THE WHALE HUNT ASHORE
The depressing influence of this disappointment could not fail to be
felt by all--even by the old professor. They were without an ounce of
food and had no means of continuing their journey, even had they
possessed an objective point.
Nigatuk was expected to have stores. Whalers as well as Government
ships often touched there. If this torn-away world was to float about
the parent globe for long, Nigatuk might have become a focussing point
for all the inhabitants of the new planet.
But the volcanic eruption, or the earthquakes, had evidently shaken
Nigatuk to bits, and fire had finished what remained after the
earthquakes got through. As for the former inhabitants of the place,
our party could not even imagine what had become of them.
When they went through the wrecked town, however, they found many bones
picked by the wolves. Some of the Nigatuk people had met their death
and the savage beasts had reaped the harvest. They found no signs of
the company of traders whom they supposed they had followed from
Aleukan, far up in the foothills of the Endicott Range. Not a boat was
frozen into the ice at what had once been the wharves at the abandoned
city. That the remaining inhabitants had sailed away after the
catastrophe was at least possible.
"At least, the ocean must be out yonder somewhere," declared Phineas
Roebach, pointing down the nearest estuary of the Coleville.
Professor Henderson did not verbally agree with this statement; yet
he made no objection to the suggestion that the party take up its
journey again toward the sea.
The wind was fitful. They traveled unsteadily, too, tacking back and
across the estuary, because the breeze was so light, and no longer
astern. Ten miles down the mouth of the stream they beheld an island
where huge sheets of ice were piled one upon another, in an overhanging
jumble of ice-hummock, some fifty feet high. And along the edge of
this cliff was a herd of sea lions, that roared mournfully as the sleds
advanced.
"Thank goodness!" exclaimed the professor. "There is meat again."
Andy and Roebach needed no urging to the attack. Nor did the boys.
They disembarked carefully and made a detour so as to get at the rear
of the herd. The sea lion is not a very sagacious beast.
Jack and Mark were on either side of the old hunter and were moving
upon the herd with considerable circumspection, and all had about come
to a place where the rifles could be used effectively, when Jack Darrow
spied something that brought a cry to his lips.
Fortunately both the hunter and Mr. Roebach fired the next instant and
two of the sea lions were hit. The remainder of the herd slid over the
ice-cliff and flopped away at good speed toward a break in the ice
through which they could get into the water.
But Jack began to dance and shout, and Mark was too surprised to even
fire at the herd.
"What under the sun is the matter with you, chum?" exclaimed Mark,
with some asperity. "You're as bad as Washington White."
"Maybe I'm worse," bawled the cheerful Jack.
"You scared off them sea lions, boy," admonished Andy Sudds. "We only
got two of them."
"Don't care if I did," replied Jack. "See yonder!"
The others followed the direction of his pointing arm with their gaze.
Off beyond the headlands at the mouth of the river rose a column of
thick black smoke. It was as big a smoke as though some great forge
or factory was working overtime in that direction.
"Hurrah!" cried Mark, re-echoing his chum's delight.
The entire party was delighted. Yet not knowing who the people were
who made the smoke, nor under what circumstances they would find them,
the dead sea lions were packed aboard the sleds before they continued
their way down the river.
"That smoke lies a good way beyond the mouth of the river," said Phineas
Roebach. "I believe it is on the sea."
"A vessel afire?" proposed Mark.
"It's a fire on a vessel," said the professor, suddenly. "I believe
that is the smoke of the trying-out works on a whaler."
"You've hit it, Professor," agreed Andy Sudds. "It's a whaler for sure.
There's more than _you_, Phineas, hunting for oil up in these regions."
"A whaling ship on this island in the air," murmured Jack. "What will
they do with the whale oil? They will never get back to San Francisco
again."
"We do not know that," said the scientist, gravely.
The last few miles, during which they could not see beyond the high
ice-shod banks of the estuary, were traversed slowly enough. They all
grew anxious to know what the column of black smoke meant.
Finally they came to the open mouth of this branch of the river. The
sight they beheld almost stunned them.
Instead of an ocean, rolling up in great surges upon the beach on
either hand, they beheld a vast sink through which the partly ice-bound
river crawled as far as the eye could see. They knew that this was the
old bed of the Arctic Ocean; but the waters of that cold sea had receded
and left little but ice-bound pools here and there.
"Fo' de goodness gracious sake!" cried Wash. "Does yo' mean ter try
ter mak' me beliebe dat disher place is whar' de great an' omniverous
ocean once rolled? Dat de hugeous salt sea broke its breakers on dem
ice-bound shores? Git erlong, chile! Yo' is tryin' ter bamboozle me,
suah."
"That is where the Arctic Ocean rolled, all right," growled Phineas
Roebach. "I can swear to that. I have been here before. Something has
certainly happened to it."
"I declare!" chuckled Jack Darrow, who could not miss the joke, despite
the seriousness of their situation. "Somebody has removed the ocean
without permission." Behind a great fortress of rock which had once
been an island they saw the same column of smoke. But it was something
nearer to them on the bed of the Arctic sea that more particularly
attracted their attention.
"Look at that thing! That monster!" cried Mark, pointing.
"And there is another!" shouted Jack.
"Whales!" yelled the excited Andy Sudds. "Those are whales as sure as
shooting--there's a school of them here."
And they had no more than made this discovery when a party of men, all
dressed in furs and some dragging great sleds behind them, came out
from behind the pile of rocks which had certainly once been an island
in the ocean.
These new-comers did not see our heroes and their friends, but they
approached the whale stranded nearest to the rocks. This huge leviathan,
like all the others of the herd, was long since dead. The men attacked
him with blubber-saws and axes and began to cut him up in a most
workmanlike manner.
"A whaling ship, sure enough," declared Professor Henderson, who seemed
the least astonished by these manoeuvres. "We will be among friends
soon. And we will hope that the ship--despite the fact that her crew
has come whaling ashore,--will have her keel in deep water." The party
ran their sleds ashore on the right bank of the river at its old mouth.
Then they started at a round pace for the spot in the old bed of the
ocean where the crew of the whaler were cutting up their prize.