CHAPTER XXII
HOPE AND DESPAIR
"Tat! Tat! T-t-tat!" It was working, the radio code was coming in! Theywere in touch!
The wonder of it! From this lone camp out here on the drift ice, theoperator with his patched-up radio set was in voice connection withlands hundreds--yes, thousands of miles away.
Some metal strips wired together, their bases banked in snow, liftedtheir slender height above this tiny camp on a drift-island of ice.Renaud's radio aerial!
Beneath it, a black-haired boy with determination in set of jaw, darkeyes fever-bright, hands that trembled from hunger weakness in spite ofthe grip a fellow kept upon himself! That was Renaud, huddled at patientwork over screws and coils and some solder on a tin box. It tookcontinual nursing to keep the metal patches and makeshifts in place, tokeep this thing clicking. But he was doing it! Taps--more taps! He wasin touch again with that Hudson Bay operator at a station that was awhole ocean and half a continent away.
"Renaud--up about Foyn--are you on the air? Keep in touch with us. Yourcountry is organizing search crews. Airplanes and ice-breaker ships fromother nations joining the search. Give us news of the lost dirigible.Give us your needs."
Instead of being perched out on a hunk of ice in the vast Arctic, LeeRenaud, wireless operator, might, for all the precision of the affair,have been seated in a swivel-chair at the telegraph desk in someforty-story city skyscraper sending a message over the wires. He was onthe ice--but the messages were going through in great shape.
"Stand by--Renaud on the air! No more word from the dirigible, save thatcall from the 78th latitude. Still clinging to hope for them. Ourneeds--everything. Something dry to stand on, medicine for our eyes, andfood, FOOD!"
Lee shivered in his soggy furs. It was a marvel to be in touch even bysound. But a nearer touch must come soon, rescue. Their ice island wasbreaking in long black lanes. Every hour now the encroaching waterperilously ensmalled their domain.
Later that day the tapping in the radio box began again. The powerfularm of Canadian radio was reaching out with its vicarious comfort. Itwas a strange, homely message that traveled over the frozen wastes thistime. It had started from somewhere down South. Hundreds of amateurradio operators of the monstrous, friendly Radio Relay Organization ofAmerica had kept the word going. A radio "ham" in Hillton, Alabama, hadpicked it out of the air and had wirelessed it on to Bington. A Bingtonamateur had put it on to Johnston. By devious, criss-cross routes, acrippled boy's little message had sped across the length of the UnitedStates, across part of Canada, and now had been flung on the air fromthat greatest of northern stations, the Hudson's Bay Aerial, to speed onwaves of ether till that makeshift aerial near Foyn caught the words:"Lee Renaud, King's Cove is praying for you. Your true friend, JimmyBobb."
Lee Renaud had need of prayers--adrift as he was on breaking ice, withone companion injured and the other slowly falling a prey toice-blindness.
Under the pound of the winds and the steady grind of the waves, theirpiece of ice was steadily diminishing. Where it had once stretched alimitless field, it now lay a mere thousand feet long by some sevenhundred wide. Wet winds had turned its cover of snow into a slush twofeet deep. Lee and Scotty were continually having to move Van Granger tonew ridges to keep him above the slush.
Despite the crude eye-shades that they had whittled out of wood and tiedabove their brows, the awful ice glare had wrought havoc with Scotty'seyes, which were blue and seemed far more susceptible to the ice dazzlethan did Renaud's dark eyes.
Twice now, ice breaks had further ensmalled their island. With terrificlabor, they had moved their precious pieces of broken planking, theirradio, their scanty stores, farther in to the tough heart of the floe.Scotty's eyes had gotten so bad by this time that he hadn't even seen awhite bear, huge sneak-thief that had crossed from another floe, comecreeping, creeping on its broad pads to dig into their pemmican cache. Aquick shot from Renaud's rifle made the dangerous marauder take to waterwith lightning speed for so lumbering a beast, and soon it disappearedin the maze of floating tablelands. Lee looked regretfully after so manyhundred pounds of meat disappearing into the distance. They had need,dire need of that warming, rich bear steak and of the thick fur. A pityhis hand had trembled so!
"T-t-tat, t-tat!"
Staccato stutter of radio coming in again! Oslo, Norway, sending thecall.
"Courage! Relief operations pushing forward. The Russian boat,Kravassin, most powerful ice-breaker in the world, smashing her way upinto the North towards Spitzbergen to act as base ship for the rescueplanes. Dog-sledge camps being laid on mainland to act as further supplybases for rescue flight. Advance wedge of three great airplanes winginginto the Arctic now."
Rescue on the way even now! And the metallic click of his tiny radiobringing the news to the human flotsam out on the drift ice!
"Rescue coming! Wonderful! And yet--" Like some black thread of cloudthat spreads till it darkens a whole horizon, a cloud of premonition, ofanxiety, spread over Lee Renaud's jubilation.
"Scotty," queried Lee, looking out over the limitless stretches ofbroken, drifting white, "how big is this sea we are in?"
"Um--let me see!" Scotty, unbelievably darkened by snow glare, blackwhiskers standing out fiercely round his emaciated face, kept his handto his poor suffering eyes, and answered slowly. "Perhaps it's athousand miles one way, by about fifteen hundred the other."
"Thousand--fifteen hundred!" gasped Renaud. "Why, Scotty, we're lost ina sea as big as the whole United States east of the Mississippi. Andsomewhere in that stretch of water are the pin points that are us! Asilver dot further on, maybe, that's the Nardak! However--why, nolookout in a speeding airship can ever sight us! How can we hope?"
"Miracles. They still happen, sometimes," said the half-blind Scotty.
The next day, when Lee was trying to divide their remnant of provisions,a little chocolate and a little pemmican, into as small portions aswould sustain life, so that it would last as long as possible, he hearda sound up in the sky. A zoom, far away yet coming nearer, nearer!
Scotty heard it too, and ran staggering blindly in circles in the snow,shouting.
A speck in the sky, coming close, closer--a great monoplane with orangefuselage and silver wing.
In a furor of relief and excitement, Renaud and Scotty shouted, waved,threw things in the air.
On it came from the south. The pilot must have seen them and was headingtheir way--no, no, he was passing too far to the left. He was missingthem!
Like statues, the two on the drift ice stood rooted to their tracks.From within the cabin, Granger's weak voice called fretfully, wanting toknow what the shouting was, what was happening?
Nothing--nothing was happening.
Ah, yes, it was! The ship of the air was coming back, coursing in thesky trails like some trusty hunter on the scent. Ola, it must locatethem this time! Wasn't that the engine slowing, the pilot "cutting thegun" for a swoop to their floe?
But above, and still far away to the left of the three on the greatwhite waste, the pilot in his silver and orange craft kept on his way,unseeing.
After him rose hoarse shouts, that the wind whipped to nothing beforethey could ever reach him. Somewhere below him, two humans flung uptheir arms and dropped in the snow. Hope had gone.