"Dat settles it!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the colored man, mighty wroth at this thought. "I ain"t goin" ter stan" no sech doin"s. Tryin" ter shoot b.u.t.tsy; is he? I"ll show him in jest erbout a minute dat n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 c.o.o.n?"
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 a.s.sistants. 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 pa.s.s 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 alt.i.tude of that pa.s.s.
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 pa.s.sed. The cold at night (the only time they could travel) remained intense. And that flight toward the ocean sh.o.r.e--or what had once been that sh.o.r.e--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 s.p.a.ce, 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 b.u.mps 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 circ.u.mstances 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 sh.o.r.e 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.