THE WONDERFUL LEAP
Unlike the former trembling of the earth, this experience gave no
immediate promise of cessation. The world rocked on in awful throes--as
though it really was, as the black man feared, the end of all material
things. Jack and Mark rolled upon the ground in the grove of huge
trees, clinging to each other's hands, but unable to rise, or to find
their two comrades.
A rising thunder of sound accompanied this manifestation, too. And,
after some stricken minutes, the boys realized that it was thunder.
With the earthquake and the storm of volcanic ashes, came an electric
disturbance of the atmosphere, the like of which neither of the boys
had ever dreamed. They had felt the "itch" of the electric current
just before the 'quake. Now the hair on their heads rose stiffly like
that on the back of an angry cat, and when Jack and Mark chanced to
separate for a moment, and each put out their hands to seize the other,
the darkness under the trees was vividly shot through for an instant
with the sparks which flew from their fingers.
Washington White began to bawl terrifically at this display of
"fireworks," as he called it.
His lamentations were well nigh drowned by the rolling thunder. This
latter did not sound in ordinary explosions, or "claps," but traveled
in rapidly repeated echoes across the skies. The thick cloud of ashes
which obscured the sun and the whole sky was cut through occasionally
by a sword of lightning; but mostly the electricity showed itself in
a recurrent, throbbing glow upon the northern horizon, not unlike some
manifestations of the Aurora Borealis.
But even this uncertain--almost terrifying--light was of aid to the
boys; Jack, at least, remembered very clearly the way to the wrecked
flying machine, and of course the old hunter was not likely to lose
his way in as black a night as ever was made.
They struggled on between the intervals of pitch darkness, for the
trembling of the earth had again ceased. The visitation had been much
heavier than they had previously suffered.
"The best thing we can do," muttered Mark in Jack's ear, "is to fix
up the _Snowbird_ and beat it away from here just as fast as we
can. This is altogether too strenuous a place for us, believe me!" "If
we only _can_!" responded Jack, secretly as worried as his chum.
"This is a pretty fierce proposition, Mark. Just think of our bonny
_Snowbird_ wrecked on her first voyage! It's mighty hard; eh, chum?"
But the duty before the two boys just then was to find the wrecked
'plane and see what could be done with it. The thunder continued to
mutter and the intermittent flashes of electricity helped them somewhat
in finding the way to the spot where the _Snowbird_ had made her
final landing. But the fall of volcanic ash continued and the darkness,
between the lightning flashes, remained as smothering as before.
They reached the spot, however--seemingly a small plateau on which the
huge trees did not encroach, giving them plenty of space for a flight
if they were fortunate enough to get the _Snowbird_ in condition
for such an attempt.
There were both electric lamps and lanterns in the machine and Mark
sent Washington White to light every one while he and Jack went over
the wrenched mechanism. Andy Sudds stood guard with his rifle, or ready
to lend a hand should the boys need him.
The storm in the clutch of which the flying machine had traveled so
many hundred miles had wrenched her not a little. And the two landings
she had made on the mountainside had done her no particular good. There
was a broken plane, any number of wires to splice, and bent rods
innumerable.
These were the more apparent injuries. But the more delicate machinery
of the _Snowbird_ required a thorough overhauling. It was absolutely
necessary for them to have the use of a forge, and Jack had already
learned that such an article was among the oil hunter's possessions at
his camp.
They were a solid three hours putting to rights the machine and
correcting the damage done to her smaller parts. Then, with several
rods to be straightened and the light framework of the broken plane,
that must be put in the fire for a bit, the party started down the
mountain to Phineas Roebach's camp.
The four had left the plateau where the _Snowbird_ lay and were just
descending into the forest, carrying two storage battery lamps with
which the easier to find their way.
There was no preliminary trembling of the earth or the air. There was
an unheralded clap of sound--a sharp detonation that almost burst their
ear-drums.
They did not fall to the ground; the earth, instead, seemed actually
to rise and smite them!
A cataract of sound followed, that completely overwhelmed them. They
realized that the huge trees were swaying and writhing as though a
sudden storm-breath had blown upon them. Had a tornado swept through
this wood no greater danger could have menaced them. Trees about them
were uprooted; many bent to the earth; some snapped off short at the
ground--great boles two and three feet through!
Jack and Mark, with Andy Sudds and the terrified Wash, would have been
destroyed within the first few seconds of this awful upheaval had it
not been for a single fortunate circumstance. When the cataclysm was
inaugurated the first shock drove the four into a sort of hollow walled
about with solid rock. Upon this hollow fell the first huge tree trunk
of the flying forest--and it sheltered them instead of crushing them
to death.
The four had but small appreciation of this--of either their temporary
safety, or the perils that menaced them. Suddenly the thick air seemed
to stifle them. They could neither breathe nor see. The lamps had been
lost when they were flung--like dice in a box--into the rock-sheltered
hollow.
As the huge tree fell across their harbor of refuge, they all lost
consciousness.
What happened during the next few minutes--perhaps it was a quarter
of an hour--none of the little party of adventurers ever knew. It was
Jack who first aroused.
The whole world seemed still shrouded in pitch darkness. But he could
breathe without difficulty and he sprang to his feet with a peculiar
feeling of lightness as he did so.
But then he stumbled over Mark, and his chum came up, too, ejaculating:
"What is it, Jack? What is the matter now?"
"You can search me!" responded the other boy. "If this sort of business
keeps on I shall wish, with Wash, that we'd never come to Alaska."
"You can wish it with me!" grumbled Mark. "Washington doesn't want to
get back to Maine any more than I do right now, Jack."
"We must complete the repairing of the _Snowbird_," gasped Jack.
"And where are the rods--and the plane frame? And where are the lights?"
They held on to each other in the darkness of this over-shadowed hollow
and neither boy was willing to speak for a moment. Then Andy Sudds
staggered to them.
"I've lost my gun!" he ejaculated, with a quaver in his voice that was
quite surprising.
"And we've lost our lamps; but we'll find 'em, Andy," said Jack Darrow,
curiously enough becoming leader of the expedition right then, instead
of the man. It wasn't that the old hunter was frightened; merely, he
did not know what to do in this emergency.
"Do you notice--?" began Jack, seriously, and then stopped.
"Do I notice what, son?" responded Andy.
"I don't see how you can notice anything without a light," interrupted
Mark querulously.
This statement seemed to arouse Jack's faculties completely. He did
not continue his remark, but said:
"That's our first job; isn't it?"
"What's our first job?" asked the hunter.
"To get a light. We can't find the flying machine, nor get back to
Roebach's camp, without light. Why, it can't be more than mid-afternoon,
yet it's as dark as a stack of black cats in a coal-chute."
"And that's where I feel as though I'd been," declared Mark.
"Where?"
"Fighting the cats in the coal-hole. Ouch! I'm lame and sore all over."
"We're sure up against it," repeated Andy. "But there must be some way
out, boys."
"Light is the first requisite," agreed Jack, more cheerfully. "Got any
matches, Andy?"
"Plenty of 'em in a corked flask. I don't ever travel without matches,
son," returned the old hunter.
"But matches won't show us the way to Roebach's camp," complained Mark.
"Don't croak, old boy," advised Jack. "Let's have that bottle of
cosmolene I saw you tuck in your pocket there at the _Snowbird_."
"I was taking that to the professor. He said he would want it," said
Mark. "What's it good for?"
"You'll come pretty near seeing in a minute, Mark," returned the
quick-thinking Jack. "Here, Andy! let me have that woolen scarf you
wear. You'll have to say good-bye to it--bid it a fond farewell."
"I'm sort of friendly to that scarf, youngster," said the hunter.
"What's to be done to it?"
"It's going to become a lamp wick right here and now," declared young
Darrow, promptly. "So! I've got the cosmolene smeared on it already.
There! that's the last of it. Now a match, Andy."
"Joshua!" grumbled the hunter. "It _is_ good-bye, I guess!" The match
flared up. Jack touched it to the greasy woolen cloth. It began to burn
brightly and steadily at once.
"Now, you all hunt around for the things we dropped. If we can find
them we'll push out right away for the camp and the professor. You
know he'll be worried about us, just as we are worried about him!"
With the light of the improvised torch flaring about them they saw
what manner of place they were in. The huge trunk of the fallen tree
had not entirely shut them in the hole. Mark got in position to climb
out beside the tree-trunk.
There was a small, tough root sticking out of the bank above his head.
He leaped to catch it with one hand, intending to scramble out by its
aid.
And then the very queerest thing happened to him that could be imagined.
The spring he took shot him up through the hole like an arrow taking
flight.
He never touched the root, but over-shot the mark and disappeared with
a loud scream of amazement and alarm into the outer world.