ON TO GLORY
The little group huddled close on their piece of drift. In the past
hour, winds had swept a huge tableland of frozen white so near that it
had verged on riding down the castaways. But instead a veer of the wind
had sent it scraping by, and shearing off the whole eastern edge of
their domain. A few more such vast, unwelcome visitors and their island
would be ground to bits.
Young Renaud, the only one of the three whom exposure had not crippled
in some way, had hastily gathered together portions of their supplies in
packs that could be strapped to each person. The queer rubber boat was
ready for launching though it seemed beyond reason to hope that this
frail craft could live for even a moment in that grinding, crashing,
ice-strewn sea.
With a sudden hoarse cry, Lee Renaud leaped to his feet, seized the
half-blind Scotty by the shoulder. "Quick! Help me lift Granger to the
boat! In it yourself! I'll stand ready to push off if--if what's coming
strikes!"
Whatever the thing was, tornado or waterspout, a crash seemed imminent.
Straight toward the piteous group on their drift island, the stormy line
of white moved. Tons of ice were hurled up in great masses that crashed
back to churn the sea in gigantic geyser spouts of turmoil.
Lee Renaud shivered and closed his eyes. It would soon be the end. God
give him strength to meet that end like a man! Shoulders squared, head
up, young Renaud stood beneath his wireless aerial with its fluttering
bit of flag that was a little piece of America up here in the Farthest
North.
Boom, crash, boom! It was a titanic sight, ice ripped and torn by
terrific power.
Then behind the ice, through the ice, there came a strange sight. Not
the tornado whirl Lee Renaud was expecting, but the great prow of a
vessel. The most powerful ice-breaker of the North, the Kravassin,
fighting through to the rescue!
Renaud's heart stood still. Relief at the reprieve from death itself
rushed through him in a revulsion of feeling that left him weak. His
limbs were as water, his bones were as sand. He crumpled to his knees.
It was a stupendous spectacle that Renaud was given to watch--a gigantic
battle between the vessel's ten thousand horsepower engines and the
frozen clutch of the North.
How could the great ship smash through to the tiny island without
sinking it?
In anguish, Renaud watched the oncoming, triple-sheathed ram of the
Kravassin cut her terrible path.
The refugees would be submerged, swept off their ice. How could the
monster heave in to them without drowning them?
But with a sure hand, Markovitch, captain of the mighty ice-breaker,
sent his crashing, metal-clad monster in a great circle about the
marooners' piece of floe. Then cutting in, he made a smaller circle, and
a still smaller circle--eased his huge vessel close. Movement was slow.
The great ram of the prow, instead of smashing, was nosing in, creeping
in now.
With a shudder of steam exhaust, she came to rest, her bulk pushing
together the ice drift before her to make a white bridge to the
marooners' island. Over her side swarmed a rescue crew, Ravoia of the
SD-55 leading on foot now to the little ice island he had located from
the air days ago. The castaways were rushed back, sped across rocking
floe, lifted across little chasms that in another moment would be great
chasms. At the ship itself, ladders and hawsers and scores of willing
hands waited to draw them up to safety.
"Easy now! He's injured! That one's not seeing much. Easy, easy!" rose
calls from the ice.
Blanket slings hoisted up Van Granger and Scotty.
Lee Renaud had the strength to go up and over by himself, though the
feel of solid ship beneath him took the last of his fighting spirit out
of him. Safe! He didn't have to be strong for himself and for the sick
and injured men longer. He was going to make a fool of himself--going to
faint. He fought off blackness in vain. He felt kind hands catch him,
lower him. The last he heard was Ravoia calling out, "Hey, get this
up--Renaud's wireless. It's made history, linked the world."
When Renaud came to, he had the feeling that he was still on a bit of
drift ice, that it must all be a marvelous dream--the great ship,
comforts, warmth, the crew calling him a hero.
With the picking up of these first refugees, the Kravassin's work had
just begun. On into the frozen north she pushed, following that one clue
of the lost dirigible, that faint wireless call Renaud's radio had
picked up--"Adrift on ice. Latitude 78."
Life aboard the Kravassin was one steady round of excitement. Food and
comforts soon brought Lee's strong young body back to normal. Snug in
furs, from hooded parka to boot tip, he took his part in the work as the
steel-clad ram bucked the floes, deeper and deeper into the frozen ocean
of the Arctic.
Never was there such a ship as the Kravassin, never such a method of
fighting the power of ice. With metal ram to crack the ice, with keel
built to ride the floe in slide movement, with ten thousand horsepower
engines to push her, the Kravassin fought her fight. Huge water tanks,
fore and aft, were filled or emptied at the rate of hundreds of tons an
hour, so the weight could be increased enormously to crush the ice or so
the ship could roll to smash itself free.
For a week the Kravassin pushed on, pathmaking through the frozen pack,
heading north, trailing the faint clue--"Lost at 78."
It was hopeless. The Arctic summer light was merging into the twilight
that meant the beginning of the long night of the Arctic winter. Man
must flee before that long period of darkness descended. Part of the
crew were ready to turn back. They had done their duty, had crossed
78,--no lost dirigible was in these parts. Perhaps it was all a
hallucination of young Renaud's fevered mind--that radio call from the
north. So the talk went.
They must push on, farther still; it was drift ice the call had come
from; the dirigible may have been swept on and on. Renaud pleaded and
begged for a longer search. He reinforced his pleading with promise of
rich pay out of the golden treasure that had crashed with the gondola on
the ice.
Because of Renaud's intense belief in that faint call, the mighty search
went on yet a little longer. Steel prow crashing tons of ice to the sky
and back--airship flotilla searching from the upper strata--men's eyes
strained ahead for glint of lost silver hulk!
A second week was wearing itself away when lookouts sighted a thread of
smoke on the north horizon.
A day later the Kravassin had fought through to that smoke.