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 PhineasRoebach, 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 circumspection, 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."
"Don't care if I did," replied Jack. "See yonder!"
The others followed the direction of his pointing arm with their gaze. Off beyond the headlands at the mouth of the river rose a column of thick black smoke. It was as big a smoke as though some great forge or factory was working overtime in that direction.
"Hurrah!" cried Mark, re-echoing his chum's delight.
The entire party was delighted. Yet not knowing who the people were who made the smoke, nor under what circumstances they would find them, the dead sea lions were packed aboard the sleds before they continued their way down the river.
"That smoke lies a good way beyond the mouth of the river," said PhineasRoebach. "I believe it is on the sea."
"A vessel afire?" proposed Mark.
"It's a fire on a vessel," said the professor, suddenly. "I believe that is the smoke of the trying-out works on a whaler."
"You've hit it, Professor," agreed Andy Sudds. "It's a whaler for sure.There's more thanyou, Phineas, hunting for oil up in these regions."
"A whaling ship on this island in the air," murmured Jack. "What will they do with the whale oil? They will never get back to San Francisco again."
"We do not know that," said the scientist, gravely.
The last few miles, during which they could not see beyond the high ice-shod banks of the estuary, were traversed slowly enough. They all grew anxious to know what the column of black smoke meant.
Finally they came to the open mouth of this branch of the river. The sight they beheld almost stunned them.
Instead of an ocean, rolling up in great surges upon the beach on either hand, they beheld a vast sink through which the partly ice-bound river crawled as far as the eye could see. They knew that this was the old bed of the Arctic Ocean; but the waters of that cold sea had receded and left little but ice-bound pools here and there.
"Fo' de goodness gracious sake!" cried Wash. "Does yo' mean ter try ter mak' me beliebe dat disher place is whar' de great an' omniverous ocean once rolled? Dat de hugeous salt sea broke its breakers on dem ice-bound shores? Git erlong, chile! Yo' is tryin' ter bamboozle me, suah."
"That is where the Arctic Ocean rolled, all right," growled Phineas Roebach. "I can swear to that. I have been here before. Something has certainly happened to it."
"I declare!" chuckled Jack Darrow, who could not miss the joke, despite the seriousness of their situation. "Somebody has removed the ocean without permission." Behind a great fortress of rock which had once been an island they saw the same column of smoke. But it was something nearer to them on the bed of the Arctic sea that more particularly attracted their attention.
"Look at that thing! That monster!" cried Mark, pointing.
"And there is another!" shouted Jack.
"Whales!" yelled the excited Andy Sudds. "Those are whales as sure as shooting—there's a school of them here."
And they had no more than made this discovery when a party of men, all dressed in furs and some dragging great sleds behind them, came out from behind the pile of rocks which had certainly once been an island in the ocean.
These new-comers did not see our heroes and their friends, but they approached the whale stranded nearest to the rocks. This huge leviathan, like all the others of the herd, was long since dead. The men attacked him with blubber-saws and axes and began to cut him up in a most workmanlike manner.
"A whaling ship, sure enough," declared Professor Henderson, who seemed the least astonished by these manoeuvres. "We will be among friends soon. And we will hope that the ship—despite the fact that her crew has come whaling ashore,—will have her keel in deep water." The party ran their sleds ashore on the right bank of the river at its old mouth. Then they started at a round pace for the spot in the old bed of the ocean where the crew of the whaler were cutting up their prize.
It was several miles from the brink of what had once been the polar sea to the spot where the whalers were at work. Jack Darrow, Mark Sampson, and their friends found it a difficult way to travel too.
Naturally they had abandoned the sleds. The ice on the stream which flowed out of this mouth of the Coleville River was so broken that they could no longer use it as a highway. The bottom of what had once been the ocean was only partly ice-covered. There were enormous rocks to climb over, or to find a path around. Reefs and ledges reared their heads fifty feet and more high. There were sinks, too, in the floor of the old ocean; but these were mostly covered with ice.
The Arctic Ocean must have receded at the time of the upheaval which had flung this island into the air so rapidly that many of the sea's denizens, beside the school of whales, could not escape.
Here, in one big pool, lay frozen in the ice a monster white shark. It had battered itself to death against the rocks in trying to escape. Through yonder blow-hole in another pool there suddenly appeared an enormous bewhiskered head, with great tusks like the drooping mustache of a soldier.
"A walrus!" exclaimed Jack, recognizing the creature.
"And yonder are seals playing in the open pool," said Mark.
"These pools, or lakes, are still of salt water," said the professor, thoughtfully. "Ah! what would I not have given to have been on that headland yonder at the moment the ocean went out."
"Not me! Not me!" cried Phineas Roebach. "I'd gone completely off my head then, for fair—I know I would!"
"Mr. Roebach is not quite sure now that he isn't suffering from some form of insanity," said Jack, chuckling.
"Den it suah is too bad dat we nebber kin fin' dat chrisomela bypunktater plant ter cure him wid," declared Washington White, dolefully.
"But, by the piper that played before Pharaoh!" ejaculated Phineas Roebach, at last brought to a point where hehadto admit that no reasonable explanation would fit the conditions confronting them, "tell me this: What has become of the Arctic Ocean?" "You can search me!" drawled Jack. "I can assure you, Mr. Roebach, that I haven't seen it. Have you got it, Mark?"
"The question of what has become of this great sea which once washed the shore we are now leaving," said Professor Henderson, seriously, "is a remarkably interesting one. The ocean may have merely receded for a few miles at the time of the volcanic eruption and earthquake which threw off this new planet."
Phineas Roebach shook his head at this, but said nothing.
"It may be," pursued Mr. Henderson, "that that part of our old world that was shot into space did not include much of this Arctic sea. We may find beyond here," pointing, as he spoke, ahead, "instead of the receded ocean, no ocean at all. We cannot believe that this island in the air is spherical like our own old earth. It is a ragged form which will show on what we may call theunderside the very convolutions and scars made by its breaking away from the old earth. Do you get my meaning?"
"Yo' suttenly is a most liquid speaker, Perfesser," declared Washington White. "Yo' was sayin' dat w'en disher new planet broke off de earf, she slopped over de whole Arctic Ocean."
"Perhaps that puts it quite as simply," said Professor Henderson, smiling grimly. "The ocean 'slopped over'. It was either left behind to partly fill the cavity left by the departure of this torn-away world we are living on, or it has receded into the valleys and sinks upon the other side of this small planet."
Phineas Roebach threw up both hands and groaned.
"It's as clear as mud!" he cried. "I don't understand a thing about it."
But the old professor went on without heeding him, knowing that his pupils, Jack and Mark, were deeply interested in the mystery of this torn-away world, or island in the air.
"It is a moot question whether or not the weight of the water which lay in this vast sink, before the eruption, was not needed, and is not needed right now, for the balancing of this tiny planet we are living on. Nature adjusts herself to every change more quickly than human intelligence. How much of the crust of the earth, extending up into the polar regions, was broken away from our old world, we do not know. But that it is now perfectly balanced we can have no doubt—that balance is proved by the fact of the regularity of the recurrence of night and day."
These and many other observations Professor Henderson spoke as the party continued its rugged advance over the more or less dry bottom of the ocean. In two hours the party was observed by the crew of the whaler at work on the carcass of the great whale. The sailors signaled to them, and when the boys and their friends drew near, some of the whalemen ran forward to welcome them.
"More refugees from inland, eh?" exclaimed a rough but cordial seaman, who proved to be the captain's harpooner and boat-steerer. "We have some traders from Aleukan already with us."
"Ah!" said Professor Henderson, "we have been looking for them. They have arrived in safety, then?"
"But nearly frozen," said the boat-steerer.
"And where are the people of Nigatuk?"
"We believe all those not killed or burned in the first earthquake were taken off by the United States revenue cutterBear. She sailed for Bering Sea some time before the final earthquake."
"And where is the ocean?" demanded Phineas Roebach.
"It was sucked away in a great tidal wave and left theOrionhigh and dry yonder," said the sailor.
It was evident that the sailors had no appreciation of the real happening. They did not know that they were cut off from the old earth by thousands of miles of space. "Your bark's name isOrion, then?" queried the professor.
"Aye, aye, sir," said the boat-steerer. "TheOrion, out o' New Bedford; the only whaler under sail in these seas, I reckon. Most o' them that's after the ile is steam kettles," he added, thus disrespectfully referring to the fleet of steam whalers from San Francisco.
"But we got 'em all beat, I guarantee," he added, grinning. "We was chasin' a school of big fellers when the sea sucked out and left us an' them high and dry. But the skipper says the sea will come back in good time and mean-times we gits the ile."
Just then the boat-steerer was sending off several sled loads of blubber to his ship, and Jack and Mark, with the professor and their companions, accompanied the cargo.
TheOrionwas a fine big bark and was commanded by an old-fashioned Yankee skipper of the type now almost extinct. He welcomed the travelers aboard his ship most cordially, the ship itself all of a stench with the trying blubber, and overshadowed by a huge cloud of black smoke, for the fires were fed with waste bits of blubber and fat.
The skipper and crew were literally "making hay while the sun shone," for there were more than twenty huge leviathans within a circuit of ten miles from the bark, and they proposed to have every one of them before the flocks of seabirds, or the bears, should find and destroy the stranded creatures.
"We'll fill every barrel and be ready to sail home with our hatches battened down when the sea comes back," declared Captain Sproul.
"And you are quite sure the ocean will return and float your bark?" queried the scientist, patiently, for he saw that it was quite as useless to explain what had happened to this hard-headed old sea-dogas it was to talk to Phineas Roebach.
"You can bet your last dollar it will come back, Mr. Henderson," declared Captain Sproul.
"Why do you think so?" asked the professor.
"Why, the ocean alwayshasbeen here; ain't it?"
"I expect so—within the memory of man."
"Then it will come back!" cried the skipper of theOrion, as though that were an unanswerable argument.
"But what do you call that up yonder?" asked Professor Henderson, pointing to the calm-faced earth rolling tranquilly through the heavens, while her satellite, the moon, likewise appeared.
"We certainly are blessed with moons," said Sproul, nodding. "And mighty glad of it I be. As the day is so short now, and the sun is so hot, two moons to work by is a blessing indeed to us whalers."
"And you don't consider that new planet anything wonderful?" JackDarrow asked Captain Sproul.
"Not at all. We often see what they call sun dogs; don't we?"
"I have seen such things," admitted the youth, while he and Mark smiled at the old skipper's simplicity.
"That double moon is like that, I reckon," said Sproul, and that ended the discussion.
The boys were interested in this novel kind of whaling; but they were more deeply interested in the possible outcome of the situation in which they, and their friends, and the fur-traders, and the bark's crew, were all placed.
The tearing away of this piece of our planet, on which the boys and their companions now sailed, must end finally in some terrible catastrophe. It would be catastrophe enough if the torn-away world never returned to the earth, but sailed forever and ever, round and round its parent planet. Our heroes and their companions would then be marooned without hope of rescue on a fragmentary planet in space, the said planet doomed to become a mere lump of dead and frozen matter adrift in the universe.
Professor Henderson set up the powerful telescope that he had brought, with his other instruments, all the way from the wrecked flying machine left in the crevasse of the great glacier, and busied himself in filling his notebooks with data relating to the movements of this new planet, and of the strange and remarkable incidents occurring each hour of their imprisonment on the island in the air.
Jack and Mark, however, found time to help the whalemen secure the oil from the carcasses of the stranded leviathans which surrounded theOrion. They, with old Andy and Phineas Roebach, began to go out with the parties of blubber-hunters to guard them at their work. For now great troops of polar bears appeared from the north, evidently making their way from the fields of ice that likewise had become stranded on the old sea bed; and these white bears were as savage and as hungry as were the Kodiak bears that infested the river.
The two chums, thus engaged, had an adventure one day that they were never likely to forget. Seeing that there were several of the huge walruses imprisoned in the lakes of salt water remaining in the ocean bed, Jack and Mark desired to kill one for its great tusks. They knew where there was one of the beasts—half as heavy as an elephant—and not far from one of the last whales the crew of theOrionwere cutting up. The boys were guarding this special party of seamen at their work, but had seen no bears since sunset.
There was plenty of light, for both the earth-planet was shining on them and her moon likewise, although the latter was now in her last quarter. Quite sure that the sailors would not be molested, Jack and Mark crept away toward the pool where they had seen the walrus.
They soon found, however, that they were not alone. Washington White had come over from the bark, and seeing what the boys were about he followed them.
"Is you suah 'nuff gwine ter try an' shoot dat hugeous wallingrust, an' pull his teef?" he whispered. "Yo' boys will git killed, some day, foolin' wid sech critters."
"You'd better go back, then," said Mark, "if you are afraid."
But the darkey wanted to see how the boys proposed to go about the work of capturing the walrus. Jack had prepared a long and stout line with a whale lance at one end and a sharp spike at the other. The boys very well knew that the bullets from their rifles would make little impression on the walrus. They had to go about his, capture in a different way from shooting bears.
The salt water lake in which the walrus was trapped was perhaps a mile across, and there were several blow-holes in it. The party had to lie down behind a barrier of seaweed that the wind had tossed up in a great windrow, and wait for the walrus to appear at one hole or another.
When his fierce head came into view Jack and Mark, with their satellite, Washington, crept around to the rear of the creature, and then made a swift but careful advance upon his position. They reached a spot upon the ice not more than ten yards from the blow-hole without attracting the attention of the walrus.
Instantly Jack motioned his chum to stand ready to drive the steel spur at the end of the line into the ice to hold the beast, while he went forward with the harpoon. Right at the edge of the broken ice, within ten feet of the monster, Jack Darrow stood a moment with the weapon poised.
He swung back his body and arm, aimed true for the spot behind the shoulders of the walrus, and then drove the iron home with all his strength.
The harpoon sank deep, and a mighty roar burst from the lips of the stricken beast. Mark drove down the steel peg, stamping on it to fix it securely in the ice. The walrus threw his huge body around and came half out of the water upon the ice to reach his tormentor. But Jack was ready for this move, and he sprang back, out of danger, and picked up his rifle.
The ice of course broke under the walrus for yards around. His fierce little eyes seemed to take in every move of his tormentors. He saw both boys (for Mark, too, had reached his gun) spreading out on either hand to get in fatal shots if they could. Meanwhile Washington White stood on the line close to the peg in the ice so that the beast could not jerk free.
"Take him in the eye, if you can, Mark!" shouted Jack. "The cap of blubber he wears will act like a cushion if we shoot him in the head."
But before either of them could obtain a satisfactory mark, the beast sank from sight. He had broken the ice for some yards toward the place where the end of the line was fastened, and he now had plenty of slack. The boys waited expectantly for his reappearance, while Wash stood, open-mouthed and eyes a-roll.
Suddenly the black man executed a most astounding acrobatic feat. From that standing posture he executed in the twinkling of an eye a swift back somersault, at least twenty feet from the ice!
"Oh, gollyation! I'se a goner!" he yelped, as he described his surprising parabola through the air.
The ice where Wash had stood, and where the steel peg had been driven in, was crushed to fragments as the huge head and shoulders of the wounded walrus came up from the depths. The creature had marked the negro's position exactly, and had burst through the ice at the right spot. The wonderful lightness of all matter on this torn-away world, however, saved the darkey's life. The blow threw Wash so far away that the walrus could not immediately get at him.
But he evidently laid his trouble entirely to the black man, and he threw himself forward along the ice, smashing it to bits, and gnashing at it with his tusks. In half a minute he would have been on the spot where the negro lay had not the boys run in swiftly and pumped a dozen bullets into his eyes and down his open mouth. By good luck more than good management they killed the beast.
"See wot yo' done done!" wailed Washington White, rising gingerly and with a hand upon the small of his back. "Yo' come near ter spilein' Perfesser Henderson's most impo'tant assistant. How do you 'speck de perfesser c'd git erlong widout me?"
This was certainly an unanswerable question, and the boys admitted it. They were sorry Wash had been so badly frightened, but they were delighted at the possession of the tusks of the walrus. The whalers secured the body, too, and made a very good quality of oil out of the blubber.
In hunting adventures, and in the labor of trying-out the whale blubber, several weeks passed. The marooned scientist and his friends, with the crew of the whale ship, experienced some bad weather during this time. For three entire days a terrible snowstorm raged—a blizzard that drifted the snow about theOrion(which had chanced, when she was stranded, to settle on a perfectly even keel) until one could walk over her rail out upon the bottom of the sea.
But when this storm passed over the sun came out and shone as tropically as ever. The snow melted very rapidly and the old sea bed was soon awash. The beasts and fish still alive in the sinks were enabled to reach the streams running out of the various mouths of the Coleville, and these creatures took to deep water.
"By Jo!" ejaculated Captain Sproul, "give us a leetle more water and we'd sail the oldOrionafter them, and reach the open sea again."
He had every belief that the ocean would return to its former bed, and his crew believed it, too. But Professor Henderson and the boys seriously discussed making some move from this locality.
It was plain that there was still plenty of game 'along the shore of the old ocean, and they had about made up their mind to follow the edge of the shore toward Bering Sea and if possible find the revenue cutterBear, when another storm broke over them. No snow fell this time. There was almost continual thunder and a downpour of rain and hail that was sufficient to smother anybody that ventured out upon the deck of theOrion. The new planet seemed to be in the throes of another eruption, too.
Lightning lit the waste about them with intermittent flashes. They had lost sight entirely of the old earth, of the moon, and of the sun. It seemed to Jack and Mark as though this tiny island in the air must be flying through space again, buffeted by every element.
The wind wailed and screamed about the whaleship. There were more than sixty souls aboard and they crouched in the cabin and in the forecastle and knew not what to make of such a foray of the elements. At one moment the rain flooded down upon the decks as though a cloud had burst directly above them; then great hailstones fell, drumming on the planks like musket balls.
The calmest person among them all was Professor Henderson. Captain Sproul had given the aged scientist the use of the small chart-room. There he had set up certain of his instruments, and he hovered over these most of his waking hours, making innumerable calculations from time to time. During the awful turmoil of the elements he watched his instruments without sleep. The boys remained with him most of the time, for they realized that some catastrophe was threatening which the scientist feared but did not wish to explain at once.
Suddenly Captain Sproul burst into the chart-room and gasped:
"Can you tell me the meaning of this, Mr. Henderson? You're a scientific sharp and know a whole lot of things. My cook just went to the galley door to throw out a pot of slops and something—some mysterious force—snatched the heavy iron pot out of his hand and it went sailing off over the ship's rail. Can you explain that?"
"Wasn't it the wind snatched it away?" asked Jack Darrow, before the professor was ready to answer.
"Don't seem to be no wind blowing just at present," said Captain Sproul.
"Wait!" commanded the professor. "Order every companionway and hatch closed. Do not allow a man to go on deck, nor to open a deadlight. We must exist upon the air that remains in the vessel for the present."
"What do you mean?" gasped the skipper.
"There is no air outside!" declared Professor Henderson, solemnly. "We are flying through space where no atmosphere exists. The iron pot merely remained poised in space—our planet, far, far, heavier, is falling through this awful void."
"What sort o' stuff are you talkin'?" demanded Captain Sproul, growing positively white beneath his tan.
"We began to fall several minutes ago," said the professor, pointing to the indicator of one of the delicate instruments before him on the chart table. "The balance of attraction between the earth and the sun has become disturbed and we are plunging—"
"Into the sun?" shrieked Mark Sampson, springing to his feet.
"No! no! Toward the earth! Toward the earth!" reiterated Professor Henderson. "Her attraction has proved the greater. We are falling with frightful velocity toward the sphere from which we were blown off into space so many weeks ago."
"I reckon I'm crazy," groaned Captain Sproul "I hear you folks talkin', but I don't understand a thunderin' word you say."
"You can feel that the air in here is vitiated; can't you?" demandedProfessor Henderson.
The boys had already felt that it was more difficult to breathe. They heard cries all over the ship. Washington White burst into the room, crying: "Oh, lawsy-massy me, Perfesser! We is done bein' smothercated. De breaf am a-leabin' our bodies fo' suah."
The negro fell in a swoon, overturning the table and sending the professor's instruments crashing to the floor. The others, struggling for breath, likewise sank beside Wash. The lights all over the ship were suddenly snuffed out. Every soul aboard lost consciousness as, rushing at unreckoned speed through the universe, the torn-away world descended toward its parent planet.
How long they were unconscious none of the survivors ever learned. When theydidfinally struggle to sense again, it was with the sound of the rushing of mighty waters in their ears.
TheOrionwas afloat! She was being tossed upon the bosom of a wind-lashed ocean, and a hurricane, the like of which the two boys had never experienced before, was at its height.
Captain Sproul rose to his feet, panting for breath, but with his senses all alert. He shouted:
"The sea has rolled back again! What did I tell you? Up and at it, my bully boys! Get a sail upon her so's we can have steering way. Every ile barrel is full and we're homeward bound!"
The hatches were opened and they rushed on deck. It was so black that they could see nothing but the storm-tossed waves—not a sign of land. But it was plain, too, that they were no longer on the lee shore. They had plenty of sea room to work the ship and the brave sailors went about their usual tasks with cheerfulness.
But Professor Henderson and the boys, as well as Andy Sudds and Washington, gathered in the chart room. The aged scientist was confident that during their period of unconsciousness the fragment of the earth that had once been shot off into space, had returned to its parent globe, and he spoke cheerfully of their probable escape.
"But have we descended into the very place we left?" demanded Mark.
"Scarcely probable," returned the professor.
"Nevertheless the ocean has returned to this spot," declared Jack.
"There is water here, yes," admitted the professor. "We are afloat, that is true."
"And is it not the Arctic Ocean?"
"Later I will tell you. They say there is no land in sight. I believe the bulk of the land which was shot off by the volcanic eruption has now sunk in this sea. What sea it is we can tell soon."
"When can we see the sun and take an observation?" queried Mark. "Perhaps finding the temperature of this ocean which surrounds us will tell us something. However, we must have patience until this bitter storm is past."
And this did call for patience, for the hurricane continued for fully a week. Meanwhile the Orion ran on under almost bare poles, and in a northwesterly direction. This course, Captain Sproul believed, would bring them to Bering Sea, and their homeward route.
But a vast and amazing discovery awaited the hardy navigator of the whaling bark when the wind finally died down, the clouds were swept away, and the sun again appeared. Professor Henderson appeared on deck, too, and calculated their position side by side with Captain Sproul. The latter's amazement was unbounded. His calculations, no matter how he worked them, made the position of theOrion148 degrees west of Greenwich and 49 degrees north.
In other words, he was far, far south of the Alaskan Peninsula. During this awful storm he had traversed (or so he was bound to believe) a long stretch of the Arctic Ocean, Bering Sea and Strait, had passed the Aleutian Islands, and was now more than a thousand miles south of the position of theOrionwhen she first became stranded.
The professor endeavored to explain to him again what had really happened—that the fragment of the earth on which they had been marooned had plunged into the old earth again, landing by great good fortune in the empty sea between North America and Asia—in the North Pacific.
Such an explanation seemed utterly ridiculous to Captain Sproul, to his seamen, and even to Phineas Roebach. They were convinced that Professor Henderson was in his dotage. They would rather believe that theOrion, sailing on pretty nearly a straight course according to the compass, had traversed this enormous distance during the hurricane.
The professor and his young friends, however, had studied too deeply the mystery of this astounding affair to be mistaken. All the phenomena of the experience had been noted by Professor Henderson. He had the material of a most remarkable work in his notebooks, and that volume will soon appear to delight the scientific world.
Meanwhile theOrionchanged her course and ran for San Francisco to re-provision. She had a very valuable cargo of oil which she would later take around the Horn to her home port, New Bedford.
At San Francisco, however, Professor Henderson, Jack and Mark, with Andy and Wash and Phineas Roebach, left the ship. Roebach was to report to his oil company and probably return to Alaska to continue his search for petroleum. Our friends started overland for home, stopping off at the city where Dr. Artemus Todd resided to explain to that savant the reason for their inability to secure a single specimen of theChrysothele-Byzantium, which herb the doctor was so confident would be of incalculable value in treating patients suffering from aphasia, amnesia, and kindred troubles.
Perhaps the disappointed doctor was not entirely sure that his friend, Professor Henderson, and his comrades, had gone through the strange experience which they recounted. But a few weeks later several vessels reported sighting a new island in the North Pacific, south of the Alaskan Peninsula. On this island men who landed discovered a colony of Kodiak bears, some Arctic foxes, and the remains of vegetation which had never before been found south of the Arctic Circle.
This discovery created vast talk among the geographers and scientists. An exploring party was sent out by the Smithsonian Institution to examine the new island. It was pronounced of volcanic origin, yet the formation of it was not of recent time. There was on this island (which contained several square miles) the remains of a glacier, and in the ice the party discovered the wreck of a wonderful flying machine, which had evidently been built within a few months.
Of course, this was theSnowbird, the aeroplane which our friends had been obliged to abandon. But by that time Jack and Mark had built another flying machine on the same lines as the one which they had lost in the crevasse of the glacier.
The professor proceeded to explain and prove all this in his book; but there will always be certain doubters. Washington White, however, was more disturbed than any of the party over the fact that everybody would not accept as true the scientist's account of their wonderful voyage on a torn-away world.
"De stupendous and unprecedented gall some folks has is suttenly beyond comparination!" exploded Wash. "Dere is folks dat ain't nebber been to Bawston, eben, dat dares say dat we didn't go ter Alaska in a flyin' masheen, an' den fly away wid a piece ob dat kentry inter de cimcum-ambient air—droppin' back on de same w'en we'd got t'roo wid it, an' landin' right outside de harbor of San Francisco. Dey won't belieb it at all, not eben w'en I proves it to 'em."
"And how do you prove it to your friends, Wash?" queried Jack Darrow.
"By Buttsy," declared the darkey, gravely.
"By the Shanghai?"
"Yes, sah. By Christopher Columbus Amerigo Vespucci George WashingtonAbraham Lincoln Ulysses Grant Garibaldi Thomas Edison Guglielmo MarconiButts."
"And how do you prove it by Christopher Columbus And-so-forth?" demanded the chums, in chorus.
"Why," said Wash, rolling his eyes, "I done tooked dat rooster wid me in all ma trabels; didn't I?"
"You most certainly did," admitted Mark.
"And a big nuisance he was," added Jack.
Wash loftily overlooked this remark. He said, confidently:
"And I brought Buttsy back ergin; didn't I?"
"You did. He's getting fat and sassy right now out in his coop behind the bungalow."
"Well den!" cried Wash. "I done took him wid me, an' I done brought him back. Wot furder elimination ob de fac's does dem folks want? Don't Buttsy crowin' away dar prove it?"
And Washington White walked off with his head held very high as though he had made a perfectly unanswerable statement of the case.
And here we will say good bye to our friends, who had so many thrilling adventures while drifting through space On a Torn-Away World.