CHAPTER XV
ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND
Ned declared the message was a fake. He would not believe such an extraordinary tale could be true.
“Somebody wants to get you off the Winged Arrow,” he said. “That fellow who hung around here at the launching—remember? The chap with the Frenchy look. I bet he represented some inventor who is trying to put out a machine like yours. This is a scheme to take your mind off your work and delay you.”
“It can’t delay me much now,” said Tom, puzzled. “The flying boat has been proved practical—and is practically complete.”
“I fear that something really terrible has happened to our friends up there in the Arctic,” Mr. Swift broke in.
“The chief thing to do is to find out about it,” Tom said vigorously. “We’ll test this thing out—find out who Captain Olaf Karofsen of the Kalrye is.”
“How are you going to do that and him in Iceland?” scoffed Ned. “It will take you two months or longer to get there.”
“We have got to look into it and try to find Mr. Damon and Mary’s father, if it takes two years,” declared Tom.
He set to work at once with telephone and telegraph and got information from everybody he could think of regarding Iceland and its chief seaport. He reached a representative of Icelandic commercial interests at his home in Boston and was told how to cable in the most direct way to Reykjavik. The Merchants’ Association there verified Olaf Karofsen’s statement of the wreck of his motor schooner in the ice and the loss of several passengers and their possessions.
Before morning Tom had a pretty complete story of the disaster. It seemed that because of the lateness of the season no steamship would sail from Reykjavik at once, and Mr. Damon had engaged the motor schooner, Kalrye, to take his party over to a Greenland port from which a fishing steamer would sail south before winter really set in.
In the night and fog the Kalrye smashed into a shelf of ice just below the surface, which seemed to be part of a gigantic iceberg, the peaks of which stood up out of the sea several miles distant. Mr. Damon was known to carry with him a chest of treasure which he had come to Iceland to secure. With this chest Mr. Damon and his friend, with five sailors, had taken to one of the Kalrye’s two boats. A heavy sea had smashed it against the ice and the skipper and his party had seen all in the wrecked boat get onto the ice with their luggage.
Then the fog had shut down again and Captain Karofsen had been unable to find the castaways. He had returned to Reykjavik and was now ready, if furnished with necessary funds, to get up a searching party and start after the lost men.
“It would be weeks before we could hear from such a searching party,” groaned Mr. Swift. “What will you tell Mary and her mother, Tom?”
“Don’t tell ’em anything,” advised Ned. “Wait until we hear something for sure.”
But this could not be. It was impossible to hide the facts from Mary Nestor. Before Tom had got out of bed, after spending most of the night at the telephone, Rad knocked on his door.
“Miss Mary come, Mars’ Tom,” said the old darkey through the keyhole. “She done got a letter from her father.”
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Tom, getting out of bed in a hurry. “He can’t have got off that iceberg and written her, all as quickly as this!”
He did not stop to dress, but put on his blanket robe and went downstairs. Mary was talking with Mr. Swift and had already got an inkling of the trouble. She was very pale and her eyes glistened with tears.
“Oh, Tom! what shall we do?” she cried, when the young inventor appeared. “We never should have let him go with Mr. Damon.”
“Why not?” Tom demanded. “Isn’t your father better?”
“He says in this letter that he is. Much better. But that was written a month ago. It was sent by the last mail steamer for the season. Father and Mr. Damon should have taken that steamer. But the legacy Mr. Damon went after had not then been put into his hands. Think, Tom! Thirty thousand dollars in Danish money that his old friend, Aman Dele, left to him. The priest had it hidden away in a vault under his little stone church at Rosestone. Father tells us all about it in this letter.”
“Then they are only delayed up there in Iceland,” began Tom rather faintly.
“Don’t!” exclaimed Mary. “I know more than that. Your father says they have been wrecked at sea. I must know all, Tom,” and Mary’s eyes filled with tears as she struggled courageously for self-control.
“Oh, it may not be anywhere near as bad as it seems,” began Tom.
“But—but they are lost? Oh, Tom! What shall we do? And what would I ever do without you, Tom? It startles me sometimes when I realize how much I depend on you.”
“I’m glad you do, Mary.”
“But what shall we do? It was so like Mr. Damon to try to reach Greenland in a small boat!”
“Not so small, I imagine. That Kalrye carried a crew of ten. A good-sized schooner. She probably ran into a ledge of ice just as the Titanic did, years ago. But the captain declares he saw his men and passengers safely on the iceberg.”
“When was that?” Mary demanded, wiping her eyes and speaking more practically.
“About ten days ago. The captain had to work his way back to Reykjavik under sail in a whale boat.”
“Could they live so long on an iceberg?”
“Why not if they had provisions? And the captain said the other boat carried both water and supplies.”
“But they would have to remain on the ice until rescued!”
“Looks so,” admitted Tom.
“If we started at once for Iceland it would be two months before we could get to Reykjavik, wouldn’t it?” the girl asked.
Tom said nothing. His father exclaimed:
“My poor girl! Passenger service to the island is probably closed until spring.”
“Then,” said Mary Nestor firmly, “there is only one hope for father.”
She looked straight at Tom, and he nodded slowly.
“Only one chance that I can see,” he said.
It was the turn of Mr. Swift to be astonished.
“What do you two young people mean?” he asked.
Tom smiled slowly. “Mary gets the idea, dad,” he said cheerfully. “I shall start for Iceland just as soon as possible. We will pick up Captain Karofsen, if he will go with us, to point out the iceberg where he left a part of his crew and the passengers marooned, and——”
“But how will you go? What route will you follow at this time of year?” Mr. Barton Swift demanded.
“We’ll go on the wings of the wind,” declared his son, laughing outright. “Of course, this eventuality is exactly what I must have built the Winged Arrow for. I will telephone the shops at once and tell Brannigan to get the crew together. I’ll take Ned and Koku. If my new flying boat is any good at all, she ought to fly to Iceland in less than three days. As soon as she can be made ready, I will start, Mary.”
“Oh, Tom! suppose you should be lost, too? Suppose you should be killed?”
“That can happen but once,” declared Tom.
“Only once! But that’s the horror of it! Oh, Tom!” and Mary gave a slight shudder.
“Let’s not worry about that, Mary.”
But both knew that Mary would carry a load of worry in her heart, and not entirely for her father.