain.

King Richard seemed to be under the impression that they had completed the circuit of the world ahead of time, and his first remark was to the effect that Mount Everest appeared to be rising faster than they had antic.i.p.ated.

"That's none of your paG.o.das!" exclaimed the captain disdainfully; "that's old Pike; and if you can find a better crown for the world, I'd like to see it."