BACK TO THE FLYING BOAT
The excitement of the bear fight and of being shut into the tunnel
through the ice had for the moment driven out of the minds of all
the party from the flying boat remembrance of the cause which had
brought them here to the giant iceberg. For the time being even Tom
had forgotten Mr. Damon and Mr. Nestor and their companions.
At least some of the castaways from the schooner _Kalrye_ were right
ahead of Tom’s party. The booming voice of the excitable Wakefield
Damon and his “blessing” could never be mistaken by anybody who knew
him at all!
Captain Olaf Karofsen burst into a great roar of laughter, and,
cheering loudly, he strode ahead along the passage.
“We bane findt dem fellers!” he bawled. “Misder Damon! How you vas
now—yes?”
The others heard Mr. Damon cry:
“Here’s that Skowegian, Nestor! Captain of the _Kalrye_. What do you
know about this? Bless my divining rod! I never expected to see him
again.”
The whole party, including Tom, followed the big captain. They rushed
into a circular chamber in the ice. In the middle was a small fire
burning on a piece of copper sheathing, set up on empty bean cans to
keep the heat from the floor of the chamber.
There were only two persons present, both wrapped well in furs. They
had been eating some cooked fish of some kind and drinking tea from
tin pannikins. The man who had first got up to greet the newcomers
was Mr. Wakefield Damon.
“Bless my horn spectacles!” he gasped, staring. “Is that Tom Swift I
see? And Koku? And Ned Newton? Bless my imagination! I certainly must
be seeing things.”
“You surely are, Mr. Damon!” cried Ned. “You are seeing a bunch of
castaways—just as much cast away as you are.”
But Tom gave his closest attention to the other man—the man who still
sat before the fire. There was no mistaking him, yet he looked so
different from the wan and almost helpless man who had left Shopton
for the Arctic weeks before that the young inventor could scarcely
believe he was Mary Nestor’s father.
“Mr. Nestor!” gasped Tom.
“Tom, my boy! Did you really come to find us? My brave fellow!”
“I did not come expecting to find such a picture of health, Mr.
Nestor,” declared Tom, clasping hands with the ex-invalid. “That
crazy Raddiker wasn’t so crazy as I feared, was he? Why, Mr. Nestor,
you are a picture!”
“I am a picture of a homesick man, believe me,” declared Mary’s
father earnestly. “I don’t know how you got here, Tom; but I hope you
can take us back home in a hurry.”
“Bless my seven-leagued boots! how you must have traveled to get here
so quickly, Tom Swift,” Mr. Damon suddenly shouted. “How did you do
it? I see the skipper must have got word of the wreck to you. But how
did you fellows get here?”
“Through the air,” said Ned, laughing.
“The new flying boat?” demanded Mr. Nestor. “Is it a success, Tom?”
“Bless my flying carpet of Bagdad!” chuckled Mr. Damon. “Never
thought of that! Where is she? Can you take us all back?”
“We hope to. Though it may be close crowding with the five sailors.
By the way,” added Tom, “where are they?”
Instantly Mr. Wakefield Damon was very grave. Mr. Nestor said slowly:
“We had a terrible accident the third day we were on this ice
island. We were climbing over the heights, making for a place where
we thought of setting up an oar with a flag, although it scarcely
seemed possible that there would be any passing ship so late in the
fall.
“However,” he went on, “we came to a crevasse in the ice, and in
trying to cross it two of the men fell and disappeared. We could not
reach them.”
“And bless my disappearing riches!” burst out Wakefield Damon, “the
chest with my legacy from Aman Dele fell with them. We lost the men
and the thirty thousand dollars in a moment.”
“That is very unfortunate, Mr. Damon,” said Tom seriously. “Where are
the other three sailors who made up your party?”
“They are out somewhere now hunting for food—seals or fish, or the
like. Brave fellows! Bless their hats and shoestrings! I mean that
all of them shall be well paid for their faithfulness to us.”
Captain Karofsen was silent. He had learned by a single question that
the two sailors who had fallen into the chasm with the treasure chest
were his own brother and his nephew! These relatives had aroused in
the schooner captain a great desire to recover the castaways.
“Let’s get out of here and find your other three helpers,” Tom said
finally. “We must get back to the gorge in which we left the flying
boat. Brannigan will believe we are completely lost.”
“And maybe we are,” said Ned, again pessimistic. “No knowing whether
we can get down into that valley again. And, once there, shall we be
able to lift the _Winged Arrow_ into the air?”
None of the others paid much attention to Ned’s gloomy words. Mr.
Damon and Mr. Nestor were too much interested in hearing news from
home and Tom’s brief account of the flight of the flying boat from
America to Iceland and thence to this part of the Arctic Ocean to
listen to Ned.
“It is wonderful!” declared Mr. Nestor. “One could scarcely believe
that you would have so easily found this particular iceberg—and us
upon it.”
“Thanks to the bear,” said Tom. “And if we get short of provisions we
can go back and get a few bear steaks. Where is the entrance to this
house?”
Mr. Nestor and Mr. Damon led the way. In two minutes they were out
on the open ice, on the side of one of the ice hills over which the
explorers had previously flown in the flying boat.
“How far are we from the place where we left the _Winged Arrow_,
Captain?” asked Tom of Olaf Karofsen.
“It iss so far as that peak—yes? Maype ten mile. But my odder t’ree
men——?”
Almost immediately the party sighted the trio of sailors coming up
the slope from the ice field. Two of them bore a frozen seal between
them. The other carried the guns and a rope. When they saw Captain
Karofsen and the others they shrieked their joy and, dropping the
seal, scrambled up the ice slope as fast as possible.
In their own language they broke into a concerted account of their
adventures since the _Kalrye_ had been wrecked. It was easy for the
Americans to know when the sailors spoke of the loss of Captain
Karofsen’s brother and nephew. The schooner captain grew very, very
grave.
“I wish we might search that chasm you speak of for those men,” Tom
whispered to Mr. Damon. “You say they carried a bag of provisions,
too?”
“Bless my emergency ration, Tom Swift!” whispered the eccentric
gentleman. “We yelled there and waited around for an hour. There
was not a sound rose from that hole. They must have been instantly
killed.”
“But the money?”
“We-ell,” said Mr. Damon doubtfully. “Of course, all I thought of at
first was the chance of our getting away from here. But now it looks
different. It might be well to make a search for the treasure box.
But first, let us see,” he added more vigorously, “if we can get your
flying boat out of that hole you say she is in.”
That actually was the main thing to worry about. And even when the
party had reached the brink of the gorge and fortunately found a
traversable path to the bottom of it and came in sight of the flying
boat, the question as to whether or no they could get the _Winged
Arrow_ into the air again was the all-important subject of their
thoughts.