KILLERS OF THE ARCTIC
"Help! Scotty! Killer whales!" screamed Lee, plunging forward, striving
to pull pallet, sick man and all back from the edge of the ice.
At Lee's shout, the sea monster slid back into the depths. But not for
long! There came a swish, a puff. Out of the water was thrust again the
huge black snout, in which were set two wicked little eyes.
Other black snouts were thrust above water. Ten, maybe twenty killers
rolled surfacewards and spouted.
Scotty was beside young Renaud now, helping him drag the sick man back
and back from the water's edge. Their hearts throbbed painfully. It had
been a close call. Another instant and the sea killer would have
snatched off the helpless victim and sunk to the chill, dark depths to
gorge itself on a meal of human meat.
"Hi, ya! Sea wolves! Tigers of the sea!" Such were the epithets Scotty
hurled forth as he shook his fist at the sinister black crew that kept
rising at the ice edge, sinking, rising again to glare with ravenous,
evil eyes at meat that had moved out of reach.
Many times before this, Scotty had seen service in the Arctic waters,
and knew well enough about the killer whales. Like the wolf-pack of the
snow barrens, these ferocious sea creatures hunted in bands. The man
shuddered now when he remembered what he had seen of the killers on the
trail. Sometimes these carnivori swallowed dolphins alive without even
taking trouble to kill them. Sometimes the killer-pack attacked a huge
bowhead whale, beat him into submission with leapings and poundings of
their lithe, cruel black bodies, devoured him ferociously, first the
lips, then the tongue, then the rest of the monstrous, helpless body.
Anxiously the marooned men watched the horizon for thunderhead and storm
cloud. Suppose a tempest rolled up, drove their ice field hither and yon
on the sea, smashed and ground it to pieces? It would mean a terrible
end, with the killer-pack of the sea nosing in, ready to devour.
It was hard to set the thoughts on anything else save the sinister sea
shapes that slunk away mysteriously for long stretches, then rolled back
into view, to glide and blow and watch with evil, hungry eyes.
Somehow, though, Lee forced his mind and his hands to concentrate on the
scattered debris of his broken radio. For hours he labored, repairing
the condenser, straightening springs, connecting wires. "F-O-Y-N"--that
one call had gone out on the air from his machine. Had anyone heard it?
Would he ever be able to send another?
An hour, eight hours, for days, the struggle went on. A black-haired boy
out on the bleak white of drift ice striving to rehabilitate a dead
radio! No tools, no resources, no anything save some broken wires and
metal pieces--and the eternal ice!
A wire bent here, a patient bit of soldering there--then all of a sudden
he was in touch! He had done it, made the connection, fired again the
spark of electricity that was the life of radio!
Something was coming in! A chitter-chatter of faint telegraphic code!
"Latitude 78--on the ice--drifting--"
That was all.
No matter how Renaud sent out an answering call, begged, pleaded, tapped
out the code, nothing more came in.
By the buzz from the wire circuit of his direction-finder, the call had
come from the north. From the dirigible--it could be from no other!
For a brief second these two widely separated sections of the ill-fated
expedition had been in touch. Then something had broken the connection.
Atmospheric condition--disaster--storm, who could tell what? Never
another sound came from the north.
Renaud and his companions comforted themselves with the belief that
their shipmates aboard the dirigible had survived thus far.
Except for the briefest periods off for rest and food, and to race up
and down the ice sheet to stir circulation against the treacherous creep
of the bitter cold, Lee Renaud hung feverishly over his radio. It was
their one hope, their one connecting link to anything beyond this frozen
hell.
Two more days dragged by their torturous lengths, and except for its own
little lonely click, the drift-ice radio brought no other sound. It
seemed insane to continue to place hope on this pile of junk. It had
reached a little way into some near region--once--and that was all.
Scotty began to plan how they could strike out over the ice on foot,
move on somewhere, anywhere, in hope of getting nearer to land. This
inaction was terrible. But there was Van Granger to be thought of, sick
and nearly helpless.
Sensing a discussion that he could not hear, Van Granger began begging
his companions to kill him, to put him out of his misery. He wanted to
be no drag, holding other men from their chance to make a dash for life.
Without the burden of him, they could carry food--for a greater
distance. After that, Lee and Scotty always kept their weapons with
them, or hidden out on the ice. Words of comfort and assurance seemed to
make no impression on the sick mind of their injured companion. They
feared that he would do himself some bodily injury.
In the midst of black hopelessness, Lee aimlessly tinkered at the radio
outfit. He shunted wires here and there, set a tube connection
higher--and with a sudden crackle of spark, code began sliding in!
"V-I-A-T-K-A," Lee, counting code with one hand, scratched the
mysterious letters on the snow beside him. Exhilaration shot through
him. He was in touch with something--but what, where?
"Viatka--Viatka!"
There it came again and other letters in a strange jumble that he could
not seem to unravel. The direction-finder indicated south, east.
Frantically Lee poured his own code on the air. He got nothing more,
made no other connection, could only content himself with the fact that
his radio was reaching somewhere beside the floes of Arctic.
What Lee did not know was that, days ago, his first brief call,
"F-O-Y-N," had been picked up by a young Russian amateur wireless
operator by the name of Arloff, living in a village in the Government of
Viatka. Just the faint, far signal of four mysterious letters! This call
out of the ether intrigued Arloff. He wired it on to Moscow, from whence
it was spread throughout the world.
Men began putting two and two together.
Foyn--an island at the gateway to the North Pole!
The dirigible Nardak lost above northern America after a great storm
which had rolled down thence--for days all radio communication cut off
from the Nardak, and no more word from her. And now this mysterious
call, "F-O-Y-N." Did that call hold the answer to the dark riddle of the
lost ship?
The mental eye of the world focused upon that bit of frozen land in the
polar ocean.
Though he knew nothing of this, though some atmospheric disturbance of
the air ceiling interfered with his receiving, Lee Renaud continued to
doggedly tap out his radio call of location--needs--a cry for help. In
Siberia, Alaska, Canada, stations keyed by that mysterious "F-O-Y-N"
checked in his message, tried to check their answering call across the
frozen wastes--but some Arctic interference barred the sound.
Then came some sudden change in atmospheric conditions, storm-charged
stratum of interference lifted, sound went through.
It was from the lofty wireless towers at Fort Churchill, an outpost of
civilization on Hudson Bay, that an operator got the "touch" through to
Renaud.
"Putting through to F-O-Y-N--clear the air, all else--courage to the
marooned--help coming--the planes and ice-breakers of five nations to
the rescue!"
"Rescue! Rescue!" shouted Lee Renaud, then his fingers fell to tapping
again.
"Stand by--the Arctic on the air--F-O-Y-N heard the message--we live--"
Lee Renaud slid to his knees, a prayer of thankfulness in his heart,
then fainted dead away in the snow.