Moving Mountains
By Walter L. Bailey
Chapter Two — Aboard the Icy Dreadnaught
THE STORY THUS FAR: Bob Hamond and Dan Bolin took their first jobs after finishing school as assistant engineers aboard the freighter Banaza. Shortly after they had entered the Arctic their engine had cracked, leaving them motionless in the midst of icebergs. The SOS calls were sent out by the freighter’s radio. The engineer, Spike Ambry, issued orders for the crew to set to work to try to effect the necessary repairs. As they started, the cry went up that icebergs were dead ahead. The men all deserted in the only lifeboat, leaving Spike and Dan to do their best to extricate Bob from the huge iron rod which had pinned him to the floor when the crew had dropped it. The three gathered their provisions, guns, and clothing preparatory to making a jump aboard an iceberg when one should reach their freighter. When it struck, they pitched their supplies to the icy shelf. Just as the freighter started careening away from the iceberg, the three made their leap for the icy shelf.
Bob struck the icy plateau feet first, but to keep his feet was impossible. They shot up in the air and he came down sprawling and skidding along on the slippery surface of the ice. He came to a stop against a box of canned tomatoes, and glancing about he saw Dan and Old Spike whizzing along on their backs and doing some lively skirmishing to stop themselves.
Coming to a stop, the three climbed carefully to their feet and gazed out at the listing Banaza. The freighter was slipping off to the left of them around the side of the berg. But suddenly two other bergs came plowing around the berg they were on, one on each side. These two new-comers were moving considerably faster than their own dreadnaught. The one on the left caught the ship, forcing her forward before its continuous advance as if the heavy freighter had no weight at all.
Bob stood staring with the others as the two bergs, one on each side, moved on ahead. They watched them draw gradually together, as if plowing down the long sides of a huge letter V toward its point; they saw the freighter again try to slip around her captor’s icy side, but too late. The two mountains of ice came slowly together, with the
Banaza caught between them like a trapped animal.
And even as the two mountains of ice were pressing her strong sides to the breaking point, a voice, clear and strong, broke from the deck of the doomed ship and floated out to them.
“Our topic for consideration this morning, friends of the universe, are the words of our Divine Protector: ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth!”
“The radio,” said Bob. “It was set on a station.”
The voice had ended. There was a moment of quiet. Then the voice began again.
“This . . .” That was all. As the three looked from their position on the iceberg, the sturdy freighter was crushed like a berry-crate. A great crackling of its timbers rent the air; huge splinters leaped skyward. Then it was over. The two bergs fell away from each other again, to go moving onward on their journey of destruction — formidable dreadnaughts of God. While in their wake the crushed remains of the Banaza slipped from sight beneath the waves as if it were a single water-logged board.
The vanishing of the freighter from the surface of the ocean left the three realizing more than ever that they were helplessly adrift — adrift in the middle of trackless ocean on a moving mountain of solid ice — a thing that no ship would venture close enough to, for the crew to see them.
“It might be a long ride for us, boys,” said Old Spike. We can’t guide this thing or speed it up. We can do absolutely nothing but make ourselves as comfortable as possible and wait. Where we are going, and what the outcome will be, is known only to Providence.”
Half the afternoon was spent in rigging up a kind of camp in a deep, narrow cave-like depression running back into the side of their icy ship. About mid-afternoon Bob noticed a heavy, grayish overcasting of the sky, and drew old Spike’s attention to it.
“We’re in for a blow, soon,” said the veteran engineer, squinting at the leaden sky. “There’ll be plenty of snow and wind, and it won’t be long in breaking loose. Storms come up quick in these latitudes.”
Before ten minutes had passed Bob and Dan knew that old Spike spoke the truth. There was a sudden flurry, then the storm burst in all its icy fury.
The three hastily withdrew into the bowl-like cave where all their heavy clothing and provisions were stored. The temperature dropped rapidly. A fierce icy blast swept the sides of the iceberg, whipped in and out about its lofty peaks and cave-like depressions with a high whistling noise. The air was filled with millions of particles of snow, driven before the mighty wind at break-neck speed.
Bob watched the half-dark ocean without. It began to heave and roll fearfully under the force of the disturbing elements. Great waves began to lift and roll toward the high shelf on which they had taken refuge, bringing with them numerous ice-floes which were steadily becoming larger.
Suddenly a great black wave, higher than the others, came looming toward them, seemingly high above their shelf. It broke against the iceberg with tremendous force, but the inconceivable bulk of ice rode through the waves like a steamship through a ripple. Like the dreaded monster of the deep it was, the ice-mountain cut its way majestically through the violent, heaving and rolling disturbance of the ocean with little more than a slight swinging and rising and falling motion.
Dark waves, towering high, seemed always on the brink of engulfing them — only to break with harmless force against the berg’s cold icy sides. On and on went this monster of the deep, carrying its three passengers huddled together in the protection of one of its many icy caves. The sky was blackness itself. The ocean continued its mad heaving, a trackless mass of darkness and gloom. Wave after wave continued to hurl itself in vain against their icy dreadnaught.
After several hours the darkness of night was added to the darkness of the storm, and the three could but sit and listen to the howling of the gale and the dashing of the waves as they broke against the solid abutment of ice with a sound that was like breakers in a hurricane.
Time and again Bob wondered what could be the fate of the Banaza’s crew. Unless some vessel picked them up, they were surely lost. For the little life-boats would never ride through this pandemonium of the deep.
Old Spike fastened a thick blanket across the mouth of their cave to keep out the snow and wind, then took a candle from a small box which he had brought along and struck a match to it. The flickering light shone dazzlingly against the icy walls.
“First let’s see which way we’re headed, then we’ll have something to eat,” remarked old Spike. He pulled a small hand-compass from his pocket and held it flat in the candle-light.
Bob noticed a deep frown pass across his face. Deep lines furrowed his forehead for a moment, then slowly smoothed out. But he still held the compass; he still looked at the little instrument as if he found what he saw there hard to believe.
Bob moved so he could see the face of the compass. The slender black needle on the dial was hovering over the capital N.
“North!” The one word broke from Bob’s lips.
The veteran engineer hastily slipped the compass into his pocket. It was plain that he hadn’t meant for the youths to know what the little needle told, at least not yet.
“That means the . . . !” Bob paused significantly, a lump settling in his throat.
“The Ice!” Dan finished, his face ashen in the candle light.
“I’m afraid so,” said old Spike, as he moved over and pulled the blanket back a little from the cave entrance and peered out into the howling gale a moment. Then he let the blanket fall back in place and turned.
“I had hoped the berg would drift on Southward and take us to safety, but the storm has turned her due North.” He came away from the entrance and sat down on a case of canned beef. His face was a picture of deep anxiety.
“Cheer up, old top,” Bob grinned, knowing the man’s anxiety was for Dan and himself. “We’re tough as ox-hide.”
“And it tanned,” added Dan.
“You might have to be to pull through this,” said old Spike solemnly. “We’re headed for the bleak, ice-bound fastness of the extreme Arctic regions somewhere east or northeast of the icy island of Spitzbergen.”
The old seaman was silent a moment, then he resumed: “What do you boys know about the ice?” he asked.
“We’ve read about it,” Bob returned.
The old seaman nodded understanding^, and was silent again.
BOB exchanged a long look with Dan; a look which held no mirth. Through their minds was flashing the Arctic and Antarctic Expeditions which they had read about.
There was the “British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition” in 1914 by Sir Ernest Shackleton. With his good ship Endurance fast set in thousands of miles of heavy Antarctic ice; the weird floes, miles wide, pressing continuously against her strong sides with million-ton pressures, Shackleton waited — waited — waited for the moment to come when his ship would crumple under the awful pressure, and the great ice-covered ocean would become their only home. The moment came. The hull of the ship was crushed like an egg-shell. Then for months the twenty-eight men aboard, lived and fought along on the bleak, barren, gale-swept ocean of desolate ice, finally to win out to a small whaling camp and safety.
Then there was the Russian Arctic Expedition, under Lieutenant Broussilov in 1912. Broussilov’s ship, the “Saint Anna,” was caught in the ice in the Kara Sea. For nearly two years the doomed vessel drifted North with the ice, covering only three miles a day, until finally Broussilov dispatched fourteen men over the ice to the Southward toward some islands seventy miles away. Three of the fourteen men returned to the ice-bound ship after covering twenty-six miles. Only two of the 14 men dispatched won through. They were picked up by another expedition on the Northbrook Island months later. What became of Broussilov and his companions who stayed aboard the drifting, ice-bound Saint Anna remains a deep secret of the silent, icy wastes.
The shriek of the wind that was driving them North, interrupted the thoughts of the two boys. In the lull which followed, the ever increasing ice-floes could be heard grinding against the sides of the berg, but the icy monster plowed on, pushing the huge chunks of ice aside in the darkness with no apparent effort. Bob moved over and peered out through a crack in the blanket. All was a gray, heaving mass without. Snow stung his face. At frequent intervals great blocks of ice, snowy white, rose momentarily like gray ghosts beside their berg, only to fall away again into one of the many dark and shifting valleys on the surface of the heaving ocean.
Bob trembled at the vast display of unconquerable power. One moment the berg they were on rose upward to the giddy heights of a wave-top; to go sinking the next into a wallowing valley between.
The words from the deck-radio flashed to his fear-stricken mind: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.” Almost desperately Bob whispered the words. They seemed to soothe his trembling nerves; seemed to cause the heaving turmoil before him to lose some of its tearfulness.
The voice of old Spike brought him away from the cave entrance.
“Let’s eat and then get some sleep, boys,” he said. “This berg will plow North as long as the waves push it that way and as long as the ice remains loose.”
They made a meal of sardines, bread, and canned tomatoes. Then placing the boxes of canned foods flat, and side by side along the right wall of their fifteen foot cave, they spread blankets over them for a bed.
“The boxes will keep us off the floor so the warmth of our bodies won’t melt the ice under us and get us wet.” explained old Spike.
Each rolling in three or four blankets, they lay down on their bed of boxes, and were soon sleeping soundly in spite of the storm. The fatigue of the eighteen hours’ work on the Banaza’s engine had been forgotten momentarily in the excitement of transferring themselves to the berg, but now their weariness returned, causing them to sleep quickly and deeply.
While without the storm raged on; the berg, rising and falling, climbed wave after wave. The gale howled desolately, and the huge blocks of ice-floes became steadily more numerous. Hour after hour passed, and always, the berg plowed Northward — ever Northward — through the Arctic upheaval.
(To be continued)