UNEXPECTED GOOD FORTUNE
Mr. Wakefield Damon was possessed of a bulldog trait. When he once
set his teeth into a thing he would not let go until he had mastered
it.
While Tom and the others were giving way to excitement over the
result to the flying boat of the shock it had undergone, Mr. Damon
(when once the door in the hull was opened) leaped out and stared up
the slope of the ice peak to see if he could again observe the curl
of smoke which had been rising from that height as the flying boat
passed over it.
“There is somebody up there. Bless my tortoise-shell glasses! there
must be somebody up there. Smoke doesn’t come out of a hill of ice by
any natural means, that is sure.”
But he did not see the smoke now. He called to Olaf Karofsen. He
had picked up a few words of the Old Norse dialect much used by the
people of the “back end” of Iceland, and the schooner captain spoke
that language, too.
So the other Americans in the party did not understand what Mr. Damon
and the captain were so excitedly talking about.
“What made that smoke, Captain?” demanded Mr. Damon.
“Fire,” declared the man promptly.
“And fire in an iceberg is not a common thing. Over there is the
crevasse where we lost your poor brother and his boy. Bless my
icepick! but there is something strange about this.”
“We will go see,” declared the captain.
He hurried for a coil of rope and a rifle. Unnoticed by the others,
the giant seaman and his employer climbed the slope of the ice
mountain. Tom and his helpers were overhauling the airtight pontoon
that swung from the left wing of the flying boat. This was the part
injured by the latest collision.
“It must be that I am not so well able to judge distances as I was,”
the young inventor grumbled. “To smash a wing twice, hand running, as
you might say!”
“It was a puff of wind did this for you,” declared Ned. “I would not
blame my eyesight.”
To work in the open on the ice with a living gale blowing down from
the Pole was by no means a comfortable situation. The mechanicians
had to take turns in working on the broken wing and pontoon. A man
might easily freeze his hands while working without gloves. Two
gasoline stoves were brought out of the flying boat and set up on the
ice right where the repair gang worked. The cook served hot coffee by
the gallon. The passengers did all they could to help, but that was
little.
Suddenly Mr. Nestor noticed the absence of Mr. Damon and the schooner
captain. He asked:
“Have they gone hunting? Why did they climb that hill, do you
suppose, Tom?”
“Didn’t we see some smoke up there?” queried Tom, only mildly
interested. “Why, yes! Mr. Damon was talking about smoke from the
ice peak, and that got me interested—interested enough to scale the
old plane across the shoulder of that hill,” and the young inventor
laughed rather ruefully.
“There’s something going on up there, Mr. Swift!” exclaimed Kingston
suddenly. “See there?”
He pointed up the heights. Several hundred feet above the plain
the big seaman was standing and waving his arms wildly to attract
attention. Now his voice came booming down from the eminence:
“Mis-der Swift! Mis-der Swift!” he singsonged. “Send up a couple of
my bullies undt a pread pag. Hurry oop!”
“Wonder what’s going on up there,” remarked Ned, as Tom waved to a
couple of the seamen to obey their skipper’s demand.
“Let’s have a look ourselves,” Kingston said, and started up the
ascent.
Tom could not go; but there was nothing to keep Ned back, so he fell
in behind the wireless operator. Besides, one could keep warm on the
ice only while in motion. The two young fellows swarmed up the hill
as fast as they could travel, while the sailors came on in their rear
with the bag.
Ned and his companion found Captain Karofsen on a little shelf of the
hill. He was much excited and his face was again a smile.
“It is wonderful! Wonderful!” he declared. “Come with me, young
gentlemen. It is wonderful.”
“I bet it is,” commented Ned. “But just what is it?”
They fell in behind the excited captain of the _Kalrye_, who led them
along the shelf, around an abrupt corner, and brought them out upon
a small plateau in which there was a sink. Mr. Damon was lying flat
upon his stomach and looking down into this chasm. He turned his red
face toward Ned and Kingston and burst out with:
“Bless my Italian gardens! here is the most wonderful thing I ever
saw. Did you bring that rope?”
“It’s coming,” said Ned. “What is the matter down there, Mr. Damon?”
“Greatest thing in the world, Ned!” exclaimed the eccentric
gentleman. “The coincidence is wonderful. Who would ever have thought
it! Well!”
“It’s wonderful, all right,” repeated the puzzled Ned. “Both you and
Captain Karofsen say so. But just what _is_ it?”
“Come here! See yonder? Half a mile or so away is the crevasse down
which those two unfortunate men tumbled who were carrying my chest of
Danish gold. We never expected to see them again—or the chest. And I
guess the chest _is_ done for,” admitted the excited Mr. Damon.
Ned and the operator were now beside him. They knelt on the ice and
likewise peered down into the blue-white depths of the sink. Ned
uttered a shout of amazement.
“What do you know about this!” murmured Kingston.
Under an out-thrust shelf of ice and on the bottom of the hole a
small fire was smouldering. Two muffled figures lay beside this tiny
fire. But they moved, first one and then the other raising his head
and then waving a feeble hand to the spectators on the brink of the
ice wall.
“The lost seamen?” demanded New Newton of Mr. Damon.
“Karofsen’s brother and nephew,” the gentleman answered. “I don’t
care about the lost gold! The men are still alive! They must have
suffered terribly. And how they found fuel for even that little fire,
I don’t see.”
The eager schooner captain just then arrived with the pair of seamen
he had called. They had a coil of rope long enough to reach to the
bottom of the cleft in the ice.
It was plain that the men below could not help themselves. Kingston,
who was the lightest of the party, volunteered to go down.
“Take the pag vonce,” said Karofsen eagerly. “I pet you it vill come
handy—yes? Now, are you ready?”
The operator swung out from the ice, and fending himself from the
wall with feet and hands, was lowered safely to the floor of the
sink. As soon as he stood upon his feet there he disengaged himself
from the loop of the rope and ran across to the two men.
They tried to struggle up, but both dropped back. They were weak
from lack of nourishment and their extremities were undoubtedly
frost-bitten. The older man insisted by gestures (he could speak but
few English words) that Kingston aid his son, first of all.
The wireless operator seized the boy in his arms and staggered across
the sink with him. He fastened him safely in the noose and gave the
signal for those above to “hoist away.”
Although the turning body of the youth scraped several times against
the ice, he was not hurt while his uncle and the sailors drew him
up. Kingston, when he saw him swinging near the top, ran back to the
other man. The latter had struggled to his knees and seized the bread
bag that Kingston had brought down with him by Karofsen’s advice.
What he wished to do with the bag puzzled Kingston for a moment. Then
he saw what had been cached under the overshot ledge of ice, well
back against the wall.
“Right-o, my man!” the operator cried. “I am wise to it. Here! Let
me do all that. We’ll send the bag up before you go up. I quite
understand.”
He was much excited. And the situation was indeed an exciting one.
Kingston knew that the spectators at the top of the ice cliff were
going to feel much amazement when that bread bag swung up there at
the end of the noose.
The heavy bag swung out of his sight. Then came a yell. Mr. Damon
almost fell over the brink of the wall.
“Bless my coupon bonds and the interest on my mortgages, these
courageous men have saved my thirty thousand dollars! It’s gold!
They broke up the chest to make a fire, but here is the money intact.
“Here, Olaf! Swing your brother up here in a hurry. I want to hug
him. Bless my last red cent! if we get off of this giant iceberg
alive, he and his boy shall never know want as long as they live.
“Lay onto the line, lads! Now, haul! Bless my hemp and cordage! If
that line parts now, we’ll lose one of the most honest men who ever
walked on two feet. Altogether, now!”