A PLUNGE TO THE ICE
Jack Darrow was a youth less likely to be panic-stricken than his chum;
but just as Mark Sampson had lost his head for a few minutes on the
occasion when the _Snowbird_ was tried out, so Jack was flustered now.
The flying machine shot up at such a tangent, and so swiftly, that he
was both amazed and frightened. The speed indicator showed a terrific
pace within a few seconds, and when Jack first tried to reduce the
speed he learned that the mechanism acted in a manner entirely different
than ever before.
The motor made more revolutions a minute than she was supposed to make
when pressed to the very highest speed. When he had raised the bow of
the flying machine at the start she had shot up almost perpendicularly
into the air. He was afraid she was going to turn a back somersault.
As he depressed the planes he found that it took much more depression
to bring the _Snowbird_ down to even keel. And the rapidity with
which they left the ground and soared upward was in itself enough to
shake Jack's coolness. Suddenly (being furnished with the professor's
patented ear-tabs) he heard that gentleman calling to him from below:
"Get back to the five-hundred-foot level--quick!"
Light as his head had become, and confused as he was, Jack realized
what these words meant, and he knew enough to obey without question.
He brought the _Snowbird_ down the air-ways on a long slant and
at a swift pace. He realized that, as they descended, he was able to
breathe more easily and his head stopped ringing. For some moments he
had felt like an intoxicated person in the vastly rarified plane of
the upper ether.
The professor staggered to the young operator's side.
"Danger! Danger above, boy!" he gasped. "We cannot cross these mountains
while--while the air is so thin."
"But we need not cross them to reach Aleukan?" suggested Jack, speaking
with some difficulty himself. There was a pain in the region of his
lungs and he saw that Professor Henderson was very pale.
"That is a fact," panted the professor. "Descend, Jack. Make it two
hundred feet. Be careful!"
For as the youth depressed the planes again the ground beneath seemed
to fairly leap up to meet them.
"What do you know about that?" gasped the young aviator. "She--she
doesn't work at all like she used to."
"Less attraction," declared the scientist.
"What do you mean, sir?" cried Jack. "Has the law of gravitation lost
its power over us--and over the flying machine?"
"There is a difference--a great difference," proclaimed Professor
Henderson. "The power of attraction is lessened mightily."
"What does it mean? What _can_ it mean?" murmured the disturbed youth.
"I suspect--I fear--"
What the professor would have said was not spoken then. Mark interrupted
by shouting:
"Look ahead! Look ahead! What is that--a river?"
"There is no river of size in this locality," declared the professor,
quickly, training his glasses on the white streak that appeared on the
ground ahead.
Phineas Roebach struggled forward to the operator's bench. He gasped:
"This is worse than I ever thought flying could be. Do you have to go
so fast? I cannot get my breath. Hullo! That's the glacier ahead. The
dog trail to Aleukan follows the ice for more than fifty miles."
"A glacier it is," agreed Professor Henderson. "It seems pretty smooth,
Jack. You can descend still farther."
That they were all suffering from the rarity of the atmosphere was
plain. It seemed as though the envelope of breathable air surrounding
the earth had suddenly become vastly rarified. If the atmosphere had
been so changed all over the globe it would be a catastrophe
unspeakable.
"We certainly _can't_ cross these mountains--nor the Rockies," groaned
Jack. "How are we ever going to get home again?"
"If the air remains as it is now?" asked Mark. "You're right! We're
imprisoned in this part of Alaska just as fast as though we were caged
behind iron bars."
"If we only had some of those torches we used on the moon," said Jack.
"What will we do, Professor?" begged Mark.
"Let us not lose hope," responded the old scientist. "First we will
get to Aleukan and see if our provisions have been brought over from
Coldfoot."
"I'll bet they haven't been brought across the range," said the
pessimistic Mark. "If the air everywhere is so rarified the men would
die crossing the mountains." "Think of the people living on Mt.
Washington--and other heights!" cried Jack, suddenly. "Why, they will
be snuffed out like candles. It is an awful thought."
"We will hope, at least, that this fearful catastrophe is local," said
the professor, seriously. "Have a care, Jack! Don't dip like that. We
do not want to descend here."
It was extremely difficult to manage the _Snowbird_, for she answered to
the levers so much more quickly than before. The air pressure on the
craft was so slight that at the least touch she mounted upward like a
scared quail! The speed of the aeroplane had to be reduced, too; they
traveled scarcely forty miles an hour.
On either hand as they winged their way over the great river of ice
(it was quite four miles broad) sharp cliffs arose, guarding the
glacier. These cliffs ranged from two hundred to a thousand feet high.
The professor, at once interested in such a marvel of nature, begged
Jack to reduce the speed even more. They merely floated above the
cracked expanse of whitish-green ice for some minutes.
"That's what the earthquakes did for it," said Phineas Roebach. "You
see those crevasses--and some of 'em mighty deep? Well, they weren't
here the last time I came this way." "She is in motion again, perhaps,"
suggested Professor Henderson.
"It ain't been in motion for ages--or, so the Aleuts say," responded
the oil hunter.
"But there looks now to be some sagging forward. There is a crevasse
splitting the glacier from wall to wall," proclaimed the scientist.
"We'd never be able to sled over this trail in the world!" cried Mark.
"How would you pass such a yawning gulf as that?"
"It beats me what's happened here since I was across last," muttered
Roebach, scratching his head in bewilderment.
The yawning ice was right beneath the flying machine. It was a hundred
yards across at the surface. They seemed to be looking down for five
hundred feet, or more, into its greenish depths.
Jack had turned the _Snowbird's_ prow and they were drifting toward the
western cliffs which guarded the glacier. Here the rocky heights were at
least seven hundred feet above the ice.
Out of a crack in the high wall--from its eyrie without doubt--a huge
female eagle suddenly shot down toward the drifting aeroplane. The
flying machine seemed not to startle the great bird at all; it only
angered her. Perhaps she had young up there in the cliff and she feared
her hereditary enemy, Man, was coming on wings to deprive her of them.
With a scream of rage the eagle dashed herself directly into the face
of Jack, strapped to the operator's seat. For once Andy Sudds had not
his rifle at hand; and, the attack was so unexpected, it is doubtful
if he could have come to the rescue in season.
With beak and claws the bird endeavored to tear at the youth's face.
Jack jerked loose the transmitter and beat it to pieces over the bird,
but without making her desist.
Again and again the feathered creature darted in, claws expanded and
beak snapping. With one talon she raked Jack's right arm and shredded
the heavy coatsleeve, the sleeve beneath, and scratched his arm. The
next instant her iron beak snapped upon his left hand.
Jack Darrow was plucky, but the pain of the wound brought a scream to
his lips. It was answered by the wild shrieks of the eagle.
And then, ere any of his friends could reach him (for the professor
had gone back to the cabin), the boy, fighting for his sight--indeed,
for his very life--by some unfortunate movement depressed the planes.
Like an arrow from the bow the _Snowbird_ shot downward into the yawning
crevasse which split the glacier from wall to wall. With a yell of
terror Mark Sampson sprang forward to the operator's bench. But he was
too late--if he could have done any good at all.
The _Snowbird_ swung to one side. Her right forward plane crashed
against the wall of ice, shattering some of the hard crystal. But on
the rebound the fluttering flying machine sank lower. Jack tried to
make her rise. She refused to obey the lever.
And then, with a suddenness that made them all catch their breath, the
_Snowbird_ plunged down into the ice-gulf and ended her dive with
a terrific crash on a narrow shelf at least two hundred feet below the
surface of the glacier.