CHAPTER XV.
DYNAMITING THE REEF.
"No," shouted the boy, "not that, but I think I see a chance of ourbeing saved!"
"Have they seen us from the ships?" asked Billy.
"No, but the floe has struck a different current and we are driftingback."
"Are you s-s-s-sure of t-t-t-this?" asked the professor.
"Certain," replied Frank; "I have been watching the progress of otherpieces of drifting ice and the current seems to take a distinct curvehere and radiate backward toward the pole."
"Then we are saved--hurray!" shouted Billy, dancing about on theslippery ice, and falling headlong, in his excitement, on thetreacherous footing it afforded.
"No use hollering till we are out of the woods," said Frank; "thecurrent may make another turn before we land near the ships."
This checked the enthusiasm and the boys all fell to anxiouslywatching the course their floe was likely to pursue.
"There's our whale," shouted Billy, suddenly. "Look what a smash onthe nose he got."
The great monster seemed to have recovered from its swoon and was nowswimming in slow circles round the floe, eyeing the boys malevolently,but not offering to attack them. Evidently it was wondering, in itsown mind, what it had struck when it collided with the boat and thefloe.
The floe drifted onward, with the vessels' forms every moment growinglarger to the boys' view. All at once a welcome sound rang out on thenipping polar air.
"Boom!"
"They have missed us and are firing the gun," cried Frank.
"That's what," rejoined Billy; "and we are going to get a terriblelecture when we get back on board, too."
Soon the floe, drifting steadily southward, by the strange freak ofthe antarctic current, came in view of the lookouts on the ships, whohad been posted as soon as the boys were missed. The boats were atonce despatched, and headed for the little ice island.
The killer whale suddenly took it into his head, as the boats drewnear, to try one more attack, but Dr. Watson Gregg, the ship'ssurgeon, who stood in the bow of the first boat, saw the ferociousmonster coming and, with three quick bullets from a magazine rifle,ended the great brute's career forever. His huge, black bulk, with itswhitish belly and great jaws, floated on the surface for a fewminutes, and the boys estimated his length at about thirty feet.
"Room enough there to have swallowed us all up," commented Billy, asthey gazed at the monster.
"Well, young men, what have you got to say for yourselves?" asked Dr.Gregg, as the boats drew alongside.
The boys all looked shamefaced as they got into the boat, and twosailors assisted the half-frozen professor into it. They realized thatthey had been guilty of a breach of discipline in taking off the boat,and that, moreover, their disobedience had cost the expedition one ofits valuable assets, for there was no hope of ever putting the smashedcraft together again.
On their return to the ship Captain Hazzard did not say much to them,but what he did say, as Billy remarked afterward, "burned a hole inyou."
However, after a hearty dinner and a change of clothing, they all,even the professor--who seemed none the worse for the effects of hiscold bath--cheered up a bit, more especially as Captain Barrington hadannounced that he had a plan for getting the ship off the reef. BenStubbs, who had, with his crew, been taken off the end of theobstruction by another boat, had announced that the depth of theobstruction did not seem to exceed twenty feet and its greatest widthforty. Where the ship's bow rested the breadth was about thirty feetand the depth not more than twenty.
"My gracious," suddenly cried the professor as the boys came out fromdinner; "I have suffered a terrible loss!"
His face was so grave, and he seemed so worried, that the boysinquired sympathetically what it was that he had lost.
"My bucket, my dredging bucket," wailed the scientist. "I was too coldto examine it thoroughly and I recollect now that I am sure it hadsome sort of sea-creatures in the bottom of it."
"What has become of it?" asked Frank, hardly able to keep fromlaughing.
"I left it on the ice floe," wailed the professor. "I must have it."
"Well, if it's on the floe it will have to stay there," remarkedFrank. "There seems to be no way of getting it off."
"I wonder if the captain wouldn't send out some men in a boat to lookfor it," hopefully exclaimed the collector, suddenly.
"I shouldn't advise you to ask him," remarked Ben Stubbs, who justthen came up, his arms laden with packages. "We've lost one boatthrough going after peppermints or specimints, or whatever you call'em."
"Possibly, as you say, it would not be wise," agreed the professor;"never mind, perhaps I can catch a fur-bearing pollywog at the SouthPole."
He seemed quite cheered up at this reflection and smiled happily atthe thought of achieving his dream.
"What have you got there, Ben?" asked Billy, pointing to thequeer-looking boxes and packages the boatswain was carrying.
"Dynamite, battery boxes, and fuses," replied the old sailor.
"Whatever for?" asked the young reporter. "Are you going to blow upthe ship?"
"Not exactly, but we are going to blow her OUT."
"Dynamite the ice, you mean?"
"That's it."
"Hurray, we'll soon be free of the ice-drift," cried Harry, as theyfollowed the boatswain forward and watched while he and several of thecrew drilled holes in the ice and adjusted the dynamite on either sideof the bow, at a distance of about two hundred feet from the ship ineither direction.
Caps of fulminate of mercury were then affixed to the explosive andwires led from it to the battery boxes.
"How will that free us?" asked the professor, who, like most men whodevote all their time to one subject, was profoundly ignorant ofanything but deep sea life and natural history.
"It is the nature of dynamite to explode downwards," said Frank. "Whenthat charge is set off it will blow the ice away on either side and weshall float freely once more."
"Wonderful," exclaimed the professor. "I had better get my deep seanet. The explosion may kill some curious fish when it goes off."
He hurried away to get the article in question, while the boys stoodbeside Captain Hazzard, who was about to explode the heavy charges.Everybody was ordered to hold tight to something, and then thecommander pushed the switch.
"Click!"
A mighty roar followed and the ship seemed to rise in the air. Butonly for an instant. The next minute she settled back and those onboard her broke out in a cheer as they realized that they once morefloated free of the great ice-reef.
The two ends of the obstruction having been blown off by the dynamite,the center portion was not buoyant enough to support the weight of theSouthern Cross, and went scraping and bumping beneath her to bob upharmlessly to the surface at her stern.
There was only one dissenting voice in the general enthusiasm thatreigned on board at the thought that they were now able to proceed,and that was the professor's. He had been untangling a forgotten rarespecimen of deep-sea lobster from his net, when the explosion came.
In his agitation at the vessel's sudden heave and the unexpectednoise, he had let his hand slip and the creature had seized him by thethumb. With a roar of pain the professor flung it from him and itflopped overboard.
"Hurray! we are off the reef, professor," shouted Frank, running aftto help adjust a stern cable that had been thrown out when theSouthern Cross grounded.
"So I see, but I have lost a rare specimen of deep-sea lobster,"groaned the professor, peering over the side of the ship to see ifthere were any hope of recapturing his prize.
The anchor of the Southern Cross was dropped to hold her firmly whilethe steel hawser was reconnected with the Brutus, and soon the coalship and her consort were steaming steadily onward toward the Barrierand the polar night.
It grew steadily colder, but the boys did not mind the exhilaratingatmosphere. They had games of ball and clambered about in the rigging,and kept in a fine glow in this
way. The professor tried to join themat these games, but a tumble from halfway up the slippery main shroudsinto a pile of snow, in which he was half smothered, soon checked hisenthusiasm, and he thereafter devoted himself to classifying hisspecimens.
Great albatross now began to wheel round the vessel and the sailorscaught some of the monster white and gray birds with long strings towhich they had attached bits of bread and other bait. These were flungout into the air and the greedy creatures, making a dive for them,soon found themselves choking. They were then easily hauled to deck.Captain Hazzard, who disliked unnecessary cruelty, had given strictorders that the birds were to be released after their capture, andthis was always done. The birds, however, seemed in no wise to profitby their lessons, for one bird, on the leg of which a copper ring hadbeen placed to identify him, was captured again and again.
The professor, particularly, was interested in this sport, and deviseda sort of lasso with a wire ring in it, with which he designed tocapture the largest of the great birds, a monster with a wing spreadof fully ten feet. Day after day he patiently coaxed the creature nearwith bits of bread, but the bird, with great cunning, came quite closeto get the bread, but as soon as it saw the professor getting ready toswing his "lariat" it vanished.
"Ah-ha, my beauty, I'll get you yet," was all the professor said onthese occasions. His patience was marvelous.
One day, as the ships were plunging along through ice-strewn seas, notfar to the eastward of the inhospitable and bleak Shetland Islands,the professor accomplished his wish, and nearly ended his own careersimultaneously.
The boys, who were amidships talking to Ben Stubbs, were apprised by aloud yell that something unusual was occurring aft, and ran quickly inthat direction. There they saw a strange sight. The professor, withhis feet hooked into a deck ring, was holding with both hands to theend of his lasso, while the albatross, which he had at last succeededin looping, was flapping with all its might to escape.
"Help, help, he'll pull me overboard," screamed the professor.
"Let go the halliards!" roared Ben, who saw that there was, indeed,danger of what the professor feared happening.
"I can't let him escape. Help me!" yelled the professor.
"My feet are slipping!" he went on.
"Let go of the albatross," shouted the boys, who with Ben werehastening up the ladder leading to the raised stern. It did not look,however, as if they could reach there before the professor was carriedoverboard like the tail of a kite, by the huge bird he had lassoed.
Suddenly, with a howl of terror, the professor, who never seemed toentertain the thought of letting go of the bird, was jerked from hisfoothold by a sudden lurch of the ship.
Ben Stubbs was just in time. He sprang forward with wonderful agilityand seized the professor's long legs just as the man of science wasbeing pulled over the rail into space by the great albatross.
"Let go, dod gast you!" he bellowed, jerking the lasso out of theprofessor's hands, while the albatross went flapping off, a longstreamer of rope hanging from its neck.
"I've lost my albatross," wailed the scientist.
"And blamed near lost yer own life," angrily exclaimed Ben. "Whydidn't you let go?"
"Why, then I'd have lost the bird," said the professor, simply. "But Ithank you for saving my life."
"Well, don't go doin' such fool things again," said Ben, angrily, forhe had feared that he would not be in time to save the bigotedscientist's life.
The professor, however, was quite unruffled, and went about for somehours lamenting the loss of the huge antarctic bird. He consoledhimself later, however, by shooting a beautiful little snow petrel,which he stuffed and mounted and presented to Ben Stubbs, who wasquite mollified by the kind-hearted, if erratic, professor's gift.
Boy Aviators' Polar Dash; or, Facing Death in the Antarctic Page 15