THE GIANT BERG
The first movement of the big flying boat attracted the attention
of the crowd of onlookers as well as the soldiery and the excited
civilian that had put in such a ridiculous claim for possession of
Tom Swift’s newest invention. Those gathered in the pilot room of
the seaplane could see everyone hurrying to get out of the expected
course of the _Winged Arrow_.
“We’ll settle that fellow’s hash when we come back,” declared Tom,
shaking his head, as he glanced out at the stranger.
“_If_ we come back, you mean,” replied Ned. “And take it from me,
Tom, that chap is linked up with the French fellow that bothered us
before we left Shopton.”
“Looks so. But that Polansky, as this chap called him, was no
Frenchman, I tell you.”
“Doesn’t matter. He had an awful amount of nerve,” said Ned. “Now
we’re rising!”
The seaplane took the air as nicely as she had before. Captain Olaf
Karofsen was tracing the course they should follow across Iceland.
The place to which he directed Tom for gasoline was a small whaling
port facing the stretch of Arctic Ocean called the Greenland Sea.
The long twilight of this northern clime made the journey really a
pleasant one. Tom, to avoid air currents caused by the mountains,
veered a little and skirted a shoulder of Mount Hekla, from the
crater of which a thin column of smoke was rising. The captain told
them there had been no eruption of the ancient volcano since he was a
child, but it was not entirely cold.
Captain Karofsen was much more interested in the management of the
seaplane, however, than he was in the physical wonders of Iceland.
The boys were eager to know the particulars of the wreck of the
_Kalrye_ and how Mr. Damon and Mr. Nestor had been thrown upon the
iceberg.
“I lost das schooner—yes,” said the captain, shaking his head. “Das
insurance don’t pay me for all. And if them gentlemen are lost for
good, I never get over it.”
It seemed that in the night and fog two monstrous peaks of ice loomed
up ahead of the _Kalrye_, but so many miles away that the captain and
crew of the schooner had no idea their boat would collide with the
berg.
She had run bow on to a ledge, and with a heavy sea following her,
the stiff hull of the schooner was battered into wreckage in a very
few minutes. The two boats were got safely out and the crew divided.
Both boats were well provisioned. The one in which the two passengers
sailed with their treasure and baggage was badly managed. A billow
caught up the craft and threw her broadside upon the ice.
“She vas smashed like you step on von cockroach,” groaned Karofsen.
“But dark as it vos, I see all the party high and dry. They signal us
with flashlight. We tell them we go for help—yes. It was the best we
could do.”
“I believe you,” agreed Tom. “And if you are sure you can pick out
the same berg——”
“Jes! It vos so pig a perg—yes. I could not be mistaken. And those
great spires of ice, side by side! Fear not, Misder Swift, I bane
sure of it.”
“Do you feel quite sure that they are still alive, Captain?” Tom
asked.
“They haf food—yes. They may freeze, but they do not starve. And if
they haf sense they save wreckage from the boat to make fire. Ja!”
“At any rate,” Tom said more cheerfully to his chum, “it’s a chance.”
“Well, I suppose so. But you yourself look out how you go sailing
around over these icebergs. If you break a wing or a propeller or
anything, and we drop on to a field of ice ourselves, we’ll be as
bad off as Mr. Damon and Mr. Nestor.”
From the height at which the seaplane sailed across the island,
heading north now, the travelers could see a vast expanse of the
Arctic sea. The sun was so low on the horizon that its beams gave
little light. But the sky seemed overcast with a luminous haze and
under that the sea, and what floated upon it, was clearly visible.
Countless little crackling points of dull fire revealed the presence
of broken ice. Here and there a spire, or hummock, rose to a
considerable height from the surface. Tom Swift and his friends began
to realize for the first time just what a search for a particular
iceberg in these cold regions might mean.
They were utterly dependent on Captain Olaf Karofsen, it seemed.
If he failed to remember how the berg looked on which he had last
seen the marooned party of sailors and passengers, it would be very
difficult for the searchers to find them.
“Looking for a needle in a haystack wouldn’t be in it!” exclaimed Ned.
Captain Karofsen took Tom’s glasses and peered steadily at the shore
line ahead. He spied out at last the little collection of houses he
had in mind, and Tom slightly changed the course of the seaplane to
more nearly hit the port.
There was a breakwater and fishing boats; and at one point a tall
staff which they soon made out to be rigged with wireless antennæ.
Late as it was in the evening (nearly midnight now) they saw the
inhabitants of the fishing port moving about. As the flying boat
dropped lower, it was plain that there was some excitement below.
The great gasoline tanks were built on an iron bridge over the water
and inside the breakwater. Captain Karofsen said there was plenty of
hose with which the tank of the seaplane could be connected with the
supply tank. There was an open field on the edge of the water where
the flying boat might be brought down in safety.
But the sight of that wireless outfit had made Tom a little
suspicious. Instead of sweeping down at once to the land, he shot the
great boat out to sea, and then headed back again, facing the gas
tanks. The pool of water inside the breakwater was fairly smooth.
“I see some more of those armed and uniformed men there,” he said
to Captain Karofsen. “We left Reykjavik without permission of the
authorities. If your governor is one of those pompous fellows, he
like enough has wirelessed an order over here to arrest us if we come
down for gasoline.”
“He could do dot,” agreed the schooner captain, wagging his shaggy
head like a nodding mandarin.
“I am going to drop inside the breakwater,” Tom said quickly. “I can
see there is room there. And we can make our jump-off all right after
filling the tank. Ned, pass the guns to the crew; but no ammunition.
We may have to make a show of force, but of course there must be no
shooting.”
“Master, let Koku go ashore,” cried the giant. “Him dribe um off with
his spear.”
Captain Karofsen seemed much impressed by the savageness of Koku.
“I pet you him undt me could clean oudt the whole town. But Misder
Swift, you no be troubled. Them polize don’t fight yet unless the
governor make ’em. They for what you call show—yes?”
“That is all right,” laughed Tom. “But I, for one, have a hearty
respect for the police of any country. Let’s get this gasoline
without any fight, if we can.”
With the drumming of the motors stopped, the flying boat sank to the
surface of the water almost in silence. By a patent arrangement,
almost as soon as the plane was on even keel one of the airtight
pontoons which were affixed to either end of the wings was detached
and drawn in to an open door in the hull of the great craft.
This small boat was driven by a detachable motor. There was room in
the cockpit for Tom and Koku and Captain Karofsen, but it was a tight
fit! They pushed off immediately for the beach under the gasoline
tanks.
The inhabitants of the port were gathered in a wondering group just
above high water mark. They were mostly fishermen and their wives and
children. There were six of the uniformed police, and their spokesman
immediately advanced with a blue paper in his hand.
He spoke in a language which Tom did not understand, but which
Captain Karofsen was familiar with. The schooner captain answered
angrily. Then he said to Tom:
“This big walrus make de same demandt—yes. They are all crazy yet. I
bane have a goot mind to slap him. He says we steal the seaplane.”
“What does he want to have us do with it?” asked the inventor.
“Pring it ashore,” and Karofsen laughed.
“Tell him we have to have gasoline before we can move it at all. Get
the gasoline. That is the first thing to do.”
Captain Karofsen, much amused, proceeded to convince the people
ashore that the seaplane was immovable without a supply of gasoline.
Tom had money with which to pay for what he needed, and after about
half an hour’s wrangling the hose was connected to the _Winged
Arrow’s_ tank and a good supply of gasoline pumped aboard.
The small boat was then withdrawn from the beach and Tom and the two
giants got into the hull of the plane. The airtight boat was coupled
to the end of the wing again and they prepared for flight.
If the police of the fishing port expected to see the huge machine
jump over the oil tanks and land on the beach, they were mistaken.
When she took to the air, Tom swerved her in a half circle and she
shot out over the sea again and soared into the darkening sky at
railroad speed!
A sprinkle of brilliant stars had now appeared. The dome of the sky
was like a deep blue velvet robe, all trimmed with sparkling sequins.
On the horizon flashes of purple, scarlet, and green denoted the
distant Aurora Borealis. It was a perfect Arctic night.
Tom sailed his flying boat not far above the water and ice. Vast
sheets of the latter gleamed below the flying boat and they could
trace long canals between the fields. Here and there rose the peak of
a great berg.
“When you consider that only about one-seventh of the bulk of a berg
is above the surface of the water, some of those fellows must be
extraordinary in size,” Tom said to Ned and Kingston.
“Some icebergs, I’ll say!” murmured the wireless operator. “And there
are thousands of them. How are you ever going to pick up the one
those folks were wrecked on?”
But Tom had already thought seriously of that point. The chart and
Captain Karofsen agreed that the set of the current was southward
between Greenland and Iceland, through the wide Denmark Strait.
“In all probability that berg our friends are on has been carried
into the strait by this time,” Tom declared.
“You seem dreadfully certain that the poor chaps are still alive,”
Ned said.
“Captain Karofsen has hope of that, so why not?” rejoined Tom. “We
have not come away over here to find Mr. Damon and Mary’s father
starved or frozen, I hope.”
But Tom was anxious. He would not leave his post in the pilot room
that night. As the darkness increased the two great searchlights of
the seaplane flashed their beams over the icefields, and it did seem
as though, if there were any castaways there, these signals would be
answered. The castaways from the _Kalrye_ were known to have electric
torches.
Until the thin edge of the sun appeared above the horizon again the
_Winged Arrow_ soared over the sea. Captain Karofsen pointed out the
coast of Greenland, which the boys at first had thought was a row of
icebergs in the distance.
“My _Kalrye_, she vos sailing by there when she vos wrecked,” said
the schooner captain. “We make it in about two days more. Undt she
iss lost!”
The plane swept around and drifted back toward Iceland on the other
tack. Beneath, the points of broken ice began to sparkle, tipped by
the brief rays of the sun. The sheets of unbroken ice were as blue as
the sea itself. As the plane moved southward there were fewer open
channels and pools. It seemed, before noon, as though able men cast
away in this ice might make their way to one shore or the other.
Yet, if they did, neither the Greenland nor Iceland coasts afforded
much hope of succor. The first named was utterly barren for hundreds
of miles, while the fishing settlements on Iceland were far apart on
this northwestern coast.
Now and again somebody spied something moving on the ice, and down
the flying boat would swoop that the object might be the better
examined. In each case the searchers were disappointed. Several times
small herds of seals were made out, or a pair of walruses. Once a
huge polar bear was seen drifting down a channel, enthroned on a lump
of ice. It had evidently been fishing at the edge of the open water
and the chunk of ice had broken away from the parent field.
A school of round-backed whales, some ten of them, were observed
swimming down a channel, evidently making for the warmer seas.
“Let Mr. Damon and his party catch one of those whales or a bear, and
they’ll be fixed all right for food,” said Ned, chuckling. “Wouldn’t
Mr. Damon be blessing everything in nature if he came to eating
blubber?”
Tom drove his flying boat first to the east until they could see the
coast of the big island they had left the night before, and then
turned her about and drove west until Greenland was in sight. At each
lap he brought their course many miles southward. Little floating on
the surface of the sea escaped their keen gaze.
It was mid-afternoon when Captain Olaf Karofsen, looking through
Tom’s powerful glasses, began to show more excitement. Even with
only the naked eye there could be seen ahead two tall pinnacles like
cathedral towers. There was a narrow space between them, and miles
upon miles of hummock ice and low bluffs lay about the two spires.
“Dot iss she!” exclaimed Captain Karofsen. “I vould not fool you,
Misder Swift. Dot is de perg I see Mr. Damon and the sick man undt
my five sailors from the _Kalrye_ climb upon when their boat was
smashed. I could not mistake those two points like chimneys.”
“Is there anything moving on that great field of ice?” demanded Tom
anxiously.
His companions used their eyes, and the binoculars, as well, to the
best advantage. Tom drove the flying boat nearer and nearer to the
pinnacles of ice. Not a moving object was descried beneath them. The
great iceberg seemed to be as abandoned as any of the other fields
they had flown over during their marvelous journey through the air.