Moving Mountains

By Walter L. Bailey

(Previous chapter)

Chapter Five — Into the Gorge

THE STORY THUS FAR: Spike Ambry, engineer for the freighter “Banaza” with Bob Hamond and Dan Bolin, assistant engineers, was stranded in the Arctic region. Gathering provisions, the three rigged up a cave on an iceberg. As their ship was crushed by two mountains of ice, the radio’s dying voice floated out to them: “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world!” Bob and Dan explored the berg, leaving old Spike asleep. When they returned he had gone. Setting out to find him, they reached a water lane, across which they heard him calling. Dan hurried back to their cave for guns while Bob pushed ahead to find a crossing. Suddenly, he found himself facing a huge wall of ice, broken, ridge-cut, up which he climbed to find himself confronted by a huge polar bear. Trying to escape it, he lost his footing and catapulted into a mist-filled gorge.

FASTER — faster — Bob went sliding down the smooth, steeply slanted ice toward the mist-shrouded brink of the gorge. While, not far behind, came the sure-footed bear, still intent on catching this man-creature who had dared enter his icy domain. But Bob paid little heed to what was going on behind him. His whole attention was riveted on the danger directly ahead — the yawning gorge. There was no possible way to stop himself as no icy obstructions lay in his path to which he might catch and cling, and he had no claws with which to grip the smooth ice as the bear behind him had.

He slid on — helplessly. The mist began to whizz by at a terrific speed. Desperately he dug at the slippery ice. The gorge was suddenly directly below, waiting to swallow him. Bob whirled his feet around before him as he went over the icy edge.

Down, down he dropped, until his feet struck ice, sending him sprawling flat on his back. Sitting upright, he stared up through the haze which was gray as ashes on all sides. The ice was trembling violently under him. The far-off rumbling had drawn dangerously close.

But in spite of these sinister warnings, a thrill of joy ran through Bob: he was still alive! By luck he had landed on a narrow ledge barely twenty feet down. And the fall had not hurt him. Above, dimly outlined in the gray haze, he saw the head and shoulders of the polar bear, peering over at him. Would the beast try to jump to the narrow ledge?

Bob picked himself up from the ice, and as he did so things began to happen in earnest. From somewhere on the ledge close by, old Spike’s voice lifted itself, cutting through the Arctic haze like a haunting echo. Bob lifted his voice in reply. And while the echoes of his own voice still reverberated through the haze-hidden cliffs, a rifle barked sharply on the ice above.

Glancing up quickly. Bob saw the haze-dimmed form of the polar bear rear itself high on the very brink of the ice, pawing desperately. The next instant its huge body was pitching downward through the mist toward him, twisting and turning over and over. Bob took a half dozen quick steps along the ledge to get out of the path of the falling body. The bear thudded on the ice directly behind him, rolled crazily to its feet and staggered this way and that. Then the animal’s body reeled over the edge of the narrow ledge and plunged on downward.

Bob began to breath again. Almost joyously he whispered the words: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

His heart was still thumping hard when old Spike’s voice broke calmly over the Arctic rumblings at his elbow.

“Are you hurt?” There was anxiety in his voice in spite of its calmness.

“No,” Bob answered. “Are you?”

“Luckily, no.”

Then words tumbled rapidly from old Spike’s mouth.

“I saw the bear fall. No more trouble from him, thanks to Dan. When I woke up back in the cave and found you two boys missing, I started out to look for you and was cut off from the berg by that water-lane opening up. Then that bear hopped on me and knocked my rifle awinding. Couldn’t find it again in the mist and had to run. I climbed the mountain of ice we’re on, hoping to lose the bear. But he wouldn’t lose. The brute forced me off the cliff up there. Lucky this ledge was here.”

“And lucky for me, too,” said Bob. “I got a sliding start down the ice and couldn’t stop.”

“Come on!” said old Spike suddenly, listening intently for a moment to the loud roaring coming to them through the haze, “The ice will be breaking up shortly and we must get back on the berg with our supplies before it breaks. Nothing would make that noise but broken, driving ice, forced forward by a terrific storm.”

Already the haze was being whipped violently about by the rising gale. Together they moved rapidly along the ledge, searching the wall of ice for a possible way to climb to the top. But no way was to be

found. The cliff of ice was so nearly perpendicular that a foot-hold in it was impossible.

DAN WAS repeatedly shouting to them from the cliff-top to hurry, evidently sensing the dan-ger in the oncoming rumbling, and fearing separation in this icy world of terror and desolation.

Occasionally the ice-wall before Bob and old Spike seemed to slant to a slight degree, but the next few steps found it looming straight up again. Finally at one of these slants old Spike paused and gazed silently upward a moment. Then he turned to Bob:

“We’ll have to dig out steps in the ice with our pocket knives. It’s the only way up. We’ll take turns, each digging ten steps at a turn. We’ve got to work fast. I’ll dig first.”

As old Spike was digging upward into the driving mist, clinging to small projections of ice with one hand and digging with the other, Bob waited for his turn on the ledge below.

The wind had become a gale, and the mountain of ice was shaking as if from a tremendous earthquake. It had become almost as dark as pitch black night in the driving Arctic storm. Bob could hardly see old Spike’s form hanging to the face of the ice directly above him. The roaring rumblings were in their very ears now. All was wild confusion about them. Some dozens of feet upward, on top of the icy cliff, Dan’s screaming shout came through to them barely audible above the tearing wind.

Then even before Bob could raise his voice in answer, the mountain of ice under their feet lurched crazily, swung dizzily to and fro like a huge cork in rough water. Then on one of its dizzy swings it seemed to over-balance and continue on over — slowly over, wrapped in the wild confusion of the howling storm-filled Arctic.

The level ledge of ice under Bob’s feet quickly changed to a steep slant, and he found himself sliding down the slippery surface into the face of the now leaning cliff. The wind shrieked dismally and seemed to increase with every minute. The grinding, scraping roar of piling hurling ice behind the hazy storm-curtain was terrifying to hear.

The ice was disrupting. Bob could hear the hurling splash of water somewhere in the raging tempest. It seemed as if the whole world was in the throes of an icy, boiling volcano. With great effort Bob tried to crush down fear and to think clearly. He seemed to see the sinking freighter Banaza in the midst of the ripping turmoil, with the little deck radio shouting forth the words again into the teeth of the black and boiling tempest: “I am with you alway.”

The words seemed to float serenely to him through the howling, shrieking gale. “With you alway,” he whispered, and a strange, untroubled calm settled over him — a calm which neither the terrifying upheaval nor the overturning of the ice-mountain under them could shake.

In the storm-filled darkness old Spike slid rapidly down the face of the now slanting ice-cliff to Bob’s side. The next instant Dan did likewise from the top. The mountain of ice under them continued on over, forced by the mighty power of the gale. Then suddenly, the three huddling close together in silence felt the overturning of the ice-mountain cease. It lurched drunkenly a moment, then seemed to lift itself free of something to go rising and falling with the swell of the storm-swept ocean.

The ice had disrupted — had broken up!

Old Spike leaned close to Bob’s ear and motioned for Dan to come closer. The old seaman shouted to be heard above the raging storm :

“We’re on another iceberg,” he yelled. “It’s broken loose from where it was stranded in the ice and is floating.”

Bob’s ears were listening to the continuous roar of the gale. The semi-dark walls of howling winds about them seemed to be angry that they were unable to tear the three from the trough-like depression in the ice.

The berg swayed on in the howling gale for a few minutes, then came up suddenly in the darkness against some immovable object with a sickening thud.

The three gazed intently into the storm-torn area ahead to see what had stopped the berg. Dimly, an icy spire could be made out, rearing itself into the Arctic turmoil like some great ghost-like finger which was serenely immune against the warring elements. The wind whipped about it with savage fury, but it remained unmoved, majestically anchored.

Bob gasped. Dan whistled softly in amazement that anything could remain stationary in the mighty storm about them.

“We’ve run into a stranded berg!” shouted old Spike above the raging wind.

“Maybe it’s the berg that our cave is on,” Bob yelled back.

“Maybe!” shouted Spike. “Think we can climb down the side of this berg and get aboard to see?”

Bob shuddered. The thought of moving out of the comparative safety of the trough-like depression atop the ice-mountain and to climb down its hazardous side in the teeth of a tearing gale was not a pleasant one. Again Bob shuddered, and a new wave of fear began to climb his backbone. What if one of the three of them should shp in the half-darkness of the storm as they climbed down the steep, slippery side and go hurtling to an icy death hundreds of feet below? It would leave only two to carry on and try to win out of this land of ice and coldness.

But then Bob realized that they couldn’t stay here. The intense cold was beginning to come through their heavy clothing. They must have more clothing and blankets to roll themselves in, or the cold would soon freeze them immovable. They must keep moving! They must go somewhere! In the excitement and strenuous exercise of the past few hours, the cold had gone unnoticed, but it was creeping in on them now from all sides, the icy hand of a grim fate.

Thoughts of the words from the deck-radio steadied Bob’s voice as he shouted his answer to old Spike.

“We’ll try! We can’t stay here! You lead!”

Bob saw old Spike turn to Dan; saw Dan nod in the affirmative to the older man’s questioning look.

Then without a word the hazy shape of the old engineer crawled forward into the storm.

Bob and Dan followed, keeping close together in the howling chaos. They crawled up one side of the trough-like depression until the extreme top was reached. Here the side of the berg dropped away in a jagged and steep cliff of ice, with only a few feet ahead visible to the eye.

The gale from their backs almost took them from their lofty perch, but old Spike continued quickly on down, thus cutting off the direct force of the driving wind. Slower and slower went the silent descent. Numb hands clung to narrow ledges, while the wind w^hipped and whistled in and out among the haze hidden, icy depressions.

Once, on a two-foot ledge. Bob dared to look out and down into the whirling, roaring turmoil below. There the sinister rumbling of piling ice added to the fearfulness of the upheaval. But he quickly turned back and faced the cliff, lest he overbalance and be drawn toward the disruption below.

The berg rocked alarmingly under their feet at times, causing them to cast anxious glances toward the dim and lofty peak of the adjoining berg. Bob could feel tremendous shocks run through the ice-mountain under them at frequent intervals, and knew that great blocks of ice were being hurled into the iceberg by the driving storm. It seemed that they would never reach the bottom.

Old Spike halted suddenly to gaze intently into the rushing, hazy elements, while Bob and Dan clung to the ice and gazed with him. Extending outward and resting on the opposite berg, they saw a bridge-like shelf of ice spanning the gap some distance above the level of the ocean.

Out on this bridge of ice went old Spike without a word. Bob and Dan followed closely. The gale sucked at them ferociously. The ice thundered below them. More than once Bob thought the wind would lift him from the ice-bridge and carry him away into the howling inferno. But old Spike dropped to his hands and knees, and the boys, following suit, found that the wind gripped them less in this position. They crawled rapidly forward, reaching the adjoining berg with sudden abruptness.

Pausing, old Spike shouted:

“If our cave is on this berg, we must be just about on a level with it. Follow me and keep your eyes open for caves!”

After a few minutes. Bob thought he noticed a familiar look about the berg. But was that possible, he asked himself. All bergs look more or less alike, and very little could be seen of this one through the raging storm.

But he was not wrong, for the next instant Dan was shouting and pointing upward. There, slightly above them, lay the storm-swept shelf with their cave-home nestling at its back. In a moment the three were striding across the shelf toward the cave.

Pushing inside. Bob touched a match to the candle while old Spike re-fastened the blanket securely across the entrance.

“Safe at last,” Bob breathed, flinging himself on a box beside Dan.

“For a while only,” returned old Spike with a grave look. “When our food plays out, we’ve got to be far enough south to hail a boat, or we starve and freeze to death. We’ll eat now, then roll up and sleep until this storm blows over. We need rest. When we wake, we’ll start south over the ice with as much of our provisions as we can drag. It’s our only chance.”

In the dim, flickering light of the candle, the three ate in silence from provisions which now looked scanty in their eyes, for no one could tell how long they might have to depend on the few boxes of food to keep them from starving. All but one rifle had been lost on the ice. There was plenty of ammunition, but would they meet with game or fowl to shoot for food?

These questions of doubt rolled through the minds of all three as they finished eating, and blowing the candle out, rolled in blanket after blanket to rest and sleep for what might come when they awoke.

Bob could not sleep for a long time after he lay down. The sinister roaring and rumblings at the berg’s base, the thundering of the storm driven ice, the screaming of the gale in the darkness — all filled the little ice-cave eerily and drove sleep away for a long time.

Time and again Bob dozed, only to be jerked awake suddenly by the thunderous dash and roar of ice and wind. Then slowly the noise lessened as his senses gradually became attuned somewhat to the turmoil, and he sank into a troubled sleep.

(To be continued)