ADRIFT ON A FLOE
When Dick and Sandy ran for the edge of the moving floe which was
nearest the shore, they realized what might happen to them should they
fail to jump the widening stretch of water between them and safety. With
the tide going out, they would be carried out into a sea where no ships
sailed, and where they could expect no help from any friendly, inhabited
shores.
The floe which was carrying them off was fully three hundred yards
across, and since they had been tardy in discovering their peril, they
found fate against them. Coming to a sudden stop at the edge of the
floe, they saw, with sinking hearts, that more than a hundred yards of
icy salt water separated them from the floes that still were clinging to
the shore.
“Can’t we swim it?” cried Sandy desperately.
“Never!” Dick returned grimly. “Not with these heavy clothes on. We’d
drown or freeze before we’d gone a third of the distance. Sandy, we’re
trapped!”
It did not take Sandy long to see that Dick was right. Alone, with a
dead seal, upon a large ice floe, each second increased their peril as
they floated farther away from shore. Death by freezing might be their
lot, for without shelter they could not hope to weather a polar storm.
Even if they were fortunate in experiencing mild weather, they would
eventually starve.
In a dejected mood the two boys stood watching the bleak shore line that
now seemed so warm and friendly since they had been cut off from it.
“Do you notice the current is carrying us westward as well as north?”
Dick spoke up presently.
“No, but I can see you’re right,” rejoined Sandy. “But what’s the
difference?”
“If we keep drifting at this angle, we’ll sight our camp and maybe we
can signal Toma.”
Sandy’s face brightened for an instant, then he gave in again to his
former forebodings. “Toma can’t do anything for us,” he said.
“Maybe not right away. At least he’ll know what has happened to us, and
can notify the policemen when they return.”
Sandy realized the wisdom in Dick’s words, and sat down to watch for the
first sign of their camp.
The floe slowly turned as it was carried along with the ocean current,
and the boys were forced to change their position frequently in order to
stay on the side nearest the shore. And since their huge raft was
floating out to sea as well as westward past the camp site, it became a
problem as to whether they would not be too far away to signal Toma when
that moment came.
Tensely they waited. For twenty minutes the floe forged along with its
human cargo before Dick suddenly gave a glad shout. At a distance of
about half a mile, the igloos of their camp appeared, surrounded by the
tiny dark dots which represented the sledges and other dunnage. But
there was no sign of life.
Dick and Sandy pointed their rifles into the air and emptied the
magazines. But the shots brought no figure tumbling out of one of the
far away igloos.
“He’s inside and can’t hear us. If he does he’ll probably think we’re
shooting seals.”
“Let’s fire more shots,” Sandy suggested.
They reloaded and repeated their first salvo, with no better results.
Slowly the igloos grew smaller and smaller as they floated farther out
to sea, and at last they sat down and gave up.
“Well, Toma couldn’t have helped us anyway,” Dick said, trying to make
the best of their misfortune.
“No, but it would make me feel a lot better if I knew someone knew what
had happened to us.”
Dick agreed and fell silent, wracking his brain for a way out. But the
more he thought it over, the more certain he became that they were in
the hands of fate. Nothing but a miracle could save them.
They had not been at sea an hour until a new peril presented itself. The
ice floe upon which they had been marooned was breaking up. Large
segments began cracking away from the main body and floating off by
themselves.
“We must stay together, Sandy,” Dick said, “Suppose one of those cracks
came between us.”
Sandy shivered at the thought and eyed the ice under his feet. Holding
hands, the boys walked to the center of the floe where the ice seemed
the thickest.
The shore was now only a dim line to the south, while around rose and
fell the icy waves of the desolate polar sea. Here and there a berg
wallowed along and occasionally they collided with a slower moving body
of ice. Dick thought of jumping off the floe to one of the bergs, but
changed his mind since the faster moving floe might possibly run into
land while the loggy iceberg would float in almost the same place for
days.
Adding to the danger of their situation, the sky was becoming overcast
by a film of gray clouds and a freezing wind was springing up,
heightening the waves and throwing icy cold spray across the floe.
“We’re in for a storm, Sandy,” Dick said, beating his arms against his
body to keep warm. “It’s up to us to fix up some sort of wind break or
else we can’t stand the cold. Think we can chop some cakes of ice out of
this floe?”
“We sure can try,” responded Sandy, drawing out his sheath knife with
alacrity.
Both boys then set to work industriously and after considerable hard
labor, succeeded in chipping out some good sized chunks of ice. These
they built up in a half circle, rounded against the wind. Against the
wall they flung water with their mittens. The water quickly froze,
cementing the blocks together and forming an effective wind break.
Behind this they hovered while the wind increased in velocity and a
heavy snow began to fall.
They dared not sleep for fear they would freeze before they awoke, and
though the dread drowsiness that is the first symptom of freezing stole
over them again and again, they fought it off grimly. Once both fell
asleep at the same time in spite of all they could do, but the fast
moving floe struck a large berg with a grinding, rending crash and
startled them to the temporary safety of wakefulness. Had it not been
for the wind break they had erected they would undoubtedly have frozen
to death. As it was, they were forced to watch each other, to prevent
sleep coming to both at the same time. Sometimes Dick pounded Sandy
until his eyes opened, and again Sandy beat and shouted at Dick above
the roar of the storm, and the crashing and grinding of ice.
Neither had the least idea where they were being driven to, they had
even lost all sense of direction, every effort bent on keeping a spark
of life burning in their numb bodies.
It seemed to the boys that the battle with the cold would never end,
that they had floated in the storm for hours, when suddenly the floe
came to a jarring stop, and a deluge of ice water rolled across it,
almost washing Dick and Sandy from their position under the wind break.
“I wonder what we’ve hit!” Dick shouted hoarsely.
“It must be a berg,” Sandy cried in reply.
“But we aren’t moving at all,” Dick shouted back.
Believing they might have been washed ashore on some island, the boys
braved the full force of the storm and staggered out of their wind break
to investigate. The snow and spray almost blinded them, but at last they
made out a huge mass of ice upon which the floe had lodged. It rose up
for nearly fifty feet and withstood every charge of the gigantic waves
that crashed against it.
Yet, in the brief period when the wind cleared the air of flying snow,
they could see the swell of waves beyond the ice which was holding them.
“It’s a grounded berg!” Dick shouted at last, and Sandy and he fought
their way back to the welcome shelter of their wind break.
“We must be pretty close to land,” Sandy opined.
“Yes, but there’s no telling how deep the water is here. The berg we’ve
lodged on may extend down into the water for a hundred feet. There’s
always more of a berg under water than there is above. We’ve got to
stick it out until this storm blows over.”
And so they renewed their struggle to fight off the gnawing cold,
cheered somewhat by the probabilities that when the storm blew over they
would see land.
It was two hours later when the wind slackened perceptibly and the snow
ceased to fall. With shouts of joy the boys then saw, about a mile away,
across the dashing waves, a line of black cliffs, streaked with snow.
“Now if we could only find some way to float in on those breakers. But I
don’t see how we could take a chance on a cake of ice. We couldn’t stick
to it a second before we got washed off into the sea.”
“We’ll have to wait till the waves die down,” Sandy said. “If I wasn’t
so weak, maybe we could paddle a chunk of ice then.”
Dick shook his head. “That might do in a story book, but even if we
weren’t just about ready to drop, we couldn’t do that.”
Glumly, they began the wait for the waves to go down, tightening their
belts upon flat and gnawing stomachs. With the ceasing of the storm
their hunger became three times as noticeable. Had the dead seal, which
had first accompanied them on the floe, still been with them, they might
have tackled raw blubber, but the waves had washed the seal into the sea
long before.
Though the wind had fallen, the boys found themselves little more
comfortable, for the temperature began to fall alarmingly. With the
passing of every hour the still air grew colder while the waves quieted
under the iron hand of Jack Frost.
The boys chewed ice to cool their thirsting mouths and partially allay
the great hunger that was swiftly weakening them. They could not judge
the passage of time rationally now, and when Dick awakened from a stupor
that had come upon him in spite of all he could do, he found the water
around them almost as smooth as glass.
Staggering to his feet Dick pulled Sandy to his feet and together they
gazed on a phenomenon of the north that was like a miracle in their
eyes.
The open water, or lead, between the land and the berg on which they had
lodged, was frozen over, and a level walk of thin ice bridged a way to
safety.
“Can we walk on it?” Sandy asked in a hoarse, thick voice.
“I don’t know,” Dick replied through blue lips. “I’ll test it.”
Guiding his weakened legs by force of will alone, Dick cautiously
approached the edge of the floe and placed one foot down on the ice. He
bore his weight, by degrees, on the one foot. The ice cracked a little
and gave downward, then as he placed the last of his weight upon the
ice, it broke through. Dick saved himself from a cold bath that might,
at that time, have meant the finish of him, by falling face downward on
the floe and drawing himself back to safety. He would have given up
then, had not a heart-rending groan from Sandy aroused in him a new
determination. For he could not bear to see his chum lying there, slowly
freezing, when there was an ounce of strength left in him.
Into Dick’s numb senses crept an idea. The snowshoes strapped upon their
backs! If the ice would not hold weight upon the narrow surface of a
boot sole, might it not support them if their weight were distributed
upon the broad rim of snowshoes?
In frantic haste Dick aroused Sandy and shouted his plan into his dazed
chum’s ears. Fumbling fingers then began the slow process of attaching
snowshoes to tingling feet. At last the task was accomplished, and the
boys began shuffling toward the thin ice.
Dick went first, skating as lightly as possible out on the ice. His
heart was in his mouth. Would the ice hold?
The ice sprang downward slightly and tiny cracks spread out all around
Dick, but the ice held.
“Don’t follow my track,” he cried to Sandy, about to leave the floe.
“Start somewhere where the ice hasn’t been strained. We’ve got to hurry.
This salt water may melt at any moment.”
Sandy did as he was told and there began a more perilous half mile of
snowshoeing than the boys ever before had experienced or ever hoped to
experience again.
Faster and faster they skated over the rubbery ice, praying they would
strike no weaker spot, every nerve strained to the utmost in their
fear-driven flight.
Under any other circumstances the boys would surely have fallen
completely exhausted before they finished that terrible half mile of
snowshoeing. But it was life or death, and all the reserve energy in
their strong, young bodies came to the front to carry them through.
One last spurt of speed and they tumbled onto the heaps of solid ice
marking the beach and solid land. Scarcely had they landed when the
water broke through the rapidly melting ice.
Sandy could not raise himself and Dick had just enough strength left to
drag himself to a standing position. His roving eyes fell upon a flock
of eider ducks a little distance away. His stomach crying out for food,
Dick reeled toward the wild fowl, scattering them to right and left. He
found quickly what he was looking for. Eggs!
Pawing into a nest he rolled out three eggs, and without testing them to
see whether they were fresh or not, he cracked the shells and drank down
the life-giving nourishment. Hastily picking up two more eggs, he
stumbled back to Sandy and forced him to suck the raw whites.
Both boys revived by the duck eggs, they waited for the ducks to settle
back to their nests, and shot two of them.
Dick and Sandy ordinarily would have been repelled at the idea of eating
raw flesh, but now nothing seemed sweeter than the warm white meat of
the eider ducks. They ate their fill, like young savages, and found
warmth and strength returning to their half-frozen bodies.
Spirits rising through the effect of the food and their recent
deliverance from the drifting ice floe, the boys were about to start
further inland, when Sandy pointed to a boulder only a hundred feet
away.
“I thought I saw something move over there,” he whispered.
Dick opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. From behind the
boulder arose the head and upper body of an Eskimo—and yet, was it an
Eskimo?
“His skin is white!” Sandy exclaimed.
“It’s the white Eskimo!” Dick echoed.