THE MAMMOTH.
Leaving the boat in the professor’s care, Frank rushed out on deck, and
peering over at the ground, he saw that it was sinking down beneath the
weight of the boat.
The ice covering had given way, exposing a muddy marsh, up from which a
terrible stench was rising.
The smell came from the rotting carcase of a huge mammoth lying buried
in the mud.
It was the animal which Vaneyke was hunting for.
This creature had probably stepped into the marsh centuries before, and
sinking into the mire, was buried alive.
It had been preserved by the swamp freezing around it, and thus would
have kept for an indefinite period, had not a thaw set in which rapidly
decomposed the enormous body.
Exposed to Frank’s view was an elephantine head, covered with dry,
dark-gray skin, furnished with tufts of hairs, the neck was covered with
a long flowing mane, and a reddish wool grew all over the exposed parts.
The long, curved tusks were ten feet in length.
“What a stench! It is awful!” he muttered, holding his nose. “The mud
has hold of the wheels and runners.”
Having seen how the Ranger was held. Frank dashed inside, and telling
the professor what he had seen, he pulled the levers controlling the
side wheels and driving screw.
As they began slowly to revolve, the mud flew up from them in showers,
and the runners having been thus cleared, the ascensional force of the
gyroscopes lifted the ship up.
She freed herself this way and rose a few feet, then darted away.
Then Frank stopped her machinery.
The professor had gone outside.
He viewed what little there was of the carcase on the surface, and going
back again, he said to Frank:
“We can’t do anything with that object in the state it is in now.”
“What do you propose to do?”
“Only carry away the skeleton.”
“Strip it of that rotten flesh?”
“No; we can let the scavengers of this neighborhood do that for us.”
“How do you mean, doctor?”
“Blow the mud away from around that body so as to leave it exposed. The
odor will attract the foxes and the wolves here. They will devour the
flesh, picking the bones dry.”
“If they eat all the rotten meat,” said Frank, “as there are tons upon
tons of it, there will be enough for an army.”
“As the food here is very scarce,” replied the old scientist, “the wild
beasts are ravenous, and as there are vast numbers of them, they will
soon get away with it.”
“We might try the experiment, anyway.”
“How shall I go about it, Frank?”
“I’ll attend to it. You keep the ship over the marsh.”
Frank went to the storeroom as he spoke, and procured two fifty-pound
bombshells, to each of which he fastened a wire.
Taking them out on deck, he let them drop one after the other down into
the mud, on each side of the mammoth.
They sunk deeply by their own weight, coming from a height, and the
other ends of the electric wires remained in Frank’s hand.
“Raise the ice ship a hundred feet!” he sang out.
Dr. Vaneyke complied, there being plenty slack wire attached to the
bombs.
Then Frank handed him the ends of the wire, and said:
“In a minute you can touch them to the battery binding-post.”
“All right,” said the professor, with a nod, and Frank went out again.
Peering down, he saw that they were at a safe distance from the place
where the shells would explode.
“When the ordinary gun-powder shell is fired on the battlefield,” he
muttered, “if it explodes in front of a man, he will get killed, while
if it bursts behind him, the man will not be injured, for the force is
all thrown forward. Now, in this case, as the shells will be burst from
the upper side, the force will be downward, and that will throw the mud
up, I think.”
But just here the professor touched the wires to the battery, a current
passed down to the shells, and they exploded.
A smothered roar was heard, and a tremendous mass of mud was blown so
high in the air that some of it spattered the upper part of the flying
ice ship.
When it subsided Frank looked down and saw that a huge pit had been rent
in the marsh, and in the middle of it laid the body of an enormous
mammoth.
The carcase was somewhat mutilated by the shells, but none of the limbs
had been torn off.
A mass of black, muddy water ran back into the holes from the ground and
settled around the body of the mammoth.
“Well,” asked the professor, “what luck?”
“The body is exposed. Come out here,” said Frank, as he wound in the
wire with which the shells were burst.
Dr. Vaneyke complied, and was well satisfied.
After a short survey, he said:
“We’ll soon have that skeleton. Wait here awhile, and you will see for
yourself.”
Over an hour passed by.
Then a dismal howling began.
It was repeated from different quarters.
They soon saw wolves and foxes swarming from every direction toward the
body of the mammoth.
A horrible scene followed.
The wolves fought the foxes to keep them away from the carcase, and
began to tear the mammoth to pieces.
Dozens, hundreds, thousands came from all points of the compass, and a
frightful struggle went on amid snarls and yells, and the flesh was torn
from the mammoth’s body rapidly.
“There’s no use remaining here any longer,” said Frank, “for it will
take several days to finish devouring all that putrid meat. Let us
leave. We can return and gather up the bones.”
“Where do you intend to go?”
“In search of the Red Eric.”
“Very well.”
Barney and Pomp had come out on deck, and it was decided to send the ice
ship down over the Archangel Sea, there to wait and watch for the
whaler, no objection being raised.
It was getting so uncomfortably cold out on deck that our friends were
glad to go inside again.
The boat was steered away to the southward.
They spent a week in the frozen sky, searching for some trace of the
whaler, but failed to see her.
Far in the north the ocean was frozen up and covered with drift ice
which the currents carried to the southward.
But the warm current of the Gulf Stream kept the Russian shore-water
clear enough for any ships to pass on to Nova Zembla, so they expected
to see the Red Eric come along any moment.
Every day that went by the weather grew colder.
Terrible hail storms, blinding snow falls and fierce tempests were now
of daily occurrence.
The thermometer mercury sank below zero, and the icy particles in the
frozen sky became so dense that at times it formed a mist which they
could not see through.
Indeed, it was dangerous to go out in it.
These fine needles attacked their skins so fiercely that it made their
faces bleed and threatened to destroy their sight.
The moon looked like a big, crooked ball of fire, the aurora borealis
played in beautiful colors in the northern sky, and the short days grew
shorter still.
A suspicion that the whaler was not going to the Kara Sea now began to
dawn upon Frank’s mind.
One morning he said to Dr. Vaneyke:
“I fear we have had our journey here for nothing.”
“Nonsense!” replied the professor. “Isn’t it something to get the bones
of that mammoth, Frank?”
“Of little consequence to me in view of the more important work I have
on hand,” the inventor replied. “By this time the bones must be picked
clean.”
“Then suppose we go back and gather them up.”
“I have no objections.”
Just then Barney called down from the turret:
“Sail ho! Sail ho!”
“Where away?” cried Frank, running up-stairs.
“Beyant ter ther northaist. But it isn’t ther Red Eric.”
“How do you know?”
“Onless me eyes decaive me it’s ther ship Sally Ann.”
Frank now saw the ship.
She was a whaler, cruising along below them.
Barney was right. It was not the Red Eric.
“But perhaps the crew might know about the latter vessel,” thought
Frank, and he said aloud: “Descend, until I speak to her captain.”
While Barney lowered the ice ship, Frank went out on deck.
They were soon hovering over the vessel, and he addressed her crew,
telling them what the Ranger was, and asking about the Red Eric.
“See her?” repeated the captain. “Of course I did. I was in her company
several days. She is up in the North now.”
“Where am I to find her?” eagerly asked Frank.
“She came up from Boston nearly a week ago, and has gone into winter
quarters in Nordenskjold bay.”
“Does she intend to remain there?”
“Yes—until spring.”
Frank spoke at some length further.
Then he bade the captain adieu, and said to the professor:
“Start back for Tchekin bay, and we’ll get the mammoth’s bones. After
that, in order to approach the Red Eric unseen, we will go toward her
quarters overland.”
“Good!” cried the scientist. “We may save the boy yet.”
The air ship flew back to Nova Zembla, and headed for the marsh where
the mammoth’s body had been.
When they reached the place they found nothing but the animal’s
skeleton, and took it aboard.
Then they started off to find Ben Bolt’s ship.