DYNAMITING THE REEF.
"No," shouted the boy, "not that, but I think I see a chance of our
being saved!"
"Have they seen us from the ships?" asked Billy.
"No, but the floe has struck a different current and we are drifting
back."
"Are you s-s-s-sure of t-t-t-this?" asked the professor.
"Certain," replied Frank; "I have been watching the progress of other
pieces of drifting ice and the current seems to take a distinct curve
here and radiate backward toward the pole."
"Then we are saved--hurray!" shouted Billy, dancing about on the
slippery ice, and falling headlong, in his excitement, on the
treacherous footing it afforded.
"No use hollering till we are out of the woods," said Frank; "the
current may make another turn before we land near the ships."
This checked the enthusiasm and the boys all fell to anxiously
watching the course their floe was likely to pursue.
"There's our whale," shouted Billy, suddenly. "Look what a smash on
the nose he got."
The great monster seemed to have recovered from its swoon and was now
swimming in slow circles round the floe, eyeing the boys malevolently,
but not offering to attack them. Evidently it was wondering, in its
own mind, what it had struck when it collided with the boat and the
floe.
The floe drifted onward, with the vessels' forms every moment growing
larger to the boys' view. All at once a welcome sound rang out on the
nipping polar air.
"Boom!"
"They have missed us and are firing the gun," cried Frank.
"That's what," rejoined Billy; "and we are going to get a terrible
lecture when we get back on board, too."
Soon the floe, drifting steadily southward, by the strange freak of
the antarctic current, came in view of the lookouts on the ships, who
had been posted as soon as the boys were missed. The boats were at
once despatched, and headed for the little ice island.
The killer whale suddenly took it into his head, as the boats drew
near, to try one more attack, but Dr. Watson Gregg, the ship's
surgeon, who stood in the bow of the first boat, saw the ferocious
monster coming and, with three quick bullets from a magazine rifle,
ended the great brute's career forever. His huge, black bulk, with its
whitish belly and great jaws, floated on the surface for a few
minutes, and the boys estimated his length at about thirty feet.
"Room enough there to have swallowed us all up," commented Billy, as
they gazed at the monster.
"Well, young men, what have you got to say for yourselves?" asked Dr.
Gregg, as the boats drew alongside.
The boys all looked shamefaced as they got into the boat, and two
sailors assisted the half-frozen professor into it. They realized that
they had been guilty of a breach of discipline in taking off the boat,
and that, moreover, their disobedience had cost the expedition one of
its valuable assets, for there was no hope of ever putting the smashed
craft together again.
On their return to the ship Captain Hazzard did not say much to them,
but what he did say, as Billy remarked afterward, "burned a hole in
you."
However, after a hearty dinner and a change of clothing, they all,
even the professor--who seemed none the worse for the effects of his
cold bath--cheered up a bit, more especially as Captain Barrington had
announced that he had a plan for getting the ship off the reef. Ben
Stubbs, who had, with his crew, been taken off the end of the
obstruction by another boat, had announced that the depth of the
obstruction did not seem to exceed twenty feet and its greatest width
forty. Where the ship's bow rested the breadth was about thirty feet
and the depth not more than twenty.
"My gracious," suddenly cried the professor as the boys came out from
dinner; "I have suffered a terrible loss!"
His face was so grave, and he seemed so worried, that the boys
inquired sympathetically what it was that he had lost.
"My bucket, my dredging bucket," wailed the scientist. "I was too cold
to examine it thoroughly and I recollect now that I am sure it had
some sort of sea-creatures in the bottom of it."
"What has become of it?" asked Frank, hardly able to keep from
laughing.
"I left it on the ice floe," wailed the professor. "I must have it."
"Well, if it's on the floe it will have to stay there," remarked
Frank. "There seems to be no way of getting it off."
"I wonder if the captain wouldn't send out some men in a boat to look
for it," hopefully exclaimed the collector, suddenly.
"I shouldn't advise you to ask him," remarked Ben Stubbs, who just
then came up, his arms laden with packages. "We've lost one boat
through going after peppermints or specimints, or whatever you call
'em."
"Possibly, as you say, it would not be wise," agreed the professor;
"never mind, perhaps I can catch a fur-bearing pollywog at the South
Pole."
He seemed quite cheered up at this reflection and smiled happily at
the thought of achieving his dream.
"What have you got there, Ben?" asked Billy, pointing to the
queer-looking boxes and packages the boatswain was carrying.
"Dynamite, battery boxes, and fuses," replied the old sailor.
"Whatever for?" asked the young reporter. "Are you going to blow up
the ship?"
"Not exactly, but we are going to blow her OUT."
"Dynamite the ice, you mean?"
"That's it."
"Hurray, we'll soon be free of the ice-drift," cried Harry, as they
followed the boatswain forward and watched while he and several of the
crew drilled holes in the ice and adjusted the dynamite on either side
of the bow, at a distance of about two hundred feet from the ship in
either direction.
Caps of fulminate of mercury were then affixed to the explosive and
wires led from it to the battery boxes.
"How will that free us?" asked the professor, who, like most men who
devote all their time to one subject, was profoundly ignorant of
anything but deep sea life and natural history.
"It is the nature of dynamite to explode downwards," said Frank. "When
that charge is set off it will blow the ice away on either side and we
shall float freely once more."
"Wonderful," exclaimed the professor. "I had better get my deep sea
net. The explosion may kill some curious fish when it goes off."
He hurried away to get the article in question, while the boys stood
beside Captain Hazzard, who was about to explode the heavy charges.
Everybody was ordered to hold tight to something, and then the
commander pushed the switch.
"Click!"
A mighty roar followed and the ship seemed to rise in the air. But
only for an instant. The next minute she settled back and those on
board her broke out in a cheer as they realized that they once more
floated free of the great ice-reef.
The two ends of the obstruction having been blown off by the dynamite,
the center portion was not buoyant enough to support the weight of the
Southern Cross, and went scraping and bumping beneath her to bob up
harmlessly to the surface at her stern.
There was only one dissenting voice in the general enthusiasm that
reigned on board at the thought that they were now able to proceed,
and that was the professor's. He had been untangling a forgotten rare
specimen of deep-sea lobster from his net, when the explosion came.
In his agitation at the vessel's sudden heave and the unexpected
noise, he had let his hand slip and the creature had seized him by the
thumb. With a roar of pain the professor flung it from him and it
flopped overboard.
"Hurray! we are off the reef, professor," shouted Frank, running aft
to help adjust a stern cable that had been thrown out when the
Southern Cross grounded.
"So I see, but I have lost a rare specimen of deep-sea lobster,"
groaned the professor, peering over the side of the ship to see if
there were any hope of recapturing his prize.
The anchor of the Southern Cross was dropped to hold her firmly while
the steel hawser was reconnected with the Brutus, and soon the coal
ship and her consort were steaming steadily onward toward the Barrier
and the polar night.
It grew steadily colder, but the boys did not mind the exhilarating
atmosphere. They had games of ball and clambered about in the rigging,
and kept in a fine glow in this way. The professor tried to join them
at these games, but a tumble from halfway up the slippery main shrouds
into a pile of snow, in which he was half smothered, soon checked his
enthusiasm, and he thereafter devoted himself to classifying his
specimens.
Great albatross now began to wheel round the vessel and the sailors
caught some of the monster white and gray birds with long strings to
which they had attached bits of bread and other bait. These were flung
out into the air and the greedy creatures, making a dive for them,
soon found themselves choking. They were then easily hauled to deck.
Captain Hazzard, who disliked unnecessary cruelty, had given strict
orders that the birds were to be released after their capture, and
this was always done. The birds, however, seemed in no wise to profit
by their lessons, for one bird, on the leg of which a copper ring had
been placed to identify him, was captured again and again.
The professor, particularly, was interested in this sport, and devised
a sort of lasso with a wire ring in it, with which he designed to
capture the largest of the great birds, a monster with a wing spread
of fully ten feet. Day after day he patiently coaxed the creature near
with bits of bread, but the bird, with great cunning, came quite close
to get the bread, but as soon as it saw the professor getting ready to
swing his "lariat" it vanished.
"Ah-ha, my beauty, I'll get you yet," was all the professor said on
these occasions. His patience was marvelous.
One day, as the ships were plunging along through ice-strewn seas, not
far to the eastward of the inhospitable and bleak Shetland Islands,
the professor accomplished his wish, and nearly ended his own career
simultaneously.
The boys, who were amidships talking to Ben Stubbs, were apprised by a
loud yell that something unusual was occurring aft, and ran quickly in
that direction. There they saw a strange sight. The professor, with
his feet hooked into a deck ring, was holding with both hands to the
end of his lasso, while the albatross, which he had at last succeeded
in looping, was flapping with all its might to escape.
"Help, help, he'll pull me overboard," screamed the professor.
"Let go the halliards!" roared Ben, who saw that there was, indeed,
danger of what the professor feared happening.
"I can't let him escape. Help me!" yelled the professor.
"My feet are slipping!" he went on.
"Let go of the albatross," shouted the boys, who with Ben were
hastening up the ladder leading to the raised stern. It did not look,
however, as if they could reach there before the professor was carried
overboard like the tail of a kite, by the huge bird he had lassoed.
Suddenly, with a howl of terror, the professor, who never seemed to
entertain the thought of letting go of the bird, was jerked from his
foothold by a sudden lurch of the ship.
Ben Stubbs was just in time. He sprang forward with wonderful agility
and seized the professor's long legs just as the man of science was
being pulled over the rail into space by the great albatross.
"Let go, dod gast you!" he bellowed, jerking the lasso out of the
professor's hands, while the albatross went flapping off, a long
streamer of rope hanging from its neck.
"I've lost my albatross," wailed the scientist.
"And blamed near lost yer own life," angrily exclaimed Ben. "Why
didn't you let go?"
"Why, then I'd have lost the bird," said the professor, simply. "But I
thank you for saving my life."
"Well, don't go doin' such fool things again," said Ben, angrily, for
he had feared that he would not be in time to save the bigoted
scientist's life.
The professor, however, was quite unruffled, and went about for some
hours lamenting the loss of the huge antarctic bird. He consoled
himself later, however, by shooting a beautiful little snow petrel,
which he stuffed and mounted and presented to Ben Stubbs, who was
quite mollified by the kind-hearted, if erratic, professor's gift.