“Am I going crazy?”
Raynor, marooned on the drifting berg, passed a hand across his
eyes. The white form that had menaced him with he knew not what
peril a minute before had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
Badly overwrought, the lad stood staring at the place where he had
seen it.
“This won’t do,” he said to himself, “I mustn’t lose my nerve and
get to seeing things.”
With an effort he braced up his faculties. With infinite patience he
waited for daylight. At last, after what seemed years, the east
began to flush with the dawn. Soon a gray light was diffused over
the sea, the fog had lifted and the horizon could be seen in every
quarter.
Raynor gave a groan, despite his determination not to give way, as
he gazed about him. The sea was empty. The berg, surrounded by a
small belt of floating ice, was the only object on the surface of
the waters. Not even a streak of smoke on the sky showed the
vicinity of steamers.
“I must have drifted right off the ocean track in the night,”
muttered Raynor. “It’s a million chances to one now if I ever get
picked up.”
The thought overwhelmed even his sturdy determination to bear up. He
sank down on the berg utterly unnerved. How long he sat there with
his head between his hands in an attitude of abject despair he did
not know.
But he was aroused by a sound of snuffling not far from him. He
looked up and gave a shout of terror as he did so.
Eyeing him from a slight acclivity of the berg not a hundred feet
away, was an immense polar bear!
Like a flash he realized that this was the mysterious visitant of
the night, the other occupant of the drifting berg. The creature, as
is not uncommonly the case, must have been trapped on the berg when
it broke loose from the ice fields of the north.
The bear stood perfectly still except for a wagging motion of its
long, narrow, almost snake-like, head. Had the circumstances been
different Raynor could have found it in his mind to admire the snow
white king of the polar regions. But now his emotions were very
different. The bear was no doubt famished, and he was unarmed,
except for his knife, which would not be much more use than a
darning needle against such an antagonist.
Cold as it was the sweat broke out on the lad’s brow as he realized
his position. He stood immovable, staring at the white bear. The
great creature, too, appeared to be pondering its next move. Behind
Raynor the berg rose to its summit in a series of ledges. Anxious to
place as great a distance as possible between himself and the wild
beast, the young engineer began to climb upward.
The bear did not follow till he had clambered some distance up the
icy walls.
Then it extended its long neck, and opening its mouth emitted an
appalling roar. Raynor’s blood ran cold as he saw it shuffle
deliberately from the ledge where it had been eyeing him and begin
to climb up after him.
“I’ve not a chance on earth,” he groaned.
He looked down at the white monster as it clumsily clambered up
toward him. Its movements were quite deliberate, as though the
creature knew that the lad could not escape by any possibility.
Saliva dribbled from its red fangs as it mounted steadily and Raynor
could glimpse its sharp white teeth.
He felt his scalp tighten with fear and kept back a shout of terror
only by a supreme effort of will power. The distance that had at
first separated the lad and his savage foe was now diminished from
feet to inches. In a few seconds more they would be face to face and
then----?
[Illustration: Raymond could almost feel its hot breath.]
In a frenzy of alarm Raynor seized his tin lunch box from his pocket
and hurled it with all his force in the face of the bear. One of the
sharp corners struck it fairly on the nose and brought the blood.
But it did not stop the creature’s progress.
On the contrary, it enraged it. Shaking its head from the pain, the
bear emitted a thunderous roar of rage and scrambled up faster than
ever. The scrape of its claws, like steel chisels, against the ice,
was horribly suggestive. Raynor could almost feel its hot breath,
when something entirely unexpected happened.
A sudden shift to get further away from the bear resulted in the lad
losing his footing on the steep and slippery surface of the berg.
Like a stone from a sling he shot down the glassy side with the
speed of the wind. Ahead of him was green water but he was powerless
to check himself.
Splash! The lad slid into the water, which closed over him in a
flash. But in a second he was on the surface again and striking out.
Not far from him was a large floe, one of the numerous ones that
belted the big berg. With some difficulty he clambered upon this. He
had hardly gained its surface when a roar made him look round. The
polar bear was not going to be cheated of its prey in that way.
To his horror, Raynor saw the hunger-maddened creature leaping
toward him across the ice floes. In a few minutes it would be upon
him. Those cruel jaws would be crushing and tearing his flesh. The
lad turned sick and faint and reeled as if about to fall. But he was
brought sharply back to his senses.
Bang!
A rifle cracked and the bear, in a pool of crimson, sank on the floe
it was about to leap from. The next instant the phenomenon was
explained. Not far off lay a handsome, yacht-like looking schooner
with her sails aback.
The rifle shot that had saved Raynor’s life had been fired from her
deck. He could see the marksman, a tall, bearded fellow, lowering
his rifle on which the light glinted.
Then Raynor saw a boat being lowered from the stern davits. Four
oarsmen made the light craft fairly skim over the waves toward him.
In the stern sheets of the boat the man who had fired the lucky shot
stood up handling the tiller. The light gleamed in his great bronze
beard and made it shine like copper. His huge build and his attitude
at the helm made him look like a Viking of old.
But of all this Raynor, for the time being, had only a hazy
impression. Vague lights swam and danced before his eyes in a mad
merry-go-round and a sound like the roar of a thousand waterfalls
drilled in his ears. Then everything went out in a great wave of
darkness.