Hugh McAlister

“ One could not venture out in the bare white wastes without food and weapons, a fur sleeping-bag to crawl into in case of a storm, and a great knife for cutting snow blocks to build a wind-break. Also, the party carried bundles of bright, orange-hued flags to mark their trail.
Excitement hung over this little group as they made their start at trail-breaking into the unknown. Some on snowshoes, some on skis, they marched out under the strange glow of the Arctic sun, a glow that sometimes crisped and blistered, but never seemed to hold any cheer in its pale gleams that slanted over eternal ice. ”

“ Behind and over him were human beings; the passengers, officers, and crew, all sleeping serenely and confidently in this immensity of space. Europe was slipping by beneath them. Somehow David discovered that its civilization and its eager interest in their progress was a comfort, a spiritual safeguard. Now, indeed, they were about to fare into a wild and savage country, where there were no hangars, and no materials for repairs. No landing crews would swarm over the Siberian wastes to seize the ropes and ease the stranger to the earth, should she desire to come. ”

“ Wedged between some spruce sticks under a stretch of cloth, Hal was off on his motorless flight.
When on the ground this contraption of wood and wires had seemed an ungainly, waddling freak. But now as it soared upward on air currents in its sky-element, it swooped with a marvel of grace.
Instead of a short flight and a mere slide down a wind hill, the boy began to twist and turn to take advantage of every rising current of air so as to ascend to a greater height than that from which he had started. ”

“ In the salon, the passengers huddled in groups with the stoic acceptance of any situation that is characteristic of the American people. Doctor Sims calmly watched the unbelievable panorama, jotting down an occasional note by the intense glare of the lightning. Dulcie clung close to Doctor Trigg, who, also calm, strove to quiet the girl’s natural apprehension with little jokes and whimsical stories.
The majority of the crew were in the hull. The engineers of course were at their posts. Red, sure-footed as a cat, seemed to be everywhere at once. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wind rolled up into a gale that seemed to strike from all sides at once. For safety’s sake, Hal rode high, at something like ten thousand feet. He had the feeling of a lone human survivor drifting above a fog-shrouded world. He must have passed over hamlets and cities innumerable, yet no glow of home or street lights penetrated upward through the fog blanket to point him a guiding beacon.
Hal’s training in blind-flying stood him in good stead here, for relying on his marvelous earth inductor compass and his instrument of artificial horizon, he managed to keep an even keel. ”

“ For on the desert of ice, when the search party from the Kravassin made landing, they found the whole crew of the lost dirigible—but no dirigible. Not at first, anyway. Instead before their eyes lay a vast mound of snow. Within those tons of white drift lay the wreck of the Nardak—two engines smashed, and no fuel to run those that were left.
Haggard, bearded men, in whom hope had long been dead, laughed and shouted and prayed when they saw the great ship, and the rescue party swarming over the ice.
“The impossible! A miracle out of the sky! How are we found?” ”

“ The lobby was full of young officers, strutting and clanking around. Mr. Hammond and David looked distinguished in their plain, close-fitting blue with black braid and small gold insignia which had been chosen as the ship’s uniform. They were both very tall men, well over six feet, the muscles of the younger man making up for the middle-age weight of the older. The Germans regarded them with interest and respect. Certainly they were not to be looked down on, at least! Dulcie, watching them, thought with fury of her own fairylike proportions. ”

“ When a sixty-foot whale would leap high in the air, then drop its tons of weight back down against the waters, it seemed that creation shook to the concussion. At the thunder of huge bodies smashing back through the waves in their enormous fantasies of playfulness, Hal sent his ship rising higher into the air. If one of those monster bodies even brushed his wing or rudder, it would mean his plane crushed into helplessness, himself adrift upon the ocean. ”

“ Lee Renaud burrowed his head between his hands, as though by pressure he would stop the ugly round of thought. But thought swept on, ceaselessly.
To make matters worse, it was drift ice they were on, a great sheet that constantly changed its position. In a gale, it might be pounded into a thousand pieces and become little pans that would scarce support a man’s weight.
Scotty, a short, heavy-set fellow, wearing spectacles that miraculously had not broken in his fall, worked continually with the remnant of his sun compass and a small magnetic compass. ”

“ Nine o’clock; fifteen minutes past; and then—three long blasts from the city’s sirens sent men, women and children rushing for vantage points. Traffic came spontaneously to an end.
She had come; the silver ship, the Moonbeam! Her engines roaring, her silver gray sides gleaming in the searchlights, she appeared suddenly as she dropped through a floor of mist, and hung so low over the city that it was easy to see the passengers crowded at the windows of the cabin. The usual calm of the Japanese disappeared, and wild shouts of “Banzai!” rent the air. ”

“ Hal Dane stepped off the wing edge and dropped into space.
The pull-off swung him like a toy. Everything went black. He shut his eyes, opened them again. The earth seemed to gyrate below him. Above him, the zoom of the ship.
He must pull the rip cord of the ’chute. No, no—not yet! Must wait, must be no danger of tearing silken fabric against a whirl of the plane.
Down, down. Top speed. Heart in throat. Ghastly shriek of air in his face. His head was going down. He must kick, keep the slant. ”

“ At the ship itself, ladders and hawsers and scores of willing hands waited to draw them up to safety.
“Easy now! He’s injured! That one’s not seeing much. Easy, easy!” rose calls from the ice.
Blanket slings hoisted up Van Granger and Scotty.
Lee Renaud had the strength to go up and over by himself, though the feel of solid ship beneath him took the last of his fighting spirit out of him. Safe! He didn’t have to be strong for himself and for the sick and injured men longer. He was going to make a fool of himself—going to faint. He fought off blackness in vain. ”

“ They watched, and Dulcie waved madly. Below, the little toy people waved their arms and hats. Even aprons were torn off and brandished. A fat old man bowled about, waving and bowing with an air of authority easily discernible to the amused watchers above. As the ship passed on, children and dogs followed in a losing race.
“Wasn’t that fun?” said Dulcie. “You are nice, Davie. It is so understanding of you to know how they feel. That is the thrill that comes once in a lifetime for a lot of those people. ”

“ Then towards morning nature seemed to soften and grow milder. The wind sank to a breeze. Stars came out just before the darkness lifted for the first pale pearl-gray of dawn. A rose glow spread till the whole horizon seemed aflame.
It was glorious here, high above the earth, but as Hal turned his eyes downward a dreadful view met his eyes. Dismay shot through him.
Had his famous compass failed him? Had winds driven him far off his track? Had he crossed the whole length of Alabama and the top of Florida to go drifting like a derelict above the Gulf of Mexico? ”

“ Not for nothing had he followed the work of those old inventors making their way forward, a step at a time. In his own old workshop in the Cove, Lee had copied those steps in real, working mechanisms that, however crude they might have been, had yet achieved results. A modern, up-to-date inventor would be used to a splendid laboratory, used to purchasing smooth, finished, machine-made products to help with the carrying out of his ideas. But Lee Renaud, like those oldtime pioneers in electricity, was used to seizing upon wood and wire, scrap metal and glass. ”

“ He would force dark thoughts out of his mind. There must only be room in his plans for hope.
He sent the throttle up a notch. More speed! His heart caught the lift of power from the throbbing motor. Exultation, and the wild spirit of the Vikings surged through his veins. His Norse ancestors had crossed an ocean in a frail sea skiff. And now he, like some atom adrift in the immense wastes of the sky, was daring the air currents on man-made wings. Hal Dane felt a thrill of power and glory shoot through him. It was speed on to whatever the end was, to death, or to victory! ”

“ Outside on the snow barrens, the polar world went its old way. The cold streamers of the northern lights flickered in the sky; the wolf-pack flung its hunting howl on the winds; the great white bear stalked across his lonely domain.
But within the shelter of the ice tunnel, a handful of humans had dared to bring a new way of life into the Arctic wilds. Here a little audience sat thrilled and tense before a screen on which a moving-picture machine projected flight pictures made and developed in the very teeth of Arctic cold. ”

“ It was a desperate chance. Wiljohn might be going to any of a hundred places. Even if they sighted a ship and tailed it into Clanton, it might prove to be any of the thousands of sky craft that filled the air these days.
Still it was the only clew they had. They could follow it blindly—that was all.
Twenty-three miles from the Rand-Elwin Field to Clanton! With its newer speed and power, the big ship could make it in say nine-tenths of their own flying time. A mere fraction of time, a few moments out of all eternity! Yet those few moments could spell death to three unwarned passengers. ”

“ Olaf Valchen was one of those prospectors, who, eight years ago, followed the land trail and the water trail, by sled, by skin canoe, up into the frozen north. He had found gold—millions of dollars’ worth of it in the strange rottenstone mounds that edged a frozen lake. Three years later he reached civilization, but as penniless as when he had adventured forth. On the long trail, when one has to either cast away life or gold—well, one drops the heavy skin sacks in the snow, and struggles on, thankful to survive. ”

“ Down on the Rand-Elwin field a host of students and visitors watched that ship of the air. Its pilot was Hal Dane. For a space he cradled along, a mere speck gently floating up there in the immensity of the ether. Then like a mad thing his ship began to fall, rolling and twisting and turning. At impossible angles it came to life, righted itself to spring upward—only to fall into worse dilemmas. Now he was diving, only two hundred feet above earth, and flying upside down. On the verge of crash, and in an agonizing slow roll, the ship slid back into normal flying position. ”

“ Captain Jan was the type of man whom danger lures as a honey-pot lures bees. A great new gold rush was stirring the Western Hemisphere—a flying rush into Canada’s frozen Arctic on the hunt for that precious metal. A fur-clad adventurer’s discovery of gold-bearing rock in the northern wilds of the Mackenzie Delta had sent men trekking into that frozen land by canoe, by foot, by dog-sled. On his other explorations, Jan Bartlot had followed land trails and sea trails. But now he proposed to follow the air trail up into the Arctic, to take a huge dirigible into that land of storms and snows. ”

“ As spring came on, Hal went from ground work back again into air flight. He found the routine of flying tests easy, because the inner workings of engine mechanics seemed etched on his very brain. The feel of wings stirred him, roused all the old wild exhilaration of flight. And yet he was more critical of air machinery than in the past. Where before he had been vastly satisfied with the mechanisms of man-flight, he now caught himself wondering continually why man had not made his machines the better to withstand certain shocks that were bound to come in any flying routine. ”

“ Storm warnings tap through the air, radio speeds the word in all directions. In consequence, a mail plane for the West dips south in its itinerary to avoid nasty weather; shipping on the Great Lakes goes into dock or heads for the safety of open water; a mammoth dirigible changes its course to circle around a hail-and-wind-tortured sector of the ocean of air.
Between his hours of standing watch at the radio, Lee turned with delighted eyes to the mosaic of rivers, cities, forests and farms spread beneath the ship. ”

“ Endurance gains the wolf-pack its meat—relentless persistence in the chase and untiring watching and waiting for hunger, weakness and thirst to drop some beleaguered creature into their jaws.
Green eyes of hate glared up from the cave floor at the men trapped on the ice wall. Red tongues lolled hungrily over long jaws each time there was some faint movement of slipping or sliding, for it might presage a human losing grip and falling into the waiting death ring below. ”

“ Wind bird, indeed! To the uninitiated, this cloth contraption stretched on hay-bale wire and sprucewood sticks, hauled out of its lair on its screakily protesting keel skid, looked more like some waddling antediluvian from the prehistoric past.
But Rex Raynor seemed to find nothing comical in the wind bird. Her slow progress while being dragged to the brow of Hogback Hill gave him a chance to study her every line. To an aviator used to the exquisite finish and polish of a modern factory-built sky boat, Hal’s contraption offered a contrast of a rather sketchy aircraft fuselage. ”

“ On even so slight a thing as a bundle of snow moss does the success of an Arctic trip hang. For without this specially prepared moss to line boots and absorb dampness, the feet of men tramping the blizzard-swept snow barrens would freeze.
Just such details as these, and a thousand others, great and small, had to be attended to by Captain Jan and the men who worked with him.
A trip into the frozen north was no holiday of leisure; it meant hard work for all concerned.
The busiest place aboard the Nardak was the radio-room, with its every space—walls, ceiling, desk—crowded with modern equipment. ”

“ A thrill shot through Hal Dane, lifting the great weariness of the forty hours’ continuous flying. Aches and chill and battering of storms were forgotten now that the fight was ending. He had done what he had set out to do—crossed the greatest of the oceans in a single non-stop flight.
His fingers began to tap an incessant query on his sending-radio outfit, “Landing field? Landing field? Landing field?”
And suddenly he was in touch with answers winging their way up to him from the ground below—“Tokio Asahi! Tokio Asahi!” Over and over he got those two words—“Tokio Asahi!” ”

“ For generations, the great Canadian Northwest has been luring men into its frozen heart to seek wealth. The magnet which drew adventurers into this enormous wilderness, where for hundreds upon hundreds of miles there was no sign of human life, no vegetation save the fossilized leaves and twigs of a million years ago, no connection with the world of living men—the magnet which lured was mineral wealth. Gold, silver, nickel, platinum, not reckoned in millions of dollars, but in billions, lay almost to hand, just below the frozen crust of this frozen land. ”