ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND
Ned declared the message was a fake. He would not believe such an
extraordinary tale could be true.
“Somebody wants to get you off the _Winged Arrow_,” he said. “That
fellow who hung around here at the launching—remember? The chap with
the Frenchy look. I bet he represented some inventor who is trying to
put out a machine like yours. This is a scheme to take your mind off
your work and delay you.”
“It can’t delay me much now,” said Tom, puzzled. “The flying boat has
been proved practical—and is practically complete.”
“I fear that something really terrible has happened to our friends up
there in the Arctic,” Mr. Swift broke in.
“The chief thing to do is to find out about it,” Tom said vigorously.
“We’ll test this thing out—find out who Captain Olaf Karofsen of the
_Kalrye_ is.”
“How are you going to do that and him in Iceland?” scoffed Ned. “It
will take you two months or longer to get there.”
“We have got to look into it and try to find Mr. Damon and Mary’s
father, if it takes two years,” declared Tom.
He set to work at once with telephone and telegraph and got
information from everybody he could think of regarding Iceland
and its chief seaport. He reached a representative of Icelandic
commercial interests at his home in Boston and was told how to cable
in the most direct way to Reykjavik. The Merchants’ Association there
verified Olaf Karofsen’s statement of the wreck of his motor schooner
in the ice and the loss of several passengers and their possessions.
Before morning Tom had a pretty complete story of the disaster. It
seemed that because of the lateness of the season no steamship would
sail from Reykjavik at once, and Mr. Damon had engaged the motor
schooner, _Kalrye_, to take his party over to a Greenland port from
which a fishing steamer would sail south before winter really set in.
In the night and fog the _Kalrye_ smashed into a shelf of ice just
below the surface, which seemed to be part of a gigantic iceberg, the
peaks of which stood up out of the sea several miles distant. Mr.
Damon was known to carry with him a chest of treasure which he had
come to Iceland to secure. With this chest Mr. Damon and his friend,
with five sailors, had taken to one of the _Kalrye’s_ two boats. A
heavy sea had smashed it against the ice and the skipper and his
party had seen all in the wrecked boat get onto the ice with their
luggage.
Then the fog had shut down again and Captain Karofsen had been unable
to find the castaways. He had returned to Reykjavik and was now
ready, if furnished with necessary funds, to get up a searching party
and start after the lost men.
“It would be weeks before we could hear from such a searching party,”
groaned Mr. Swift. “What will you tell Mary and her mother, Tom?”
“Don’t tell ’em anything,” advised Ned. “Wait until we hear something
for sure.”
But this could not be. It was impossible to hide the facts from Mary
Nestor. Before Tom had got out of bed, after spending most of the
night at the telephone, Rad knocked on his door.
“Miss Mary come, Mars’ Tom,” said the old darkey through the keyhole.
“She done got a letter from her father.”
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Tom, getting out of bed in a hurry. “He
can’t have got off that iceberg and written her, all as quickly as
this!”
He did not stop to dress, but put on his blanket robe and went
downstairs. Mary was talking with Mr. Swift and had already got an
inkling of the trouble. She was very pale and her eyes glistened with
tears.
“Oh, Tom! what shall we do?” she cried, when the young inventor
appeared. “We never should have let him go with Mr. Damon.”
“Why not?” Tom demanded. “Isn’t your father better?”
“He says in this letter that he is. Much better. But that was written
a month ago. It was sent by the last mail steamer for the season.
Father and Mr. Damon should have taken that steamer. But the legacy
Mr. Damon went after had not then been put into his hands. Think,
Tom! Thirty thousand dollars in Danish money that his old friend,
Aman Dele, left to him. The priest had it hidden away in a vault
under his little stone church at Rosestone. Father tells us all about
it in this letter.”
“Then they are only delayed up there in Iceland,” began Tom rather
faintly.
“Don’t!” exclaimed Mary. “I know more than that. Your father says
they have been wrecked at sea. I must know all, Tom,” and Mary’s eyes
filled with tears as she struggled courageously for self-control.
“Oh, it may not be anywhere near as bad as it seems,” began Tom.
“But—but they _are_ lost? Oh, Tom! What shall we do? And what would
I ever do without you, Tom? It startles me sometimes when I realize
how much I depend on you.”
“I’m glad you do, Mary.”
“But what shall we do? It was so like Mr. Damon to try to reach
Greenland in a small boat!”
“Not so small, I imagine. That _Kalrye_ carried a crew of ten. A
good-sized schooner. She probably ran into a ledge of ice just as the
_Titanic_ did, years ago. But the captain declares he saw his men and
passengers safely on the iceberg.”
“When was that?” Mary demanded, wiping her eyes and speaking more
practically.
“About ten days ago. The captain had to work his way back to
Reykjavik under sail in a whale boat.”
“Could they live so long on an iceberg?”
“Why not if they had provisions? And the captain said the other boat
carried both water and supplies.”
“But they would have to remain on the ice until rescued!”
“Looks so,” admitted Tom.
“If we started at once for Iceland it would be two months before we
could get to Reykjavik, wouldn’t it?” the girl asked.
Tom said nothing. His father exclaimed:
“My poor girl! Passenger service to the island is probably closed
until spring.”
“Then,” said Mary Nestor firmly, “there is only one hope for father.”
She looked straight at Tom, and he nodded slowly.
“Only one chance that I can see,” he said.
It was the turn of Mr. Swift to be astonished.
“What do you two young people mean?” he asked.
Tom smiled slowly. “Mary gets the idea, dad,” he said cheerfully. “I
shall start for Iceland just as soon as possible. We will pick up
Captain Karofsen, if he will go with us, to point out the iceberg
where he left a part of his crew and the passengers marooned, and——”
“But how will you go? What route will you follow at this time of
year?” Mr. Barton Swift demanded.
“We’ll go on the wings of the wind,” declared his son, laughing
outright. “Of course, this eventuality is exactly what I must have
built the _Winged Arrow_ for. I will telephone the shops at once and
tell Brannigan to get the crew together. I’ll take Ned and Koku. If
my new flying boat is any good at all, she ought to fly to Iceland in
less than three days. As soon as she can be made ready, I will start,
Mary.”
“Oh, Tom! suppose you should be lost, too? Suppose you should be
killed?”
“That can happen but once,” declared Tom.
“Only once! But that’s the horror of it! Oh, Tom!” and Mary gave a
slight shudder.
“Let’s not worry about that, Mary.”
But both knew that Mary would carry a load of worry in her heart, and
not entirely for her father.