THE HERD OF KADIAKS
Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson had never experienced so arduous a trip
by dog sled as this. The party was really running a race with
starvation. The terrible frosts of each long night on this island in
the air had killed every species of vegetation the country wide, save
the very hardiest trees and shrubs. The country, which two weeks before
had been verdant as only a northern country can be verdant in late
summer, was now as black as though a fire had swept over it.
Everywhere, too, lay the volcanic ashes that had fallen ere the new
planet had been shot from the earth by the volcanic eruption. It was
indeed a devastated country through which the Alaskan dogs drew them.
They dared not drive the dogs more than twelve hours out of the long
night; but when the word was given to "mush," and the train started,
the party kept up a good speed for those dozen hours.
Andy Sudds and Phineas Roebach took the lead in this journey. They
understood better how to handle the dogs and how to choose the trail.
But, indeed, the trail was pretty well marked for them by the white
traders who had gone before. Their camping sites were marked by a
plenitude of discarded and empty food tins.
The party ahead, in whose pursuit the boys and their friends were,
undoubtedly traveled just as fast as Jack and Mark. And they had a
week's start, according to the Indian who had not been allowed to
return to his fellows until the whites were well along the trail to
the Anakturuk River.
The valley of the river, when they reached it, was a desert. There was
little wonder that most of the game had fled. All herb-eating animals
would have died for want of forage.
"I am not sure," the professor said, gravely, during one of their
campfire talks, "that physical life of any kind can long exist in this
small planet. The vegetation is being rapidly destroyed. Soon the
ground will become like rock. The carnivorous beasts will live for a
while on the more timid creatures, then they will fight among themselves
until the last beast is destroyed.
"There were no great lakes in this Alaskan region when our present
planet was a part of the earth. We do not know how full the streams
may be of fish. There are few birds to be seen, that is sure. I fear
that before many years this will be either a dead and frozen island
floating in space, or it will be absorbed by some other body of the
universe."
"You said, Professor," Jack observed, "that its ultimate end would
either be to fall into the sun, or collide with the earth."
"And that is my belief yet; but I have no means of knowing surely."
"I hope she bumps the world again!" cried Jack. "Maybe we can get off
then."
"It will do a lot of damage when it falls," said Andy Sudds,
reflectively. "Some folks up there in the earth will get hurt."
"Perhaps not," the professor said, hastily.
"How can it be otherwise?" Mark demanded. "This fragment of the world
must be enormously heavy. Cities--counties--whole states will be buried
if we should fall into the earth."
"Not if we came down into one of the big oceans," said Professor
Henderson. "We would probably sink some vessels, and might overwhelm
islands; but if this island in the air is as big as Australia it could
easily fall into the Pacific and do no particular harm to any present
existing body of land--save through the great tidal waves that would
result from such a fall."
"It is an awful thing to think of," cried Mark. "I don't see, no matter
how this awful affair ends, but that we are bound to be overwhelmed."
"We do not know that," declared the professor, with his wonted
cheerfulness. "Never say die. Our safety is in the hands of Providence.
We have not got to worry about that."
"Isn't he a wonder?" whispered Jack to his chum. "We ought to take
pattern by him. Our grumbling and anxiety is a shame."
Yet it was very difficult to remain cheerful under the circumstances
as they then were. Their provisions, even for the dogs, were at a low
ebb. Not a shot at edible bird or beast had they obtained since leaving
Aleukan. And the torrid sun by day and the frost by night were most
trying.
"However," said Professor Henderson, "I have kept a careful account
of the fluctuations of temperature since the catastrophe, and I find
that the mercury does not descend into the bulb so far now as it did
at first. We are circling the earth, as the earth circles the sun. At
present we are turning more toward the sun. It is coming summer. The
sun will more and more heat this torn-away world. I do not believe
that vegetation will start, and I look for nothing but frost during
the hours of the sun's absence. But the cold night is not so intense
as it was at first."
"It's quite cold enough, just the same," Phineas Roebach grunted. "It
was summer a few days ago--the best summer this part of Alaska ever
has. And to jump right into cold weather--midwinter, as ye might say--is
enough to kill us all."
The oil man simply ignored the professor's scientific explanations of
their situation and the changes in their environment. He absolutely
would not believe that they were floating in the air above the earth's
surface.
The trail down the valley of the Anakturuk was fairly smooth and well
defined; when they struck the Coleville--a much wider stream--the shore
was very rugged, and the dogs could scarcely drag the sleds over some
stretches of the route.
The traders who had gone before them were certainly having a hard time.
Our friends traveled very slowly for two days, walking most of the
time. Then they found that the veil of ice that had formed on the wide
stream since the region had become a torn-away world, would bear both
men and dogs; the sun merely made it spongy for a few hours each day,
but did not destroy the ice, which was now three or four inches thick.
Each night when the sun set and the air cooled the water on the surface
of this sheet of smooth ice congealed again, making a splendid course
for skating--had they only possessed the skates. But the sleds slipped
more easily over the ice and the dogs were saved for two or three days
longer. The brutes were almost starved, however, and one of them going
lame, when they were released at a certain stopping place, the others
pitched upon their wounded comrade and like wolves tore the unfortunate
dog to pieces before Roebach could beat them into submission.
Andy Sudds chopped through the ice and set lines for fish; but the
catch was so small that the party could not spare more than the bones
for the dogs. Starvation faced them. Mark was miserably despondent,
and Wash was so lugubrious all the time that he seldom exploded in his
usual pyrotechnical displays of big words. His grain supply for the
Shanghai had completely run out, too, and the colored man divided his
own poor rations with his pet.
"And the rooster's that lean he wouldn't be anything but skin and bone
if we killed and cooked him," Jack wickedly proposed.
Wash looked upon his young friend in extreme horror.
"Eat Buttsy?" he finally gasped. "Why Massa Jack! I'd jest as lief eat
a baby--dat I would!"
But the matter of eating was past the joking stage now. The dogs fell
on the ice and could not get up again. It was a mercy to put them out
of their misery, and this is what Phineas Roebach and Andy did--shooting
each faithful creature through the head and leaving the carcasses for
the wolves which had, all this time, followed the little party at a
respectful distance.
"If wolf meat was fit to eat we'd certainly live on the fat of the
land," quoth the oil man.
"I wouldn't mind meeting a bear--savage as that other fellow was,"
said Andy Sudds.
And before they were through with this adventure they saw all the bear
meat--and that very much alive--that the party ever wished to behold.
First, however, came Mark's invention. They dragged the empty
sleds--after the dogs were killed--for several miles and then went
into camp beside the stream, while the sun rose and warmed them most
uncomfortably.
Roebach suggested abandoning the sleds as they could carry the little
stock of movables they now owned. But Andy was opposed to this as he
feared the professor might break down, in which event they would have
to drag him.
"We must keep one of the sleds, at least," the old hunter insisted.
"I have a scheme," quoth Mark, suddenly. "Why not use the sleds--both of
them?"
"True enough--why not?" scoffed Jack. "Let's keep them to slide down
hill on. Do you realize that the professor says we are still three
hundred miles from Nigatuk and the mouth of the Coleville?"
"That is the reason I suggest traveling by sled instead of dragging
them behind us," said Mark, unruffled. "I've got an idea."
Jack stopped then. When Mark said he had an idea his chum knew it was
probably worth listening to, for Mark possessed an inventive mind.
"We will have to strap the robes and blankets on our shoulders if we
abandon the sleds," Mark Sampson said, quietly. "Let us utilize them
to better advantage and save the sleds in addition."
"How?" asked Phineas Roebach.
"Make sails of the robes and propel the sleds, riding on them, too,"
declared Mark. "Such wind as there is is pretty steadily at our backs.
Why not?"
"Why not, indeed?" shouted Jack. "Hurrah for Mark!"
"A splendid thought, my boy," declared the professor.
Poles were cut for masts and Andy rigged a stout one on each sled,
with cross-pieces, or spars, to hold the blankets spread as sails.
Andy even rigged sweeps for rudders with which to steer these crude
ice-boats. They got off under a fair wind as soon as the river was
passable again, and ran fifty miles straight away without stopping.
This was a great lift toward the end of their journey, and all plucked
up courage. The Shanghai seemed to share the feeling of renewed hope,
and began to crow again.
They were obliged to rest over the sunlit day, as before, for the ice
became covered with a sheet of water an hour after sunrise, and they
were afraid the sled runners would cut through and let them all down
into the stream.
However, they saw very well that--barring some unforeseen accident--they
would be able to reach the mouth of the river before the last of their
scanty food supply ran out. All the way now they looked for signs of
the traders from Aleukan, who had started for the coast ahead of them.
These men, however, seemed to have left the rough path along the bank
of the Coleville, and were either traveling on the ice ahead, or had
struck off into the wilderness.
When they set sail for a second time the heavens, for the first time
since the final cataclysm that had shot them off into space, were
beginning to be overcast.
"There is so great an evaporation while the sun is shining that I am
surprised that we have not had snow before," the professor observed.
"These mists rising from the earth and the bodies of water would become
heavy nightly rains in any other climate. Here they will result, now
that the atmosphere has become saturated with moisture, in heavy hail
storms and much snow. It is nothing more than I have looked forward
to."
The remainder of the party were not so much interested in the natural
phenomena as he, however; they looked forward mainly to reaching some
safe refuge--some place where there were supplies and the fellowship
of other human beings.
The wind increased, but its keenness the party did not mind. They were
only glad that it remained favorable to their line of travel. They
swept down the frozen river at a speed not slower than ten miles an
hour.
The wolves had followed them on the ice, or along the edge of the
river, up to this time. They saw, indeed, a pack of the ugly creatures
on a wooded point ahead of them, at a distance of a couple of miles.
But before the sleds reached this point (which served to hide the icy
track beyond) the wolves suddenly disappeared.
"Something has scared them fellers," Andy declared.
"The traders?" suggested Jack, who traveled with the old hunter and
Mark on one sled, while Roebach, Wash and Professor Henderson sailed
on the other. "Not hardly. Men wouldn't scare them critters so.
Something bigger and uglier than the wolves themselves, I reckon."
To prove how true Andy's guess was, Mark shouted the next moment:
"A bear--two of them! Three! See that crowd of bears, will you? No
wonder the wolves skedaddled."
Several of the huge bears, like the one they had had the fight with
on the glacier, appeared out of the woods and waddled on to the ice.
They had evidently sighted the sailing party, and they roared savagely
and tried to head off the sleds. That they were wild with hunger, there
could be no doubt.
"I have heard the Indians say that, in bad seasons, the bears travel
in packs like wolves, and will attack villages and tear the huts to
pieces to get at the inmates," Roebach said, from the other sledge.
"How fortunate that we are not afoot, then," Professor Henderson
remarked.
The next moment the two sleds shot around the wooded point and the
river below lay before them. The bears were galloping after the party
and shut off all way of escape to the rear.
"Oh, gollyation! Looker dat mess ob b'ars!" shrieked Washington White.
And there was a good reason for the black man's terror. Strung out
across the frozen river, as though they had been waiting for the coming
of the exploring party, was a great herd of Kodiak bears--monsters of
such horrid mien that more than Washington were terror-stricken by
their appearance.
There were more than half a hundred of the savage creatures, little
and big, and they met the appearance of the two sailing sledges with
a salvo of bloodthirsty growls.