CHAPTER XXIII "A BEAR! A BEAR!"
In the meantime Joe Marion and Jennings were making their way over thetreacherous ice floe toward the party of explorers who were battling fortheir lives against cold, hunger and ever perilous floes.
They had crossed a broad expanse of ice which, level as a floor, laybetween the shore and a series of low, barren, sandy islands. Then forthree miles farther they had traveled over ice which was frozen to theshore. This ice, piled as it had been by storms of early winter intofantastic heaps, here and there mixed with flat cakes and with narrow,tombstone-like fragments set on end, was nevertheless firmly united tothe shore. Over this, winding back and forth on flat cakes and overtumbled piles of ice, they traveled without fear.
When they came to what lay beyond this, all was changed. They enteredupon a new life with fear and trembling. True, the ice, pressed hard onshore by a north wind, was not at this moment moving, yet the slow risingand falling of a broad cake of ice here, the crumbling of a pile there,told them that they were now far out over the fathomless ocean; told themtoo that should the wind shift to south, east or west they might at anymoment be carried out to sea, never to be heard of again.
"Can't be helped," Jennings said grimly, as Joe spoke of this. "When thelives of thirty of Uncle Sam's brave citizens are at stake one does notthink of personal danger. He goes straight ahead and does his duty. Ourduty lies out there." He pointed straight over the ice floes which layfar as eye could scan, out to sea.
"Right-o," said Joe as he turned to urge his dogs forward.
It was hard on Joe, this urging of his faithful four forward over thedifficult trail.
"'Twouldn't be so bad," he told them, "if I wasn't driving you straighton to your own destruction. To think that after all this struggle yourreward is being eaten by some starving explorers. That's what breaks myheart."
"Ho, well," he sighed as he climbed a tumbled pile of ice fragments,"there may be a way out yet."
Night came on, and still by the light of the moon they fought their wayforward. Every moment counted. Their own lives as well as the lives ofthose they sought to rescue were at stake.
Only when the dogs, completely exhausted, lay down in the traces andhowled piteously, begging for rest and food, did they pause and seek acamping place for the night.
A broad cake of ice some hundred yards wide from edge to edge was chosen.In the center of this they pitched their tent. No Arctic feathers forthem that night, only the hard surface of the ice. But even such a bed asthis was welcome after a day of heroic toil.
When the dogs had been fed and they had eaten their own supper they setup the radiophone, and braving the danger of being detected by theoutlaw, sought to get into communication with the exploring party.
"Got to find out whether we are going right," Joe explained.
In a surprisingly short time they received an answer and were cheered bythe news that their course was correct, and that they were at this momentnot more than seventy-five miles from the explorers. With good luck, didnot the ice floe begin to shift, they might almost hope to meet the menthey sought at the evening of the next day and to relieve them of theirsuffering from hunger.
After getting in touch with Curlie and rejoicing over the knowledge thathe was alive and safe, they crept into their sleeping-bags and speedilydrifted away to the land of dreams.
Joe was awakened some time later to hear old Major sawing at the chainwhich bound him to his sled and barking lustily.
Before his eyes were fully open he heard a ripping sound at the flaps ofthe tent. The next instant two great round balls of fire appeared at thegap made in the tent-wall.
"Jennings! Jennings!" he shouted hoarsely. "A bear! A bear!"
The polar bear, attracted by the sound of his voice, lunged forward,taking half the tent with him.
Joe had scarcely time to creep back into the depths of his sleeping bagwhen the bear's foot came down with a thud exactly where his head hadbeen a second before.
* * * * * * * *
What Curlie Carson saw as he plunged toward his reindeer there at theedge of the scrub forest was a spectacle which might well have staggereda person much older than himself.
The forest of scrub spruce was on fire. The fire was traveling towardhim, seemed, indeed, to be all but upon him.
There was not a breath of air. The fire traveled by leaping from tree totree. The very heat of it appeared to seize the dwarf trees and,uprooting them, to hurl them hundreds of feet in air.
It was such a spectacle as few are called upon to witness. A red columnof flame rose a sheer hundred feet in air. Dry, rosiny spruce cones andneedles rose like feathers high in air, to go rocketing away like sparksfrom a volcano. The sky, the very snow all about him, seemed on fire.
"And near! So near!" he muttered through parched lips as he tore at thethong which bound his terrified reindeer to the willow bush.
His thought had been to loose the reindeer, and clinging to the sled,attempt to escape.
It was fortunate that the thong resisted his efforts, for just as he wasabout to succeed in loosing it, he caught above the tremendous roar ofthe fire a strange crack-cracking. The next instant he saw a vast herd ofwild and half tame things, all maddened by the fire, bearing down uponhim. There was just time to flash his knife twice, to cut the thong andthe sled strap, then to leap astride the white reindeer. Then the surgewere upon him. Like a mighty flood they surrounded him, engulfed him,carried him forward.
He saw them as in a dream, reindeer by hundred, caribou by thousands,wolves, a bear, all struggling in a mad effort to rush down the narrowvalley from the destroying pillar of fire.
He saw a wolf snap at a caribou's heels. Saw innumerable hoofs strike thewolf and bear him down to sure destruction.
"Trampled him to death," he shivered, "trampled him as they would me if Ifell from my reindeer."
He clung to the deer's neck and to his harness with the grim grip ofdeath.
"Sled's gone, radiophone set gone. Everything gone but life and areindeer. And thus far you are lucky." So his mind seemed to tell himthings as he felt himself floating forward as if on the backs of theinnumerable host.