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, s.h.a.ggy 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 carca.s.s 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 frica.s.see--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 pa.s.sed 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 ASh.o.r.e
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 circ.u.mspection, 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."