But even this uncertain--almost terrifying--light was of aid to the boys; Jack, at least, remembered very clearly the way to the wrecked flying machine, and of course the old hunter was not likely to lose his way in as black a night as ever was made.
They struggled on between the intervals of pitch darkness, for the trembling of the earth had again ceased. The visitation had been much heavier than they had previously suffered.
"The best thing we can do," muttered Mark in Jack"s ear, "is to fix up the _s...o...b..rd_ and beat it away from here just as fast as we can. This is altogether too strenuous a place for us, believe me!" "If we only _can_!" responded Jack, secretly as worried as his chum.
"This is a pretty fierce proposition, Mark. Just think of our bonny _s...o...b..rd_ wrecked on her first voyage! It"s mighty hard; eh, chum?"
But the duty before the two boys just then was to find the wrecked "plane and see what could be done with it. The thunder continued to mutter and the intermittent flashes of electricity helped them somewhat in finding the way to the spot where the _s...o...b..rd_ had made her final landing. But the fall of volcanic ash continued and the darkness, between the lightning flashes, remained as smothering as before.
They reached the spot, however--seemingly a small plateau on which the huge trees did not encroach, giving them plenty of s.p.a.ce for a flight if they were fortunate enough to get the _s...o...b..rd_ in condition for such an attempt.
There were both electric lamps and lanterns in the machine and Mark sent Washington White to light every one while he and Jack went over the wrenched mechanism. Andy Sudds stood guard with his rifle, or ready to lend a hand should the boys need him.
The storm in the clutch of which the flying machine had traveled so many hundred miles had wrenched her not a little. And the two landings she had made on the mountainside had done her no particular good. There was a broken plane, any number of wires to splice, and bent rods innumerable.
These were the more apparent injuries. But the more delicate machinery of the _s...o...b..rd_ required a thorough overhauling. It was absolutely necessary for them to have the use of a forge, and Jack had already learned that such an article was among the oil hunter"s possessions at his camp.
They were a solid three hours putting to rights the machine and correcting the damage done to her smaller parts. Then, with several rods to be straightened and the light framework of the broken plane, that must be put in the fire for a bit, the party started down the mountain to Phineas Roebach"s camp.
The four had left the plateau where the _s...o...b..rd_ lay and were just descending into the forest, carrying two storage battery lamps with which the easier to find their way.
There was no preliminary trembling of the earth or the air. There was an unheralded clap of sound--a sharp detonation that almost burst their ear-drums.
They did not fall to the ground; the earth, instead, seemed actually to rise and smite them!
A cataract of sound followed, that completely overwhelmed them. They realized that the huge trees were swaying and writhing as though a sudden storm-breath had blown upon them. Had a tornado swept through this wood no greater danger could have menaced them. Trees about them were uprooted; many bent to the earth; some snapped off short at the ground--great boles two and three feet through!
Jack and Mark, with Andy Sudds and the terrified Wash, would have been destroyed within the first few seconds of this awful upheaval had it not been for a single fortunate circ.u.mstance. When the cataclysm was inaugurated the first shock drove the four into a sort of hollow walled about with solid rock. Upon this hollow fell the first huge tree trunk of the flying forest--and it sheltered them instead of crushing them to death.
The four had but small appreciation of this--of either their temporary safety, or the perils that menaced them. Suddenly the thick air seemed to stifle them. They could neither breathe nor see. The lamps had been lost when they were flung--like dice in a box--into the rock-sheltered hollow.
As the huge tree fell across their harbor of refuge, they all lost consciousness.
What happened during the next few minutes--perhaps it was a quarter of an hour--none of the little party of adventurers ever knew. It was Jack who first aroused.
The whole world seemed still shrouded in pitch darkness. But he could breathe without difficulty and he sprang to his feet with a peculiar feeling of lightness as he did so.
But then he stumbled over Mark, and his chum came up, too, ejaculating:
"What is it, Jack? What is the matter now?"
"You can search me!" responded the other boy. "If this sort of business keeps on I shall wish, with Wash, that we"d never come to Alaska."
"You can wish it with me!" grumbled Mark. "Washington doesn"t want to get back to Maine any more than I do right now, Jack."
"We must complete the repairing of the _s...o...b..rd_," gasped Jack.
"And where are the rods--and the plane frame? And where are the lights?"
They held on to each other in the darkness of this over-shadowed hollow and neither boy was willing to speak for a moment. Then Andy Sudds staggered to them.
"I"ve lost my gun!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, with a quaver in his voice that was quite surprising.
"And we"ve lost our lamps; but we"ll find "em, Andy," said Jack Darrow, curiously enough becoming leader of the expedition right then, instead of the man. It wasn"t that the old hunter was frightened; merely, he did not know what to do in this emergency.
"Do you notice--?" began Jack, seriously, and then stopped.
"Do I notice what, son?" responded Andy.
"I don"t see how you can notice anything without a light," interrupted Mark querulously.
This statement seemed to arouse Jack"s faculties completely. He did not continue his remark, but said:
"That"s our first job; isn"t it?"
"What"s our first job?" asked the hunter.
"To get a light. We can"t find the flying machine, nor get back to Roebach"s camp, without light. Why, it can"t be more than mid-afternoon, yet it"s as dark as a stack of black cats in a coal-chute."
"And that"s where I feel as though I"d been," declared Mark.
"Where?"
"Fighting the cats in the coal-hole. Ouch! I"m lame and sore all over."
"We"re sure up against it," repeated Andy. "But there must be some way out, boys."
"Light is the first requisite," agreed Jack, more cheerfully. "Got any matches, Andy?"
"Plenty of "em in a corked flask. I don"t ever travel without matches, son," returned the old hunter.
"But matches won"t show us the way to Roebach"s camp," complained Mark.
"Don"t croak, old boy," advised Jack. "Let"s have that bottle of cosmolene I saw you tuck in your pocket there at the _s...o...b..rd_."
"I was taking that to the professor. He said he would want it," said Mark. "What"s it good for?"
"You"ll come pretty near seeing in a minute, Mark," returned the quick-thinking Jack. "Here, Andy! let me have that woolen scarf you wear. You"ll have to say good-bye to it--bid it a fond farewell."
"I"m sort of friendly to that scarf, youngster," said the hunter.
"What"s to be done to it?"
"It"s going to become a lamp wick right here and now," declared young Darrow, promptly. "So! I"ve got the cosmolene smeared on it already.
There! that"s the last of it. Now a match, Andy."
"Joshua!" grumbled the hunter. "It _is_ good-bye, I guess!" The match flared up. Jack touched it to the greasy woolen cloth. It began to burn brightly and steadily at once.
"Now, you all hunt around for the things we dropped. If we can find them we"ll push out right away for the camp and the professor. You know he"ll be worried about us, just as we are worried about him!"
With the light of the improvised torch flaring about them they saw what manner of place they were in. The huge trunk of the fallen tree had not entirely shut them in the hole. Mark got in position to climb out beside the tree-trunk.