With a roar that brought every other person save the old hunter to his feet, the huge bear swung both front paws to grab the negro. Wash escaped the embrace by the breadth of a hair.

Bang! spoke Andy Sudds' rifle.

"Gollyation! I'se done shot!" bawled the darkey, and sprang into Jack's arms.

The boy hung on to him or perhaps Wash would still be running, he was so scared. Nor were the other members of the party much less startled.

But Andy Sudds was as steady as a rock. His first ball had hit the huge beast in the breast, but the latter had plunged forward after the escaping darkey as the ball struck him. Therefore the wound was too high up to do serious damage.

A grizzly, or Kodiak, bear has never yet been settled by a single shot—unless the bullet entering the beast's carcass was explosive. With a mighty roar the bear plunged forward, right through the fire, scattering it far and wide and aiming directly for the place from which the rifle ball had come. It had stung him, and he was after the old hunter on the instant.

He half fell over the coop which contained the Shanghai rooster. Irritable as he could be, the bear delayed long enough to strike at this coop. He smashed one end of it flat, but the Shanghai miraculously escaped injury.

The bird had undoubtedly been disturbed and frightened by the secret approach of Bruin; but once free, the feathered creature felt his dignity disturbed, and finding himself free of the coop, he flew with a loud squawk at the charging bear.

Andy had pumped two more bullets after his first one. Both had found their billet in the body of the bear; but neither had struck a vital spot. The scattering fire, as the beast plowed through the embers, drove the rest of the party out of range in a hurry. Jack dragged Wash to one side; but the darkey yelled:

"Gollyation! I wanter save Buttsy! Oh, lawsy-massy! Dat Shanghai suahly is a reckless bird!"

In the flaring light of the flames the rooster was seen to pounce upon the shoulders of the huge bear as the latter came down to "all-fours" and dived at the old hunter. Andy sprang back, collided with a tree-trunk, and went head over heels. In an instant the bear would have been upon him and one stroke of his sabre-like claws would have finished Andy Sudds.

But the rooster certainly did delay the bear's charge. The brute struck at his feathered tormentor with first one fore paw, and then the other. He failed to dislodge his enemy by such means.

And then a big ember behind him snapped and a part of the flaming branch fell upon the ground just where Bruin put his hind paw upon it. Plowing through the blaze in a hurry was one thing—this was an entirely different proposition.

Bruin uttered a roar of pain and turned to bite at the stung paw. As he swung his huge body about, the blood now spouting from his jaws—for one of the bullets had punctured a lung—Andy came into position again, with the muzzle of his rifle less than ten feet from the hairy side.

Bang!

An answering roar of rage and pain followed the shot. The beast tried to whirl again, but fell instead. The rooster fled, squawking, into the bush.

The huge bear struggled on the ground for some moments before anybody dared approach. It was Wash who first dashed in and planted a foot upon the dead beast's neck.

"See wot dat Shanghai done?" he cried. "Wot you gotter say now ter Christopher Columbus Amerigo Vespucci George Washington Abraham Lincoln Ulysses Grant Garibaldi Thomas Edison Guglielmo Marconi Butts?"

"I got to take off my hat to the rooster," Andy Sudds said, quietly. "If it hadn't been for him that bear would have had me as sure as shootin'!"

"Butts is a hero—no doubt of that," gasped Jack Darrow, when he could get his breath.

The others—even Professor Henderson—were greatly excited by the incident and delighted by its outcome. Here was fresh meat in abundance, to say nothing of a fine blanket-robe, if they could take the time to stretch and "work" the hide. Andy promised to do that the next day if they would camp where they were long enough.

Meanwhile the bear was skinned and certain steaks cut off for immediate consumption, while the bulk of the carcass was cached under some blocks of ice on the glacier. Andy was for smoking some strips of meat over the rebuilt fire.

"You see, Professor, it's so hot in the daytime here, and so cold at night, that pemmican is about the only kind of meat that will keep—unless it's canned. We'll eat what we can of the fresh bear steaks; but these strips will be all right smoked a long time after the fresh meat has become too strong for anything but a buzzard," quoth the hunter.



CHAPTER XXI

MARK ON GUARD

After the hearty supper, and the excitement of the bear-killing, they were all more or less ready for bed. The professor figured that the sun would not appear again to the Crusoes on this island in the air for quite fourteen hours. They all ought to get sufficient sleep before that time. The havoc wrought by the rays of the torrid sun upon the glacier had been apparent as they came over it to this fringe of trees at the base of the cliff. It might be necessary for them to move quickly from the ice to save their lives.

"We can afford to spend some hours in rest, and will start with bodies refreshed, at least. Now we will divide the watches," suggested the scientist.

But the others would not hear of the professor going on guard. Andy declared for the first watch, for he had to 'tend his "jerked" bear meat. And following him the die fell to Mark. The old hunter awoke the youth some four hours after the camp had become quiet for the night.

The earth was then hanging low on their horizon, while the moon was climbing up from the east, the reflected light of both orbs flooding the surface of the ice-field.

Mark came out of his warm nest yawning like a good fellow, and the old hunter said to him:

"Take that axe yonder and cut some wood for the fire. Keep up a good blaze and that will keep us comfortable as well as keep you awake. I don't want you to go to sleep, Mark."

"Who's going to sleep?" cried Mark, much abused.

But he had to confess to himself that he was mighty drowsy when he had finished cutting up the wood a little way from the camp. He took a turn or two, replenished the fire, and then backed up against a sheltering tree-bole and blinked at the dancing flames.

Sleep overtakes one suddenly and strangely at times. Without intending to even close one eye, Mark was off into dreamland with a promptness that was surprising. He settled back against the tree and slept standing up. But his neglected duty troubled his subconscious mind. He was uneasy. In his dreams he was troubled by nameless dread. He awoke at last seemingly with a scream of human agony in his ears.

Had something happened to his comrades during his brief defection? Mark sprang erect and looked over the sleeping camp. Every person was in his place, but the fire was low. It had been, perhaps, an imagined sound that aroused him so suddenly.

He threw more wood on the fire and stepped out upon the ice to get more of the fuel he had previously cut into handy lengths. This morainial deposit which offered rootage for the trees and bushes was but a narrow streak—a sort of an island on the glacier. They had carried the bear meat out to a small sink in the ice where there were great slabs of the hard crystal which were easily packed over the meat. As Mark started for the wood he heard a noise out on the ice in the direction of their cache. He picked up his rifle again quickly and started for the spot. Something was disturbing the meat, and Mark did not lack courage. His rifle was loaded and, thanks to Andy, he was a good shot. The old hunter took pride in training the boys to shoot well.

The youth did not stop to ask what manner of enemy it was disturbing their cache. And it never entered his head to disturb the camp. He ran right out upon the glacier and had advanced to within a few yards of the spot before he learned what he was up against, for a huge block of ice hid the cache from his view.

Around this ice-block, from either side, as though they had been waiting purposely to ambuscade him, shot several animals, who charged him without as much as a whine.

"Dogs!" thought Mark, remembering the Alaskans that Phineas Roebach had been forced to abandon. "They have gone mad."

But the next moment he saw his mistake. They were wolves—huge, gaunt, shaggy fellows, with gaping jaws displaying rows of ferocious teeth. They charged him in awful silence, their great claws scratching over the ice.

There were eight or ten of them in sight and they were only a few yards away from the youth when he first saw them. But instantly Mark dropped to one knee to steady himself, put the rifle to his shoulder, and opened fire.

Four shots he placed in quick succession. Two of the wolves rolled over and over upon the ice, and a third limped off after the remainder, who darted behind the ice-block again. Mark leaped up, uttering a shout of triumph, and followed them, believing that he had beaten the pack thus easily.

But the moment he came around the obstruction he found himself in the midst of the actual pack. He was not charged by a dozen of the fierce creatures, but by more than half a hundred.

The wolves had raided the cache already, having torn away the blocks of ice, and were feasting on the half-frozen bear meat. Mark did not think at that moment of driving them away, however; he wanted to get away himself.

His shots had aroused the camp, although he was some distance from it. But when his friends ran out upon the ice they did not see him, and nobody for the minute suspected what had happened or where the youth had gone. The two bodies of the wolves were not at first sighted.

Mark did not have a chance to use his rifle again. The wolves seemed to rush him from all sides, and a huge gray fellow leaped against him, knocking the rifle from the lad's grasp and rolling him over and over, half stunned, upon the ice.

By marvelous good fortune none of the savage beasts followed him for the moment. The wounded wolf took up their attention. They pitched upon him and before Mark could rise to his feet the savage brutes had torn their wounded comrade limb from limb.

The ice was stained crimson and their slobbering jaws ran blood. A more terrifying sight the youth had seldom seen. He could not reach his rifle, and the bulk of the pack was between him and the way he had come. He therefore leaped away in the other direction, running from instead of toward his friends.

He passed through the thinning pack without being touched, although several of the beasts snapped at him and the clashing of their fangs sent cold chills up and down his spine. Then he leaped away at top speed across the ice.

It was a natural move, but a very unwise one. The wolves tore their comrade to pieces and bolted the pieces in about sixty seconds. Then they wheeled en masse and shot off across the glacier after the boy.

Mark ran about as fast as he had ever run before. Fortunately he had spurs in his boot-soles and therefore he did not slip on the ice. But suddenly he found that he was crossing a smooth sheet of new ice—the surface of a lake in the glacier. This lake had frozen after the sun went down and Mark felt the new ice bend under him as he ran.

The moonlight revealed his path before him plainly; but the now yapping pack behind took up so much of his attention that Mark did not take a careful view of the surface of the thinly frozen lake.

The leaders were all but upon him in a very few moments. As the first wolf leaped, Mark threw himself sideways and ran off at a tangent, holding his feet much better than did the brutes. They went scratching along the smooth ice for some yards before they could change their course.

The turn, however, put Mark in a serious position. He found the thin ice cracking loudly under his feet. He glanced ahead. There was a streak of open water.

He tried to turn again, but this time his spurs slipped. He went down on the ice. The first two wolves were a-top of him and one seized his arm. But luckily it was protected by his thick coat sleeve.

Then the wolves darted back from the prone, sliding body of the boy. They saw their peril; Mark could not help himself.

With a shriek and splash he was struggling in the deadly cold water of the lake. He plunged beneath the black surface while the yapping pack halted upon the very verge of the broken ice.



CHAPTER XXII

THE WOLF TRAIL

The hole into which Mark fell was not many yards across; but when he came to the surface of the icy water he found that the edge of the strong ice was fringed with open jaws and lolling, blood-red tongues. The wolves had surrounded the open bit of water and were prepared to welcome him with wide jaws wherever he sought to climb out.

The lad knew well enough that he was helpless against these foes. To seek to reach the ice would be to give himself up to the savage brutes. Nor could he remain long afloat in this ice-cold water. He was already chilled to his very marrow.

Mark was in a perilous position indeed. He could bear up but a few moments. He knew that if he again sank beneath the surface he would never rise again.

And so he struggled mightily to keep his head above water. The wolves did not dare leap in to seize him; they did not have to. In their canine minds they probably knew that the boy would have to come to them. But fortunately for Mark the wolves had given tongue when they chased him over the ice. Otherwise the boy's friends might not have been warned of his predicament until too late to be of assistance to him.

But the moment the wolves gave tongue Andy Sudds had started with a whoop for the cache of bear meat. Jack and Phineas Roebach followed with their weapons.

Coming in sight of the slavering pack, as they whined about the open water-hole in the lake, Andy advised his companions as to the situation and they deployed so as to shoot into the pack of wolves without sending their bullets in the direction of the half-drowned Mark.

All using magazine rifles, they were enabled to send such a fusillade into the wolves that the pack was scattered in a few moments. Then they ran on to the edge of the broken ice, finding at least a dozen dead brutes lying about the water-hole.

Jack lay down and reached his gun barrel out to his chum and by its aid Mark got to the edge of the ice and scrambled out of the water. They ran him back to the campfire in short order and then Andy set out to make a second attack upon the wolves, the pack having returned to eat up their comrades.

However, the beasts had already been punished enough. They could not stand before the old hunter, and ran howling down the glacier.

"One thing about it," Andy Sudds said, "we can make up our minds there is an outlet from this field of ice in that direction. To escape we have only to follow the wolf trail."

They were not in shape to travel at once, however. Jack's hand pained him frightfully after his work in helping Mark escape from the water, and Mark, himself had a serious chill before sunrise. Treated by the professor, however, the youth quickly recovered from his plunge into the lake.

But it was decided, nevertheless, to wait over another of the short, torrid days before leaving the trees, for the traveling by night would be much more practicable. So they were leisurely eating another meal of bear steak when the sun touched the horizon with rosy light.

The dawn broke in what Jack termed "record time," and Washington White gave vent to his surprise in characteristic language:

"I done seed de sun rise in eb'ry clime, f'om de Arctic t'rough de tropical to the Antarctic kentries. But de speed wid w'ich disher sun pops up is enough ter tear de bastin 't'reads loose from de Universe—it suah is! I finds mahself," continued Wash, reflectively, "circumnavigatin' ma mind to de eend dat disher 'sperience we is all goin' t'rough is a hallucination ob de brain. In odder words, we is all climbin' trees an' makin' a noise like de nuts wot grows dere. Do you hear me?"

"We hear you," said Jack. "And if you think you're crazy, all right. I don't feel like joining you in the foolish factory yet awhile."

"I more than half believe the darkey's right," muttered Phineas Roebach. "This experience is enough to turn the brain of any man. I don't myself believe half the things we are seeing."

The heat of the sun, as soon as it had well risen, was a fact that could scarcely be doubted, however. They were glad to seek the shade of the fir trees, and the surface of the glacier began to melt with a rapidity that not only surprised, but startled them.

A flood of water, like a great river, began to sweep by the narrow bit of earth on which they were encamped. The roar of the falling water into the crevasse from which they had so fortunately escaped soon became deafening.

They all had to remove their outer garments. The smell of the heated fir branches was like the odor of a forest on a hot August afternoon. Professor Henderson watched the melting of the ice with a serious face. When Mark asked him what he thought threatened their safety, the old scientist replied:

"I am serious, that is true, my boy. I see in this terrible heat the threat of a great and sudden change in this glacier. We must start as soon as the freeze comes on to-night, and travel as fast as we can toward the far end. Mr. Roebach knows the trail, I believe?"

"I've been over it several times; but I must say that the glacier has sunk a whole lot since I was across it before," the oil man declared.

"We can follow the wolves," said Andy Sudds, stoutly. "They knew their way out."

"That is true, we will hope," Professor Henderson said. "For I must state that I believe our peril is very great."

"How so, sir?" Jack queried.

"We do not know how soon this glacier may move on."

"Another earthquake?" cried Mark.

"Oh, gollyation! I suttenly hopes not," wailed Wash.

"No. I do not think we need apprehend any further seismic disturbance. Such gaseous trouble as there is in the heart of this island will find escape—if I do not mistake—through Mr. Roebach's oil well."

"Then what is troubling you, sir?" queried the boys in chorus.

"The knowledge I possess of the nature of glaciers leads me to fear this peril," replied the aged scientist. "Under the immediate conditions this vast river of ice may move forward at any moment."

"Impossible, I tell you!" interrupted Phineas Roebach. "I tell you this is a 'dead' glacier. It has not been in motion for ages. I have seen the face of it at the lower end of this valley. There is only a small stream of water trickling from under it, and the forest has grown right up to the base of the ice wall."

"And how big a stream do you suppose is flowing from beneath the glacier now, and working its way toward what was once the Arctic Ocean—or Beaufort Sea?" queried the professor.

"Why—why—-"

"Exactly," concluded Mr. Henderson, sharply. "You had not thought of that. You see this vast amount of water pouring into yonder crevasse? Water cannot run up hill. It is bound to seek a lower level. It must force its way down the valley, beneath the glacier, and so stream out from beneath the ice at the far end.

"Gradually this flow of water is going to wear away the ice—is going to loosen the entire glacier. And then, suddenly, with no warning at all, the field will plunge forward—break up, sink, grind itself to powder against these cliffs! And where will we be?"

"My goodness gracious gollyation!" cried Washington White. "I wants to git out o' disher right away—me an' Buttsy is ready ter go ter onct, an' no mistake!"

"What will you do—swim?" queried Jack, pointing to the river that was now washing the shore of the strip of soil on which they stood—a river which seemed to stretch the entire breadth of the glacier.

Jack and Mark were deeply impressed by the good sense of the professor's observations; and both Andy and Roebach were disturbed. They watched the disintegration of the ice with considerable worriment. It seemed to melt away much quicker during these hours of sunshine than it had on the previous occasion when the orb of day shone fully upon the surface of the island in the air.

The soil they had camped upon began to crumble away, too, for the heat was insidiously melting the ice under the morainial deposit. At the time which should be high noon—when the sun was directly overhead in its course—one end of the patch of soil, forest and all, slumped into the water with a loud crash, and at once the fierce current tore the rubbish apart and carried it onward to the brink of the crevasse, into the maw of which it fell.

"Wash is perfectly right in his statement," Jack Darrow said. "This is no place for any of us. As soon as the ice freezes up after the sun sets we must travel as fast as we can after the wolves."

"And I wish we could travel as fast as they can," muttered Andy Sudds.

"I wish we had Mr. Roebach's dogs and sleds," said Mark.

"All right. As long as you're wishing, though, why not wish for the right thing?" demanded Jack.

"And what is that, Master Jack?" asked the oil man.

"Wish we were aboard the Snowbird and that she was all right. That's what I wish."

"And I reckon the boy's right," said Phineas Roebach, with a sigh. "As much as I object to flying through the air, an airship now would be a God-send indeed."

What bear meat the wolves had not destroyed the water now washed away. The party had only that which Andy had smoked over the fire. But this was easily carried and their packs were not heavy when they prepared to leave the camp as soon after sunset as the frost would allow.

The terrific change from the heat of midsummer to the cold of midwinter, and all within something near twenty-four hours, was hard indeed to bear. The professor calculated that the drop in temperature from high noon was, two hours after sunset, exactly seventy degrees Fahrenheit.

"Human life will become extinct upon this fragmentary planet, if nothing further happens to it, in a very few years," he said, thoughtfully. "We are not attuned to such frightful changes."

They had eaten, and had packed their supplies. The earth had long since appeared again and the radiance she reflected fell softly upon the ice-field. It glistened like silver, stretching, miles and miles away before them when they climbed down from the fringe of trees in which they had encamped, and set out down the glacier.

They traveled carefully at first, for there were sinks in the ice which had barely skimmed over since sun-down. The thermometer registered 18 above zero, however, and the biting cold was congealing all lakes and pools very rapidly. Where they tramped through the slush their footprints froze behind them. In an hour the mercury had fallen ten degrees more and they were beating their gloved hands across their breasts to keep up the circulation.

They tramped on at good speed for several hours. Here and there along either edge of the glacier, were groves of fir trees like the one they had encamped in. But in places the ice had melted from under and around these patches of rock and soil and the roots of the trees were exposed, while the earth had slumped away in small land-slips until nothing but a heap of debris was left.

The old professor grew weary and Andy insisted upon making camp again and resting. While they were warming themselves over the fire the old hunter built, and Wash was boiling some coffee, Jack suddenly beheld several shining points of light in the little wood on the edge of which they had halted.

"Look out! We're being watched," he whispered in Andy's ear.

The hunter grabbed his rifle and looked where Jack pointed. At once he seemed relieved.

"The wolves," he said. "They know their way out of this valley. I don't want to travel on this ice any longer than I can help."

With a word to the professor, and taking Roebach with him, the old hunter made a determined charge into the brush at the lurking wolves. The pack scattered at first, but finding themselves determinedly followed, and both hunters having been wise enough to take torches with them (for wolves are very much afraid of fire) the pack finally gathered once more and trailed away up a narrow path upon the rocky wall close at hand.

In the white light furnished by the earth-planet Andy counted thirty and more of the beasts climbing this rugged path. He was sure it was no mere lair they went to among the rocks, but a path leading out of the valley altogether. Therefore, when the party was again refreshed, they took up their line of march, in single file, following the wolf trail.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE FIGHT AT ALEUKAN

Phineas Roebach knew nothing about this narrow defile through which the party traveled. But he agreed that they were breaking through the wall of the glacier on the right side. Aleukan, the big native settlement, was in this direction.

There seemed to be a narrow crack through this cliff which had guarded the river of ice. It had never been used by man as a right of way, but the beasts of the wilderness had used it from time immemorial, as the marks along the way proclaimed.

The scurrying feet of the wolf pack, were long since out of the way. But yonder a mountain sheep had been killed by a puma, or other big feline, and the wolves had picked its bones after the Master of the Chase had eaten his fill.

Where a little rill of sweet water sprang from between two boulders, boiling out white sand from the depths of its spring, was the print of a bear's paw. Many of these marks Jack and Mark saw for themselves; but Andy was quick to point them out as he led the way up the steep path.

Their progress was necessarily slow because of the aged professor. Although the scientist was not the man to retard the party, Andy would let nobody take the lead but himself, so that he could watch the old man's flagging steps and call a halt whenever he thought it best for Mr. Henderson to rest.

"You are babying me, Andy!" ejaculated the professor, with some irritation.

"You're the most important person in this party, sir," declared the hunter. "We can lose any other person and not miss him much. But without you we'd be without a head."

Therefore, when they had clambered through the last steep cut and reached the farther slope of the cliff, the hunter called a halt and built a camp, determined to bivouac here although the oil man assured him that they were now less than twenty miles from Aleukan.

A few hours later they awoke to find the sun rising once more and the heat of the exposed hillside becoming unbearable. Were it not for the wonderful clearness of the air they could not have stood the heat at all. But all agreed that they would better descend the hill to the forest and so be sheltered from the direct rays of the sun.

The bearing of their extra clothing in this tropical heat was an effort, and they were all glad to find shelter beneath the huge-limbed trees at the foot of the slope.

There they lay in the shade and discussed the direction they should travel from this point. It was not until this time they discovered that their pocket compasses pointed the north as being in a totally different direction from what they had supposed. Phineas Roebach had declared the native settlement of Aleukan to be directly north and west of the place where he had tapped the mud-spouter. But now, although he was positive of the contour of the hills and the line of peaks of the Endicott Range under which Aleukan was established, their compasses made the direction southwest.

"Not at all strange, sir," said Professor Henderson. "In becoming detached from the old earth, our new planet was shifted a good bit, and that which was to the north is now almost west. If, by chance, this island in the air includes that point on the earth's surface which once represented the most northerly spot—the North Pole, in fact—it is the North Pole no longer. The magnetic needle points instead to a new North Pole, established on this fragment of a planet since it was shot off into space from its parent world."

Phineas Roebach grunted his disbelief in all this. He could not get it into his head that they were riding on a piece of the old earth far, far above that stable planet. He would not believe it. No marvel of this situation could change his belief. He would not accept the professor's theory of what had happened to them.

The sun went down again and the frost began to creep after it. Already the bulk of vegetation about them (save the hardy firs and kindred trees and shrubs) were black and dead. The change in climate had tolled the knell of all those plants that had withstood heretofore the rigors of the Alaskan summer.

"What do you suppose has happened to the Chrysothele-Byzantium herb that Dr. Todd sent us for?" demanded Jack Darrow. "Seems to me that will be badly frost-bitten by the time we find it; won't it?"

"I fear so, indeed," admitted Professor Henderson.

"Lawsy-massy!" gasped Wash. "Do yo' mean ter tell me dat we ain't gwine ter fin' dat chrysomela bypunktater plant after all? What fo' did we come away off here on dis floatin' islan' if we ain't gwine ter git dat specimen of botanical horrorforbilicalness? I done hoped I could tell ma friends w'en I returned dat we done was successful, an' cure some ob dem ob craziness in de haid by applyin' some ob de bypunktater. If we don't find it, den dey all say we been follerin' a chimera-infantum—in odder words, dat we needs some ob de bypunktater our own selfs!"

"You mean," said Jack, seriously, "that they will think we are crazy if we do not bring home what we were sent for?"

"Dat's wot I done said," grumbled the colored man.

"No, you didn't say it; but you meant it, most likely," admitted Jack. "And I reckon you are right. It does seem as though we have come a long way for nothing."

"And no likelihood of our ever getting back!" added Mark, despondently.

But this was out of the professor's hearing. The party was already on their way again, and the traveling was much easier now. Andy and Roebach led the way, followed by the professor and the boys, Wash, with his rooster in a fur bag, following on behind. They covered the twenty miles to the hilltop which overlooked Aleukan without making more than one short stop. By that time both the earth and her largest satellite, the moon, were shining brightly upon this little planet on which our friends had become marooned.

"Hurrah!" cried Jack. "We are somewhere at last! Do you suppose those supplies got over from Coldfoot before that last eruption?" "If the train did not arrive before that time," said Mark, "make up your mind that it never will arrive. Probably there is no Coldfoot on this planet."

"There are some natives on hand, at least," said the professor, with satisfaction.

They indeed saw several men moving about the town; but Phineas Roebach did not seem at all pleased.

"I don't like that a bit," he declared.

"Don't like what?" asked Andy Sudds, quickly.

"There's always a slather of squaws and children around Aleukan. There are two white traders here, too—one representing the Hudson Bay Company and the other working for the French Company. And always a heap of dogs are in sight."

"What do you suppose is the matter?" Jack queried.

"Don't know," grunted the oil man. "Looks as though the squaws and young ones had been sent off with the sleds. Why, those fellows are all armed, too!"

"I expect that the strange happenings have puzzled and frightened the aborigines," suggested Professor Henderson. "We had better go down into the town and try to allay their fears."

The hunter and Roebach evidently had their doubts regarding the wisdom of this move. Yet they had come all this distance for the express purpose of going into Aleukan. They set out down the trail to enter the big village of cabins and skin huts.

Suddenly the group of bucks in the principal street of the town turned and ran shouting toward the little party descending from the heights. Their actions were extremely warlike.

Then up from a side gulch appeared twice as many other Indians, armed with spears and guns. Several shots were fired at the party approaching the town.

"Lawsy-massy!" yelled Washington White. "Disher don't seem like de us'al 'Welcome to our City' warcry. Dem fellers don't want us nohow!"

"Now we see just how popular we are with the natives of Alaska," said Jack. "What do you think of it, Mark?"

"I think we're in bad," returned his chum, gripping his rifle nervously.

"Quite remarkable! quite remarkable!" repeated Professor Henderson.

"Back to that bunch o' rocks!" shouted Andy Sudds, who had taken in the strategic advantages of a position they had just passed, at a glance.

All saw the wisdom of the old hunter's suggestion. They hurried to the group of boulders. They made a natural breastwork behind which a few determined men could hold at bay a horde of enemies—for a time, at least.

"The Indians are coming right on," cried Mark, excitedly.

"And I see some of my old workmen among them," declared Phineas Roebach. "That is what is the trouble. Those fellows have got it into their heads that we are somehow the cause of these misfortunes that have overtaken this part of the hemisphere."

"You go out and parley with them, Mr. Roebach," suggested the professor.

"You can't parley with them while their 'mad' is up," said the oil man. "They're charging. Give them a volley—and don't be afraid to shoot low. They will listen better to reason after they taste some of our lead."

His final words were lost in the explosion of the guns. All but the professor fired. He had no weapon. Several Indians fell, wounded in the legs, for all had taken Roebach's advice and fired low.

With shrieks of rage and pain the Aleuts fell back, and found shelter for themselves behind trees and rocks. But they were not minded to give up the fight so easily. They gradually extended their line of battle until they had our friends completely surrounded. Their desultory fire, however, did not at first do any damage to those in the fortress, and the whites replied only occasionally, taking careful aim and winging an Indian at almost every shot.



CHAPTER XXIV

THE FLIGHT TOWARD THE COAST

Washington White was a good shot, but he did not like fighting. And he was particularly careful not to show himself above the breastwork of boulders behind which he, with his companions, were crouching, holding the Aleuts at bay.

"Disher ain't no place for a'spectable pusson ob color," he muttered. "Wot do Buttsy an' me want o' shootin'? Wah! Dat bullet chipped de rock right near ma haid! Ain't dat Injun got no respec' for who I is?"

"I don't believe he knows who you really are, Wash," chuckled Jack, whose wounded hand was now so much better that it did not keep him from handling his rifle in a way to make old Andy proud of his pupil's marksmanship.

"Can dat be a posserbility?" demanded Wash, vainly. "Ain't dey nebber hearn tell ob me, d'yo s'pose, Massa Jack?"

"I believe they are quite ignorant of who you are," returned Jack, with gravity.

"But some ob 'em done seed me ober dar at Massa Roebach's camp. Yas, sah! I reckernize one o' dem Injuns—de short feller behin' dat tree close up yere. Gollyation! he jest fired dat shot dat come purt nigh hittin' Buttsy."

"He's trying to kill that Shanghai, Wash," said Jack, wickedly. "That's what he's trying to do."

"Dat settles it!" ejaculated the colored man, mighty wroth at this thought. "I ain't goin' ter stan' no sech doin's. Tryin' ter shoot Buttsy; is he? I'll show him in jest erbout a minute dat nobody kin shoot at ma Shanghai wid imputation an' git erway wid it—no sah!"

The boys had no idea that he would do so reckless a thing. Wash was not ordinarily a courageous person. But he was "riled all up" now, and he feared for the Shanghai's safety.

Up he jumped, threw down his rifle, and agilely leaped the fortification in the direction of the short Indian who had attracted his anger. He streaked it across the intervening space so quickly that the startled enemy did not even fire at him.

But Andy Sudds began firing his magazine rifle as fast as he could sight her and pull the trigger, and Roebach followed his example. This volley drove all the Indians to cover and doubtless saved the strangely reckless negro's life.

Wash reached the cover of the Aleut accused by him of aiming directly to finish the Shanghai rooster, and before that startled aborigine could escape, he was disarmed by the black man and dragged across the intervening space to the fort.

Wash was powerful and could easily do this, for the Indian was not a heavy fellow. But on the way one Indian had fired at the darkey and wounded the Aleut in the leg.

"Lemme tell yo'," roared Wash, "I ain't gwine to hab no off-color critter like disher try ter combobberate ma Shanghai. Dat is ma final ratification ob de pre-eminent fac's. Does you understand me?"

"We most certainly do, Wash!" declared Jack, when he could speak for laughing. "And we'll never call you a coward again."

"You have given us a hostage," said the professor. "You have done well."

Wash strutted and preened himself over this praise until another bullet sang over his head. Then he dropped down flat on the ground and groaned:

"Golly! dat bullet said—jes' as plain as day—'Whar is dat coon?' D' youse 'speck dat it meant me?"

Meanwhile Phineas Roebach had taken the wounded Aleut in hand. He not only extracted the bullet and bound up the wound, but he made the fellow explain the situation in Aleukan and tell why the Indians had attacked the white men. The natives believed implicitly that the white men in the strange flying machine had brought the awful earthquakes and storms of ashes, and that now they were burning up the poor Indians for a part of the day and freezing them the rest of the time.

Believing all the whites in the region leagued together they had at once driven out the traders at Aleukan. This Indian did not know what had become of the traders and their assistants. They had started on dog sleds toward the Polar Ocean.

No train had come in from Coldfoot for a month. Therefore it was plain that the supplies Professor Henderson had expected to meet him here would not now arrive. The pass through the Endicott Range was so high that, so the party all believed, an attempt to cross the mountain range would result in the death of those who attempted. There was no atmosphere at the altitude of that pass.

There were no more shots fired after the Indian was brought in by Washington. The whites talked the situation over and finally the oil man made the Aleuts an offer through the captive. It was agreed that if the white men were allowed two sleds and two teams of good dogs, with provisions for the dogs to last a week, they would instantly set out on the trail of the departed traders, thus removing their fatal presence from the vicinity of Aleukan.

This agreement was considered wise by all hands, for they felt the necessity of joining if possible white men who were more familiar with the territory than they were. In numbers there would be strength. If there was to be a war on this new planet between the whites and the reds, it behooved our friends to join forces with their own kind as quickly as possible.

The captured Indian was made to accompany the train for two days and then was freed. The dog teams swept the party over the frozen trail at good speed toward the Anakturuk River which empties into the Coleville, which in turn reaches the Arctic Ocean at Nigatuck, in sight of the Thetis Islands.

Food was very short. Game seemed to have fled from the valleys through which they passed. The cold at night (the only time they could travel) remained intense. And that flight toward the ocean shore—or what had once been that shore—was a perilous journey indeed.



CHAPTER XXV

THE HERD OF KADIAKS

Jack Darrow and Mark Sampson had never experienced so arduous a trip by dog sled as this. The party was really running a race with starvation. The terrible frosts of each long night on this island in the air had killed every species of vegetation the country wide, save the very hardiest trees and shrubs. The country, which two weeks before had been verdant as only a northern country can be verdant in late summer, was now as black as though a fire had swept over it.

Everywhere, too, lay the volcanic ashes that had fallen ere the new planet had been shot from the earth by the volcanic eruption. It was indeed a devastated country through which the Alaskan dogs drew them.

They dared not drive the dogs more than twelve hours out of the long night; but when the word was given to "mush," and the train started, the party kept up a good speed for those dozen hours.

Andy Sudds and Phineas Roebach took the lead in this journey. They understood better how to handle the dogs and how to choose the trail. But, indeed, the trail was pretty well marked for them by the white traders who had gone before. Their camping sites were marked by a plenitude of discarded and empty food tins.

The party ahead, in whose pursuit the boys and their friends were, undoubtedly traveled just as fast as Jack and Mark. And they had a week's start, according to the Indian who had not been allowed to return to his fellows until the whites were well along the trail to the Anakturuk River.

The valley of the river, when they reached it, was a desert. There was little wonder that most of the game had fled. All herb-eating animals would have died for want of forage.

"I am not sure," the professor said, gravely, during one of their campfire talks, "that physical life of any kind can long exist in this small planet. The vegetation is being rapidly destroyed. Soon the ground will become like rock. The carnivorous beasts will live for a while on the more timid creatures, then they will fight among themselves until the last beast is destroyed.

"There were no great lakes in this Alaskan region when our present planet was a part of the earth. We do not know how full the streams may be of fish. There are few birds to be seen, that is sure. I fear that before many years this will be either a dead and frozen island floating in space, or it will be absorbed by some other body of the universe."

"You said, Professor," Jack observed, "that its ultimate end would either be to fall into the sun, or collide with the earth."

"And that is my belief yet; but I have no means of knowing surely."

"I hope she bumps the world again!" cried Jack. "Maybe we can get off then."

"It will do a lot of damage when it falls," said Andy Sudds, reflectively. "Some folks up there in the earth will get hurt."

"Perhaps not," the professor said, hastily.

"How can it be otherwise?" Mark demanded. "This fragment of the world must be enormously heavy. Cities—counties—whole states will be buried if we should fall into the earth."

"Not if we came down into one of the big oceans," said Professor Henderson. "We would probably sink some vessels, and might overwhelm islands; but if this island in the air is as big as Australia it could easily fall into the Pacific and do no particular harm to any present existing body of land—save through the great tidal waves that would result from such a fall."

"It is an awful thing to think of," cried Mark. "I don't see, no matter how this awful affair ends, but that we are bound to be overwhelmed."

"We do not know that," declared the professor, with his wonted cheerfulness. "Never say die. Our safety is in the hands of Providence. We have not got to worry about that."

"Isn't he a wonder?" whispered Jack to his chum. "We ought to take pattern by him. Our grumbling and anxiety is a shame."

Yet it was very difficult to remain cheerful under the circumstances as they then were. Their provisions, even for the dogs, were at a low ebb. Not a shot at edible bird or beast had they obtained since leaving Aleukan. And the torrid sun by day and the frost by night were most trying.

"However," said Professor Henderson, "I have kept a careful account of the fluctuations of temperature since the catastrophe, and I find that the mercury does not descend into the bulb so far now as it did at first. We are circling the earth, as the earth circles the sun. At present we are turning more toward the sun. It is coming summer. The sun will more and more heat this torn-away world. I do not believe that vegetation will start, and I look for nothing but frost during the hours of the sun's absence. But the cold night is not so intense as it was at first."

"It's quite cold enough, just the same," Phineas Roebach grunted. "It was summer a few days ago—the best summer this part of Alaska ever has. And to jump right into cold weather—midwinter, as ye might say—is enough to kill us all."

The oil man simply ignored the professor's scientific explanations of their situation and the changes in their environment. He absolutely would not believe that they were floating in the air above the earth's surface.

The trail down the valley of the Anakturuk was fairly smooth and well defined; when they struck the Coleville—a much wider stream—the shore was very rugged, and the dogs could scarcely drag the sleds over some stretches of the route.

The traders who had gone before them were certainly having a hard time. Our friends traveled very slowly for two days, walking most of the time. Then they found that the veil of ice that had formed on the wide stream since the region had become a torn-away world, would bear both men and dogs; the sun merely made it spongy for a few hours each day, but did not destroy the ice, which was now three or four inches thick.

Each night when the sun set and the air cooled the water on the surface of this sheet of smooth ice congealed again, making a splendid course for skating—had they only possessed the skates. But the sleds slipped more easily over the ice and the dogs were saved for two or three days longer. The brutes were almost starved, however, and one of them going lame, when they were released at a certain stopping place, the others pitched upon their wounded comrade and like wolves tore the unfortunate dog to pieces before Roebach could beat them into submission.

Andy Sudds chopped through the ice and set lines for fish; but the catch was so small that the party could not spare more than the bones for the dogs. Starvation faced them. Mark was miserably despondent, and Wash was so lugubrious all the time that he seldom exploded in his usual pyrotechnical displays of big words. His grain supply for the Shanghai had completely run out, too, and the colored man divided his own poor rations with his pet.

"And the rooster's that lean he wouldn't be anything but skin and bone if we killed and cooked him," Jack wickedly proposed.

Wash looked upon his young friend in extreme horror.

"Eat Buttsy?" he finally gasped. "Why Massa Jack! I'd jest as lief eat a baby—dat I would!"

But the matter of eating was past the joking stage now. The dogs fell on the ice and could not get up again. It was a mercy to put them out of their misery, and this is what Phineas Roebach and Andy did—shooting each faithful creature through the head and leaving the carcasses for the wolves which had, all this time, followed the little party at a respectful distance.

"If wolf meat was fit to eat we'd certainly live on the fat of the land," quoth the oil man.

"I wouldn't mind meeting a bear—savage as that other fellow was," said Andy Sudds.

And before they were through with this adventure they saw all the bear meat—and that very much alive—that the party ever wished to behold.

First, however, came Mark's invention. They dragged the empty sleds—after the dogs were killed—for several miles and then went into camp beside the stream, while the sun rose and warmed them most uncomfortably.

Roebach suggested abandoning the sleds as they could carry the little stock of movables they now owned. But Andy was opposed to this as he feared the professor might break down, in which event they would have to drag him.

"We must keep one of the sleds, at least," the old hunter insisted.

"I have a scheme," quoth Mark, suddenly. "Why not use the sleds—both of them?"

"True enough—why not?" scoffed Jack. "Let's keep them to slide down hill on. Do you realize that the professor says we are still three hundred miles from Nigatuk and the mouth of the Coleville?"

"That is the reason I suggest traveling by sled instead of dragging them behind us," said Mark, unruffled. "I've got an idea."

Jack stopped then. When Mark said he had an idea his chum knew it was probably worth listening to, for Mark possessed an inventive mind.

"We will have to strap the robes and blankets on our shoulders if we abandon the sleds," Mark Sampson said, quietly. "Let us utilize them to better advantage and save the sleds in addition."

"How?" asked Phineas Roebach.

"Make sails of the robes and propel the sleds, riding on them, too," declared Mark. "Such wind as there is is pretty steadily at our backs. Why not?"

"Why not, indeed?" shouted Jack. "Hurrah for Mark!"

"A splendid thought, my boy," declared the professor.

Poles were cut for masts and Andy rigged a stout one on each sled, with cross-pieces, or spars, to hold the blankets spread as sails. Andy even rigged sweeps for rudders with which to steer these crude ice-boats. They got off under a fair wind as soon as the river was passable again, and ran fifty miles straight away without stopping. This was a great lift toward the end of their journey, and all plucked up courage. The Shanghai seemed to share the feeling of renewed hope, and began to crow again.

They were obliged to rest over the sunlit day, as before, for the ice became covered with a sheet of water an hour after sunrise, and they were afraid the sled runners would cut through and let them all down into the stream.

However, they saw very well that—barring some unforeseen accident—they would be able to reach the mouth of the river before the last of their scanty food supply ran out. All the way now they looked for signs of the traders from Aleukan, who had started for the coast ahead of them. These men, however, seemed to have left the rough path along the bank of the Coleville, and were either traveling on the ice ahead, or had struck off into the wilderness.

When they set sail for a second time the heavens, for the first time since the final cataclysm that had shot them off into space, were beginning to be overcast.

"There is so great an evaporation while the sun is shining that I am surprised that we have not had snow before," the professor observed. "These mists rising from the earth and the bodies of water would become heavy nightly rains in any other climate. Here they will result, now that the atmosphere has become saturated with moisture, in heavy hail storms and much snow. It is nothing more than I have looked forward to."

The remainder of the party were not so much interested in the natural phenomena as he, however; they looked forward mainly to reaching some safe refuge—some place where there were supplies and the fellowship of other human beings.

The wind increased, but its keenness the party did not mind. They were only glad that it remained favorable to their line of travel. They swept down the frozen river at a speed not slower than ten miles an hour.

The wolves had followed them on the ice, or along the edge of the river, up to this time. They saw, indeed, a pack of the ugly creatures on a wooded point ahead of them, at a distance of a couple of miles. But before the sleds reached this point (which served to hide the icy track beyond) the wolves suddenly disappeared.

"Something has scared them fellers," Andy declared.

"The traders?" suggested Jack, who traveled with the old hunter and Mark on one sled, while Roebach, Wash and Professor Henderson sailed on the other. "Not hardly. Men wouldn't scare them critters so. Something bigger and uglier than the wolves themselves, I reckon."

To prove how true Andy's guess was, Mark shouted the next moment:

"A bear—two of them! Three! See that crowd of bears, will you? No wonder the wolves skedaddled."

Several of the huge bears, like the one they had had the fight with on the glacier, appeared out of the woods and waddled on to the ice. They had evidently sighted the sailing party, and they roared savagely and tried to head off the sleds. That they were wild with hunger, there could be no doubt.

"I have heard the Indians say that, in bad seasons, the bears travel in packs like wolves, and will attack villages and tear the huts to pieces to get at the inmates," Roebach said, from the other sledge.

"How fortunate that we are not afoot, then," Professor Henderson remarked.

The next moment the two sleds shot around the wooded point and the river below lay before them. The bears were galloping after the party and shut off all way of escape to the rear.

"Oh, gollyation! Looker dat mess ob b'ars!" shrieked Washington White.

And there was a good reason for the black man's terror. Strung out across the frozen river, as though they had been waiting for the coming of the exploring party, was a great herd of Kodiak bears—monsters of such horrid mien that more than Washington were terror-stricken by their appearance.

There were more than half a hundred of the savage creatures, little and big, and they met the appearance of the two sailing sledges with a salvo of bloodthirsty growls.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE ABANDONED CITY

It was too late for our heroes and their friends to escape giving battle to the bears. They could not steer the sleds clear of the monsters, nor could they retreat. There were enough of the savage beasts in the rear to make this last impossible.

"Come ahead!" yelled Andy Sudds to Phineas Roebach, who guided the second sled. "Don't stop."

Jack and Mark, with the old hunter, were on the first sled. They were armed with magazine rifles, and all seized these and prepared to fight for their lives.

Andy jammed the sweep with which he had been steering between his knee and the stake at the rear of the sledge, and put his gun to his shoulder.

"Shoot into the nearest bears, boys," he commanded. "You both take that big fellow right ahead. Get him down and I'll try to pepper those on either side."

But the bears were all shuffling across the ice to get at the sailing sleds. They were fast bunching immediately in the front of their human enemies.

Jack and Mark obeyed the old hunter's order. They poured their fire into the huge, shaggy beast that rose on its hind legs before the sled, and roaring, spread its huge paws abroad ready to seize it and its human burden.

Fortunately the wind had suddenly increased as the sleds rounded the wooded point. They were traveling faster. The lead pumped from the rifles of the two boys spattered against the breast of the great grizzly, and stained its coat crimson in great blotches. But he stood, roaring in rage and pain, until the sled was right upon him.

Jack and Mark were forward of the sail, which was hoisted amidships. The sled was surrounded by the savage beasts, and when it struck the tottering brute that alone stood in its direct path, there seemed to be at least half a dozen of the bears on either side, rising on their haunches in preparation to strike.

The collision almost overbalanced the sled. It certainly overbalanced the bear, that had been hit by eight bullets from the rifles of Jack and Mark. And the huge body, lying right across the path of the sledge, halted it.

"Swing your guns, boys!" bawled Andy. "Jack to the left, Mark to the right hand."

Our heroes understood this command. They had been in tight places before with the old hunter, and now they partook of his enthusiasm.

The rifles spattered the lead among the nearest bears. Some of the creatures fell back wounded. Some were merely enraged the more and, roaring their wrath, continued to advance.

Meanwhile the old hunter had seized the steering sweep and endeavored to turn the sled aside. It had rebounded from the heavy carcass of the bear which had dropped upon the ice before it. Now Andy tried to work the sled around this obstruction.

The second sled came; on, the professor relieving Roebach at the helm, and the oil man and Washington White pouring in volley after volley at the bears. The black man was a good shot and in the excitement of the battle he forgot to be terrified. His bullets told as well as did those from the rifle of Phineas Roebach.

And fortunately the aged scientist brought this second sled safely through the line of bears. The first sled took the brunt of the battle. When that on which the professor sailed was a hundred yards beyond the herd of Kodiaks, he swerved it into the eye of the wind and so brought it to a halt without lowering the blanket that served as a sail. "Come on back and help' em!" cried Phineas Roebach, leaping out upon the ice.

He started back toward the fight, firing as he went. Wash followed more cautiously; and when one wounded beast started on a lumbering gallop in his direction, the colored man uttered a frightened shriek and legged it back to the professor.

Fortunately just about then the sled on which the boys and old Andy fought, came through the ruck of the struggle. Andy hacked with a hatchet the paws from the last Kodiak that tried to seize the sled, and the two boys continued to pour bullets into the howling, roaring pack.

They took Phineas aboard the slowly moving sled and so reached the professor and Wash. Immediately that sled was put in motion and the party traveled a full mile before they dared halt and take stock of the damage done.

The bears had given up the pursuit. The ice for yards around had been crimsoned by the blood of the huge beasts. They could count, even at that distance, ten dead ones, and many would die of their wounds.

"And we didn't get even a slice of bear steak to pay us for it all!" groaned Jack.

"Wrong," returned Andy Sudds, proudly, and he held up the two paws he had severed from the last brute. "Those will give us all a taste of fricassee—and that same dish will be a welcome one, I declare."

They were not again molested by bears; but looking back when they had traveled on some distance farther (the river being straight in this place) they saw a huge pack of wolves gathering on the ice—more than two hundred at least of the savage brutes—and believed that a battle royal was in progress between the remaining Kodiaks and the wolves.

"I hope they fight like the Kilkenny cats!" declared Jack, with emphasis, "And I hope the wolves will be kept so busy picking the bones of the slain that they will follow us no farther. They are like sharks at sea. I hate the beasts."

The country they passed as they slid down the river remained all but deserted. The wind rose and wafted them faster and faster on their way; but it was plainly bringing them a storm, too.

When the sun rose next time it was behind a thick mantle of mist. Thunder rolled across the heavens and the lightning glared fitfully. The heat had been unbearable before the storm, and the downpour of rain was terrific. The party was washed out of its encampment, and had it not been that Andy discovered shelter for them in a sort of cavern under a huge boulder, they would all have been saturated.

The storm ended with a sharp fall of hail. Hailstones as big as duck eggs fell, and the wind blew so that a portion of the river-ice was broken up. When the storm ceased the sun was only an hour high and it was already cold.

There being no dry wood now, the party suffered exceedingly before they were able to set sail again on the re-frozen river. Quite six hours elapsed after the cessation of the hailstorm until the ice would again bear.

The wind had then risen to a gale, and once under way, the sleds were borne on under closely reefed blankets. They traveled down the stream at a furious pace—at least twenty miles an hour—and arrived within sight of Nigatuk. But the appearance of this large and lively town (or so they had been led to expect it to be) was startling.

Not a house was standing. Most of the ruins were blackened by a devastating fire. And silence brooded over the place—a silence undisturbed by a human voice, the bark of a dog, or any other domestic sound.

The delta of the Coleville River hid the ocean beyond. All they could see were the ice-bound forks of the stream. And no sign of life appeared in all that vast region to which they had flown for refuge and food.



CHAPTER XXVII

THE WHALE HUNT ASHORE

The depressing influence of this disappointment could not fail to be felt by all—even by the old professor. They were without an ounce of food and had no means of continuing their journey, even had they possessed an objective point.

Nigatuk was expected to have stores. Whalers as well as Government ships often touched there. If this torn-away world was to float about the parent globe for long, Nigatuk might have become a focussing point for all the inhabitants of the new planet.

But the volcanic eruption, or the earthquakes, had evidently shaken Nigatuk to bits, and fire had finished what remained after the earthquakes got through. As for the former inhabitants of the place, our party could not even imagine what had become of them.

When they went through the wrecked town, however, they found many bones picked by the wolves. Some of the Nigatuk people had met their death and the savage beasts had reaped the harvest. They found no signs of the company of traders whom they supposed they had followed from Aleukan, far up in the foothills of the Endicott Range. Not a boat was frozen into the ice at what had once been the wharves at the abandoned city. That the remaining inhabitants had sailed away after the catastrophe was at least possible.

"At least, the ocean must be out yonder somewhere," declared Phineas Roebach, pointing down the nearest estuary of the Coleville.

Professor Henderson did not verbally agree with this statement; yet he made no objection to the suggestion that the party take up its journey again toward the sea.

The wind was fitful. They traveled unsteadily, too, tacking back and across the estuary, because the breeze was so light, and no longer astern. Ten miles down the mouth of the stream they beheld an island where huge sheets of ice were piled one upon another, in an overhanging jumble of ice-hummock, some fifty feet high. And along the edge of this cliff was a herd of sea lions, that roared mournfully as the sleds advanced.

"Thank goodness!" exclaimed the professor. "There is meat again."

Andy and Roebach needed no urging to the attack. Nor did the boys. They disembarked carefully and made a detour so as to get at the rear of the herd. The sea lion is not a very sagacious beast.

Jack and Mark were on either side of the old hunter and were moving upon the herd with considerable circumspection, and all had about come to a place where the rifles could be used effectively, when Jack Darrow spied something that brought a cry to his lips.

Fortunately both the hunter and Mr. Roebach fired the next instant and two of the sea lions were hit. The remainder of the herd slid over the ice-cliff and flopped away at good speed toward a break in the ice through which they could get into the water.

But Jack began to dance and shout, and Mark was too surprised to even fire at the herd.

"What under the sun is the matter with you, chum?" exclaimed Mark, with some asperity. "You're as bad as Washington White."

"Maybe I'm worse," bawled the cheerful Jack.

"You scared off them sea lions, boy," admonished Andy Sudds. "We only got two of them."

"Don't care if I did," replied Jack. "See yonder!"

The others followed the direction of his pointing arm with their gaze. Off beyond the headlands at the mouth of the river rose a column of thick black smoke. It was as big a smoke as though some great forge or factory was working overtime in that direction.

"Hurrah!" cried Mark, re-echoing his chum's delight.

The entire party was delighted. Yet not knowing who the people were who made the smoke, nor under what circumstances they would find them, the dead sea lions were packed aboard the sleds before they continued their way down the river.

"That smoke lies a good way beyond the mouth of the river," said Phineas Roebach. "I believe it is on the sea."

"A vessel afire?" proposed Mark.

"It's a fire on a vessel," said the professor, suddenly. "I believe that is the smoke of the trying-out works on a whaler."

"You've hit it, Professor," agreed Andy Sudds. "It's a whaler for sure. There's more than you, Phineas, hunting for oil up in these regions."

"A whaling ship on this island in the air," murmured Jack. "What will they do with the whale oil? They will never get back to San Francisco again."

"We do not know that," said the scientist, gravely.

The last few miles, during which they could not see beyond the high ice-shod banks of the estuary, were traversed slowly enough. They all grew anxious to know what the column of black smoke meant.

Finally they came to the open mouth of this branch of the river. The sight they beheld almost stunned them.

Instead of an ocean, rolling up in great surges upon the beach on either hand, they beheld a vast sink through which the partly ice-bound river crawled as far as the eye could see. They knew that this was the old bed of the Arctic Ocean; but the waters of that cold sea had receded and left little but ice-bound pools here and there.

"Fo' de goodness gracious sake!" cried Wash. "Does yo' mean ter try ter mak' me beliebe dat disher place is whar' de great an' omniverous ocean once rolled? Dat de hugeous salt sea broke its breakers on dem ice-bound shores? Git erlong, chile! Yo' is tryin' ter bamboozle me, suah."

"That is where the Arctic Ocean rolled, all right," growled Phineas Roebach. "I can swear to that. I have been here before. Something has certainly happened to it."

"I declare!" chuckled Jack Darrow, who could not miss the joke, despite the seriousness of their situation. "Somebody has removed the ocean without permission." Behind a great fortress of rock which had once been an island they saw the same column of smoke. But it was something nearer to them on the bed of the Arctic sea that more particularly attracted their attention.

"Look at that thing! That monster!" cried Mark, pointing.

"And there is another!" shouted Jack.

"Whales!" yelled the excited Andy Sudds. "Those are whales as sure as shooting—there's a school of them here."

And they had no more than made this discovery when a party of men, all dressed in furs and some dragging great sleds behind them, came out from behind the pile of rocks which had certainly once been an island in the ocean.

These new-comers did not see our heroes and their friends, but they approached the whale stranded nearest to the rocks. This huge leviathan, like all the others of the herd, was long since dead. The men attacked him with blubber-saws and axes and began to cut him up in a most workmanlike manner.

"A whaling ship, sure enough," declared Professor Henderson, who seemed the least astonished by these manoeuvres. "We will be among friends soon. And we will hope that the ship—despite the fact that her crew has come whaling ashore,—will have her keel in deep water." The party ran their sleds ashore on the right bank of the river at its old mouth. Then they started at a round pace for the spot in the old bed of the ocean where the crew of the whaler were cutting up their prize.



CHAPTER XXVIII

ON THE WHALING BARK

It was several miles from the brink of what had once been the polar sea to the spot where the whalers were at work. Jack Darrow, Mark Sampson, and their friends found it a difficult way to travel too.

Naturally they had abandoned the sleds. The ice on the stream which flowed out of this mouth of the Coleville River was so broken that they could no longer use it as a highway. The bottom of what had once been the ocean was only partly ice-covered. There were enormous rocks to climb over, or to find a path around. Reefs and ledges reared their heads fifty feet and more high. There were sinks, too, in the floor of the old ocean; but these were mostly covered with ice.

The Arctic Ocean must have receded at the time of the upheaval which had flung this island into the air so rapidly that many of the sea's denizens, beside the school of whales, could not escape.

Here, in one big pool, lay frozen in the ice a monster white shark. It had battered itself to death against the rocks in trying to escape. Through yonder blow-hole in another pool there suddenly appeared an enormous bewhiskered head, with great tusks like the drooping mustache of a soldier.

"A walrus!" exclaimed Jack, recognizing the creature.

"And yonder are seals playing in the open pool," said Mark.

"These pools, or lakes, are still of salt water," said the professor, thoughtfully. "Ah! what would I not have given to have been on that headland yonder at the moment the ocean went out."

"Not me! Not me!" cried Phineas Roebach. "I'd gone completely off my head then, for fair—I know I would!"

"Mr. Roebach is not quite sure now that he isn't suffering from some form of insanity," said Jack, chuckling.

"Den it suah is too bad dat we nebber kin fin' dat chrisomela bypunktater plant ter cure him wid," declared Washington White, dolefully.

"But, by the piper that played before Pharaoh!" ejaculated Phineas Roebach, at last brought to a point where he had to admit that no reasonable explanation would fit the conditions confronting them, "tell me this: What has become of the Arctic Ocean?" "You can search me!" drawled Jack. "I can assure you, Mr. Roebach, that I haven't seen it. Have you got it, Mark?"

"The question of what has become of this great sea which once washed the shore we are now leaving," said Professor Henderson, seriously, "is a remarkably interesting one. The ocean may have merely receded for a few miles at the time of the volcanic eruption and earthquake which threw off this new planet."

Phineas Roebach shook his head at this, but said nothing.

"It may be," pursued Mr. Henderson, "that that part of our old world that was shot into space did not include much of this Arctic sea. We may find beyond here," pointing, as he spoke, ahead, "instead of the receded ocean, no ocean at all. We cannot believe that this island in the air is spherical like our own old earth. It is a ragged form which will show on what we may call the under side the very convolutions and scars made by its breaking away from the old earth. Do you get my meaning?"

"Yo' suttenly is a most liquid speaker, Perfesser," declared Washington White. "Yo' was sayin' dat w'en disher new planet broke off de earf, she slopped over de whole Arctic Ocean."

"Perhaps that puts it quite as simply," said Professor Henderson, smiling grimly. "The ocean 'slopped over'. It was either left behind to partly fill the cavity left by the departure of this torn-away world we are living on, or it has receded into the valleys and sinks upon the other side of this small planet."

Phineas Roebach threw up both hands and groaned.

"It's as clear as mud!" he cried. "I don't understand a thing about it."

But the old professor went on without heeding him, knowing that his pupils, Jack and Mark, were deeply interested in the mystery of this torn-away world, or island in the air.

"It is a moot question whether or not the weight of the water which lay in this vast sink, before the eruption, was not needed, and is not needed right now, for the balancing of this tiny planet we are living on. Nature adjusts herself to every change more quickly than human intelligence. How much of the crust of the earth, extending up into the polar regions, was broken away from our old world, we do not know. But that it is now perfectly balanced we can have no doubt—that balance is proved by the fact of the regularity of the recurrence of night and day."

These and many other observations Professor Henderson spoke as the party continued its rugged advance over the more or less dry bottom of the ocean. In two hours the party was observed by the crew of the whaler at work on the carcass of the great whale. The sailors signaled to them, and when the boys and their friends drew near, some of the whalemen ran forward to welcome them.

"More refugees from inland, eh?" exclaimed a rough but cordial seaman, who proved to be the captain's harpooner and boat-steerer. "We have some traders from Aleukan already with us."

"Ah!" said Professor Henderson, "we have been looking for them. They have arrived in safety, then?"

"But nearly frozen," said the boat-steerer.

"And where are the people of Nigatuk?"

"We believe all those not killed or burned in the first earthquake were taken off by the United States revenue cutter Bear. She sailed for Bering Sea some time before the final earthquake."

"And where is the ocean?" demanded Phineas Roebach.

"It was sucked away in a great tidal wave and left the Orion high and dry yonder," said the sailor.

It was evident that the sailors had no appreciation of the real happening. They did not know that they were cut off from the old earth by thousands of miles of space. "Your bark's name is Orion, then?" queried the professor.

"Aye, aye, sir," said the boat-steerer. "The Orion, out o' New Bedford; the only whaler under sail in these seas, I reckon. Most o' them that's after the ile is steam kettles," he added, thus disrespectfully referring to the fleet of steam whalers from San Francisco.

"But we got 'em all beat, I guarantee," he added, grinning. "We was chasin' a school of big fellers when the sea sucked out and left us an' them high and dry. But the skipper says the sea will come back in good time and mean-times we gits the ile."

Just then the boat-steerer was sending off several sled loads of blubber to his ship, and Jack and Mark, with the professor and their companions, accompanied the cargo.

The Orion was a fine big bark and was commanded by an old-fashioned Yankee skipper of the type now almost extinct. He welcomed the travelers aboard his ship most cordially, the ship itself all of a stench with the trying blubber, and overshadowed by a huge cloud of black smoke, for the fires were fed with waste bits of blubber and fat.

The skipper and crew were literally "making hay while the sun shone," for there were more than twenty huge leviathans within a circuit of ten miles from the bark, and they proposed to have every one of them before the flocks of seabirds, or the bears, should find and destroy the stranded creatures.

"We'll fill every barrel and be ready to sail home with our hatches battened down when the sea comes back," declared Captain Sproul.

"And you are quite sure the ocean will return and float your bark?" queried the scientist, patiently, for he saw that it was quite as useless to explain what had happened to this hard-headed old sea-dogas it was to talk to Phineas Roebach.

"You can bet your last dollar it will come back, Mr. Henderson," declared Captain Sproul.

"Why do you think so?" asked the professor.

"Why, the ocean always has been here; ain't it?"

"I expect so—within the memory of man."

"Then it will come back!" cried the skipper of the Orion, as though that were an unanswerable argument.

"But what do you call that up yonder?" asked Professor Henderson, pointing to the calm-faced earth rolling tranquilly through the heavens, while her satellite, the moon, likewise appeared.

"We certainly are blessed with moons," said Sproul, nodding. "And mighty glad of it I be. As the day is so short now, and the sun is so hot, two moons to work by is a blessing indeed to us whalers."

"And you don't consider that new planet anything wonderful?" Jack Darrow asked Captain Sproul.

"Not at all. We often see what they call sun dogs; don't we?"

"I have seen such things," admitted the youth, while he and Mark smiled at the old skipper's simplicity.

"That double moon is like that, I reckon," said Sproul, and that ended the discussion.



CHAPTER XXIX

WHEN THE SEA ROLLED BACK

The boys were interested in this novel kind of whaling; but they were more deeply interested in the possible outcome of the situation in which they, and their friends, and the fur-traders, and the bark's crew, were all placed.

The tearing away of this piece of our planet, on which the boys and their companions now sailed, must end finally in some terrible catastrophe. It would be catastrophe enough if the torn-away world never returned to the earth, but sailed forever and ever, round and round its parent planet. Our heroes and their companions would then be marooned without hope of rescue on a fragmentary planet in space, the said planet doomed to become a mere lump of dead and frozen matter adrift in the universe.

Professor Henderson set up the powerful telescope that he had brought, with his other instruments, all the way from the wrecked flying machine left in the crevasse of the great glacier, and busied himself in filling his notebooks with data relating to the movements of this new planet, and of the strange and remarkable incidents occurring each hour of their imprisonment on the island in the air.

Jack and Mark, however, found time to help the whalemen secure the oil from the carcasses of the stranded leviathans which surrounded the Orion. They, with old Andy and Phineas Roebach, began to go out with the parties of blubber-hunters to guard them at their work. For now great troops of polar bears appeared from the north, evidently making their way from the fields of ice that likewise had become stranded on the old sea bed; and these white bears were as savage and as hungry as were the Kodiak bears that infested the river.

The two chums, thus engaged, had an adventure one day that they were never likely to forget. Seeing that there were several of the huge walruses imprisoned in the lakes of salt water remaining in the ocean bed, Jack and Mark desired to kill one for its great tusks. They knew where there was one of the beasts—half as heavy as an elephant—and not far from one of the last whales the crew of the Orion were cutting up. The boys were guarding this special party of seamen at their work, but had seen no bears since sunset.

There was plenty of light, for both the earth-planet was shining on them and her moon likewise, although the latter was now in her last quarter. Quite sure that the sailors would not be molested, Jack and Mark crept away toward the pool where they had seen the walrus.

They soon found, however, that they were not alone. Washington White had come over from the bark, and seeing what the boys were about he followed them.

"Is you suah 'nuff gwine ter try an' shoot dat hugeous wallingrust, an' pull his teef?" he whispered. "Yo' boys will git killed, some day, foolin' wid sech critters."

"You'd better go back, then," said Mark, "if you are afraid."

But the darkey wanted to see how the boys proposed to go about the work of capturing the walrus. Jack had prepared a long and stout line with a whale lance at one end and a sharp spike at the other. The boys very well knew that the bullets from their rifles would make little impression on the walrus. They had to go about his, capture in a different way from shooting bears.

The salt water lake in which the walrus was trapped was perhaps a mile across, and there were several blow-holes in it. The party had to lie down behind a barrier of seaweed that the wind had tossed up in a great windrow, and wait for the walrus to appear at one hole or another.

When his fierce head came into view Jack and Mark, with their satellite, Washington, crept around to the rear of the creature, and then made a swift but careful advance upon his position. They reached a spot upon the ice not more than ten yards from the blow-hole without attracting the attention of the walrus.

Instantly Jack motioned his chum to stand ready to drive the steel spur at the end of the line into the ice to hold the beast, while he went forward with the harpoon. Right at the edge of the broken ice, within ten feet of the monster, Jack Darrow stood a moment with the weapon poised.

He swung back his body and arm, aimed true for the spot behind the shoulders of the walrus, and then drove the iron home with all his strength.

The harpoon sank deep, and a mighty roar burst from the lips of the stricken beast. Mark drove down the steel peg, stamping on it to fix it securely in the ice. The walrus threw his huge body around and came half out of the water upon the ice to reach his tormentor. But Jack was ready for this move, and he sprang back, out of danger, and picked up his rifle.

The ice of course broke under the walrus for yards around. His fierce little eyes seemed to take in every move of his tormentors. He saw both boys (for Mark, too, had reached his gun) spreading out on either hand to get in fatal shots if they could. Meanwhile Washington White stood on the line close to the peg in the ice so that the beast could not jerk free.

"Take him in the eye, if you can, Mark!" shouted Jack. "The cap of blubber he wears will act like a cushion if we shoot him in the head."

But before either of them could obtain a satisfactory mark, the beast sank from sight. He had broken the ice for some yards toward the place where the end of the line was fastened, and he now had plenty of slack. The boys waited expectantly for his reappearance, while Wash stood, open-mouthed and eyes a-roll.

Suddenly the black man executed a most astounding acrobatic feat. From that standing posture he executed in the twinkling of an eye a swift back somersault, at least twenty feet from the ice!

"Oh, gollyation! I'se a goner!" he yelped, as he described his surprising parabola through the air.

The ice where Wash had stood, and where the steel peg had been driven in, was crushed to fragments as the huge head and shoulders of the wounded walrus came up from the depths. The creature had marked the negro's position exactly, and had burst through the ice at the right spot. The wonderful lightness of all matter on this torn-away world, however, saved the darkey's life. The blow threw Wash so far away that the walrus could not immediately get at him.

But he evidently laid his trouble entirely to the black man, and he threw himself forward along the ice, smashing it to bits, and gnashing at it with his tusks. In half a minute he would have been on the spot where the negro lay had not the boys run in swiftly and pumped a dozen bullets into his eyes and down his open mouth. By good luck more than good management they killed the beast.

"See wot yo' done done!" wailed Washington White, rising gingerly and with a hand upon the small of his back. "Yo' come near ter spilein' Perfesser Henderson's most impo'tant assistant. How do you 'speck de perfesser c'd git erlong widout me?"

This was certainly an unanswerable question, and the boys admitted it. They were sorry Wash had been so badly frightened, but they were delighted at the possession of the tusks of the walrus. The whalers secured the body, too, and made a very good quality of oil out of the blubber.

In hunting adventures, and in the labor of trying-out the whale blubber, several weeks passed. The marooned scientist and his friends, with the crew of the whale ship, experienced some bad weather during this time. For three entire days a terrible snowstorm raged—a blizzard that drifted the snow about the Orion (which had chanced, when she was stranded, to settle on a perfectly even keel) until one could walk over her rail out upon the bottom of the sea.

But when this storm passed over the sun came out and shone as tropically as ever. The snow melted very rapidly and the old sea bed was soon awash. The beasts and fish still alive in the sinks were enabled to reach the streams running out of the various mouths of the Coleville, and these creatures took to deep water.

"By Jo!" ejaculated Captain Sproul, "give us a leetle more water and we'd sail the old Orion after them, and reach the open sea again."

He had every belief that the ocean would return to its former bed, and his crew believed it, too. But Professor Henderson and the boys seriously discussed making some move from this locality.

It was plain that there was still plenty of game 'along the shore of the old ocean, and they had about made up their mind to follow the edge of the shore toward Bering Sea and if possible find the revenue cutter Bear, when another storm broke over them. No snow fell this time. There was almost continual thunder and a downpour of rain and hail that was sufficient to smother anybody that ventured out upon the deck of the Orion. The new planet seemed to be in the throes of another eruption, too.

Lightning lit the waste about them with intermittent flashes. They had lost sight entirely of the old earth, of the moon, and of the sun. It seemed to Jack and Mark as though this tiny island in the air must be flying through space again, buffeted by every element.

The wind wailed and screamed about the whaleship. There were more than sixty souls aboard and they crouched in the cabin and in the forecastle and knew not what to make of such a foray of the elements. At one moment the rain flooded down upon the decks as though a cloud had burst directly above them; then great hailstones fell, drumming on the planks like musket balls.

The calmest person among them all was Professor Henderson. Captain Sproul had given the aged scientist the use of the small chart-room. There he had set up certain of his instruments, and he hovered over these most of his waking hours, making innumerable calculations from time to time. During the awful turmoil of the elements he watched his instruments without sleep. The boys remained with him most of the time, for they realized that some catastrophe was threatening which the scientist feared but did not wish to explain at once.

Suddenly Captain Sproul burst into the chart-room and gasped:

"Can you tell me the meaning of this, Mr. Henderson? You're a scientific sharp and know a whole lot of things. My cook just went to the galley door to throw out a pot of slops and something—some mysterious force—snatched the heavy iron pot out of his hand and it went sailing off over the ship's rail. Can you explain that?"

"Wasn't it the wind snatched it away?" asked Jack Darrow, before the professor was ready to answer.

"Don't seem to be no wind blowing just at present," said Captain Sproul.

"Wait!" commanded the professor. "Order every companionway and hatch closed. Do not allow a man to go on deck, nor to open a deadlight. We must exist upon the air that remains in the vessel for the present."

"What do you mean?" gasped the skipper.

"There is no air outside!" declared Professor Henderson, solemnly. "We are flying through space where no atmosphere exists. The iron pot merely remained poised in space—our planet, far, far, heavier, is falling through this awful void."

"What sort o' stuff are you talkin'?" demanded Captain Sproul, growing positively white beneath his tan.

"We began to fall several minutes ago," said the professor, pointing to the indicator of one of the delicate instruments before him on the chart table. "The balance of attraction between the earth and the sun has become disturbed and we are plunging—"

"Into the sun?" shrieked Mark Sampson, springing to his feet.

"No! no! Toward the earth! Toward the earth!" reiterated Professor Henderson. "Her attraction has proved the greater. We are falling with frightful velocity toward the sphere from which we were blown off into space so many weeks ago."

"I reckon I'm crazy," groaned Captain Sproul "I hear you folks talkin', but I don't understand a thunderin' word you say."

"You can feel that the air in here is vitiated; can't you?" demanded Professor Henderson.

The boys had already felt that it was more difficult to breathe. They heard cries all over the ship. Washington White burst into the room, crying: "Oh, lawsy-massy me, Perfesser! We is done bein' smothercated. De breaf am a-leabin' our bodies fo' suah."

The negro fell in a swoon, overturning the table and sending the professor's instruments crashing to the floor. The others, struggling for breath, likewise sank beside Wash. The lights all over the ship were suddenly snuffed out. Every soul aboard lost consciousness as, rushing at unreckoned speed through the universe, the torn-away world descended toward its parent planet.

How long they were unconscious none of the survivors ever learned. When they did finally struggle to sense again, it was with the sound of the rushing of mighty waters in their ears.

The Orion was afloat! She was being tossed upon the bosom of a wind-lashed ocean, and a hurricane, the like of which the two boys had never experienced before, was at its height.

Captain Sproul rose to his feet, panting for breath, but with his senses all alert. He shouted:

"The sea has rolled back again! What did I tell you? Up and at it, my bully boys! Get a sail upon her so's we can have steering way. Every ile barrel is full and we're homeward bound!"

The hatches were opened and they rushed on deck. It was so black that they could see nothing but the storm-tossed waves—not a sign of land. But it was plain, too, that they were no longer on the lee shore. They had plenty of sea room to work the ship and the brave sailors went about their usual tasks with cheerfulness.



CHAPTER XXX

AN ENDURING MONUMENT—CONCLUSION

But Professor Henderson and the boys, as well as Andy Sudds and Washington, gathered in the chart room. The aged scientist was confident that during their period of unconsciousness the fragment of the earth that had once been shot off into space, had returned to its parent globe, and he spoke cheerfully of their probable escape.

"But have we descended into the very place we left?" demanded Mark.

"Scarcely probable," returned the professor.

"Nevertheless the ocean has returned to this spot," declared Jack.

"There is water here, yes," admitted the professor. "We are afloat, that is true."

"And is it not the Arctic Ocean?"

"Later I will tell you. They say there is no land in sight. I believe the bulk of the land which was shot off by the volcanic eruption has now sunk in this sea. What sea it is we can tell soon."

"When can we see the sun and take an observation?" queried Mark. "Perhaps finding the temperature of this ocean which surrounds us will tell us something. However, we must have patience until this bitter storm is past."

And this did call for patience, for the hurricane continued for fully a week. Meanwhile the Orion ran on under almost bare poles, and in a northwesterly direction. This course, Captain Sproul believed, would bring them to Bering Sea, and their homeward route.

But a vast and amazing discovery awaited the hardy navigator of the whaling bark when the wind finally died down, the clouds were swept away, and the sun again appeared. Professor Henderson appeared on deck, too, and calculated their position side by side with Captain Sproul. The latter's amazement was unbounded. His calculations, no matter how he worked them, made the position of the Orion 148 degrees west of Greenwich and 49 degrees north.