CHAPTER XXIIIFIGHTING THROUGH
Radio had brought ships of the air and ships of the sea into the Arctic to search for the lost crew from the great Nardak. Radio must now be the guide to focus the eyes of the searchers upon these dots that were freezing, starving humans on the boundless wastes.
Like one demented, Lee Renaud hung over his crude sending machine, tap-tapping his call into the air. He ate next to nothing, slept only in snatches. He must get in touch with Spitzbergen, with the base ship, the Kravassin, anchored there.
Since that first disappointment, two other planes had circled in and passed on, unseeing. These were two seaplanes, sturdy white-winged biplanes, with black fuselage. They had come that close, near enough for men on the ice to see, yet not to be seen. Frantic efforts to signal from the ice had been all in vain. One plane had hung in the air for an hour’s reconnaissance, then had disappeared in the grim Arctic horizon, flying back toward Spitzbergen.
“Put radios on the rescue planes. Put radios on the rescue planes, short-wave, telegraphic type. Sending station F-O-Y-N on the drift ice can then communicate direct and give signals to bring the planes to the refugees. S. O. S. to the world! Help! Relay the word to Spitzbergen. F-O-Y-N can’t make the touch to its nearest station.” Thus, hour after hour, Renaud sent his call.
For forty hours now, there had been no radio connection between the refugee camp and the rest of the world. Atmospheric disturbances, most likely,—a storm brewing and rolling up interference between the makeshift station and the stations of a listening world! The snow haze was creeping over the horizon, forerunner of evil weather. And out in the water lanes, dark forms rose now and again with a swish and a puff, rolled to blow, and sank again. Killer whales come back, like under-sea vultures, to await what storm and death might fling to them.
On and on went Renaud with his tapping. There was nothing else to do. Answer or no answer, his fingers kept doggedly to their task. Tap—listen—tap—and the snow haze closing down.
Then through the dimness to the southwest, a puff of smoke rose slim and tall, and then spread out on the damp air in a long wavering line. Another smoke puff, closer this time! Smoke bombs! Signals dropped from a plane! With a sudden chitter-chatter that sent his heart pounding up into his very throat for joy, Renaud’s little radio picked up a call out of the near air. The plane—it was sending the radio call! It was carrying a wireless set, as Renaud had pleaded!
With flying fingers, Renaud tapped out his location. “Here—to the east of the smoke bomb! More to the east! Now to the north!”
On came the plane. It was so easy now, with connection between ground and air. The plane was the splendid silver and orange monoplane that had searched in vain for them a day ago. Now it swept in a direct line above them, flew low over the ice pack—lower, lower, but did not land.
“Major Ravoia in the SD-55. No chance to land. Break of the ice would sink us all.” It was a message that sent Renaud reeling across his machine.
But if the SD-55 could not land, something else could. From over the edge of the plane, as it hovered low, an object was dropped. This fell free for a space, then fluttered open into a parachute to which was attached a large box. As gently as a hand setting a fragile glass on a table, the broad, inverted chalice of the parachute let its weight down and down till it eased against the ice.
Renaud had raised his head to watch. Now he went across the ice to the box with its draping of collapsed parachute. With a piece of metal he beat open the top—began lifting out the contents. It was enough to stir the heart of any half-starved marooner—food, clothing, snow glasses, bandages and medicines, rifles and ammunition and a collapsible rubber boat.
“Dry clothing! Something to eat! Medicine for your eyes!” he called out huskily to poor Scotty, who, scarce seeing at all now, came wavering across the snow slush.
The silver and orange of the monoplane was lifting above their heads now, but its wireless was pouring out a staccato message that came sliding briskly into the radio base on the drift ice: “Don’t despair. The ice-breaker Kravassin is fighting through to you. By radio connection I can locate you again; can pilot the ice ship on.”
With a zooming roar, the SD-55 was gone. So quickly did the flash of orange and silver disappear into the lowering haze, that it seemed almost a dream that it had ever hovered within hailing distance. Only, here was the food, the clothing, the strange rubber boat, the parachute that had eased them to the ice.
And on the air still seemed to hang the SD-55’s message: “Don’t despair—Kravassin fighting through!”
On the great Russian ice-breaker hung their last hope.