FIGHTING THROUGH
Radio had brought ships of the air and ships of the sea into the Arctic
to search for the lost crew from the great Nardak. Radio must now be the
guide to focus the eyes of the searchers upon these dots that were
freezing, starving humans on the boundless wastes.
Like one demented, Lee Renaud hung over his crude sending machine,
tap-tapping his call into the air. He ate next to nothing, slept only in
snatches. He must get in touch with Spitzbergen, with the base ship, the
Kravassin, anchored there.
Since that first disappointment, two other planes had circled in and
passed on, unseeing. These were two seaplanes, sturdy white-winged
biplanes, with black fuselage. They had come that close, near enough for
men on the ice to see, yet not to be seen. Frantic efforts to signal
from the ice had been all in vain. One plane had hung in the air for an
hour's reconnaissance, then had disappeared in the grim Arctic horizon,
flying back toward Spitzbergen.
"Put radios on the rescue planes. Put radios on the rescue planes,
short-wave, telegraphic type. Sending station F-O-Y-N on the drift ice
can then communicate direct and give signals to bring the planes to the
refugees. S. O. S. to the world! Help! Relay the word to Spitzbergen.
F-O-Y-N can't make the touch to its nearest station." Thus, hour after
hour, Renaud sent his call.
For forty hours now, there had been no radio connection between the
refugee camp and the rest of the world. Atmospheric disturbances, most
likely,--a storm brewing and rolling up interference between the
makeshift station and the stations of a listening world! The snow haze
was creeping over the horizon, forerunner of evil weather. And out in
the water lanes, dark forms rose now and again with a swish and a puff,
rolled to blow, and sank again. Killer whales come back, like under-sea
vultures, to await what storm and death might fling to them.
On and on went Renaud with his tapping. There was nothing else to do.
Answer or no answer, his fingers kept doggedly to their task.
Tap--listen--tap--and the snow haze closing down.
Then through the dimness to the southwest, a puff of smoke rose slim and
tall, and then spread out on the damp air in a long wavering line.
Another smoke puff, closer this time! Smoke bombs! Signals dropped from
a plane! With a sudden chitter-chatter that sent his heart pounding up
into his very throat for joy, Renaud's little radio picked up a call out
of the near air. The plane--it was sending the radio call! It was
carrying a wireless set, as Renaud had pleaded!
With flying fingers, Renaud tapped out his location. "Here--to the east
of the smoke bomb! More to the east! Now to the north!"
On came the plane. It was so easy now, with connection between ground
and air. The plane was the splendid silver and orange monoplane that had
searched in vain for them a day ago. Now it swept in a direct line above
them, flew low over the ice pack--lower, lower, but did not land.
"Major Ravoia in the SD-55. No chance to land. Break of the ice would
sink us all." It was a message that sent Renaud reeling across his
machine.
But if the SD-55 could not land, something else could. From over the
edge of the plane, as it hovered low, an object was dropped. This fell
free for a space, then fluttered open into a parachute to which was
attached a large box. As gently as a hand setting a fragile glass on a
table, the broad, inverted chalice of the parachute let its weight down
and down till it eased against the ice.
Renaud had raised his head to watch. Now he went across the ice to the
box with its draping of collapsed parachute. With a piece of metal he
beat open the top--began lifting out the contents. It was enough to stir
the heart of any half-starved marooner--food, clothing, snow glasses,
bandages and medicines, rifles and ammunition and a collapsible rubber
boat.
"Dry clothing! Something to eat! Medicine for your eyes!" he called out
huskily to poor Scotty, who, scarce seeing at all now, came wavering
across the snow slush.
The silver and orange of the monoplane was lifting above their heads
now, but its wireless was pouring out a staccato message that came
sliding briskly into the radio base on the drift ice: "Don't despair.
The ice-breaker Kravassin is fighting through to you. By radio
connection I can locate you again; can pilot the ice ship on."
With a zooming roar, the SD-55 was gone. So quickly did the flash of
orange and silver disappear into the lowering haze, that it seemed
almost a dream that it had ever hovered within hailing distance. Only,
here was the food, the clothing, the strange rubber boat, the parachute
that had eased them to the ice.
And on the air still seemed to hang the SD-55's message: "Don't
despair--Kravassin fighting through!"
On the great Russian ice-breaker hung their last hope.