CHAPTER XXII
BACK TO THE FLYING BOAT
The excitement of the bear fight and of being shut into the tunnel through the ice had for the moment driven out of the minds of all the party from the flying boat remembrance of the cause which had brought them here to the giant iceberg. For the time being even Tom had forgotten Mr. Damon and Mr. Nestor and their companions.
At least some of the castaways from the schooner Kalrye were right ahead of Tom’s party. The booming voice of the excitable Wakefield Damon and his “blessing” could never be mistaken by anybody who knew him at all!
Captain Olaf Karofsen burst into a great roar of laughter, and, cheering loudly, he strode ahead along the passage.
“We bane findt dem fellers!” he bawled. “Misder Damon! How you vas now—yes?”
The others heard Mr. Damon cry:
“Here’s that Skowegian, Nestor! Captain of the Kalrye. What do you know about this? Bless my divining rod! I never expected to see him again.”
The whole party, including Tom, followed the big captain. They rushed into a circular chamber in the ice. In the middle was a small fire burning on a piece of copper sheathing, set up on empty bean cans to keep the heat from the floor of the chamber.
There were only two persons present, both wrapped well in furs. They had been eating some cooked fish of some kind and drinking tea from tin pannikins. The man who had first got up to greet the newcomers was Mr. Wakefield Damon.
“Bless my horn spectacles!” he gasped, staring. “Is that Tom Swift I see? And Koku? And Ned Newton? Bless my imagination! I certainly must be seeing things.”
“You surely are, Mr. Damon!” cried Ned. “You are seeing a bunch of castaways—just as much cast away as you are.”
But Tom gave his closest attention to the other man—the man who still sat before the fire. There was no mistaking him, yet he looked so different from the wan and almost helpless man who had left Shopton for the Arctic weeks before that the young inventor could scarcely believe he was Mary Nestor’s father.
“Mr. Nestor!” gasped Tom.
“Tom, my boy! Did you really come to find us? My brave fellow!”
“I did not come expecting to find such a picture of health, Mr. Nestor,” declared Tom, clasping hands with the ex-invalid. “That crazy Raddiker wasn’t so crazy as I feared, was he? Why, Mr. Nestor, you are a picture!”
“I am a picture of a homesick man, believe me,” declared Mary’s father earnestly. “I don’t know how you got here, Tom; but I hope you can take us back home in a hurry.”
“Bless my seven-leagued boots! how you must have traveled to get here so quickly, Tom Swift,” Mr. Damon suddenly shouted. “How did you do it? I see the skipper must have got word of the wreck to you. But how did you fellows get here?”
“Through the air,” said Ned, laughing.
“The new flying boat?” demanded Mr. Nestor. “Is it a success, Tom?”
“Bless my flying carpet of Bagdad!” chuckled Mr. Damon. “Never thought of that! Where is she? Can you take us all back?”
“We hope to. Though it may be close crowding with the five sailors. By the way,” added Tom, “where are they?”
Instantly Mr. Wakefield Damon was very grave. Mr. Nestor said slowly:
“We had a terrible accident the third day we were on this ice island. We were climbing over the heights, making for a place where we thought of setting up an oar with a flag, although it scarcely seemed possible that there would be any passing ship so late in the fall.
“However,” he went on, “we came to a crevasse in the ice, and in trying to cross it two of the men fell and disappeared. We could not reach them.”
“And bless my disappearing riches!” burst out Wakefield Damon, “the chest with my legacy from Aman Dele fell with them. We lost the men and the thirty thousand dollars in a moment.”
“That is very unfortunate, Mr. Damon,” said Tom seriously. “Where are the other three sailors who made up your party?”
“They are out somewhere now hunting for food—seals or fish, or the like. Brave fellows! Bless their hats and shoestrings! I mean that all of them shall be well paid for their faithfulness to us.”
Captain Karofsen was silent. He had learned by a single question that the two sailors who had fallen into the chasm with the treasure chest were his own brother and his nephew! These relatives had aroused in the schooner captain a great desire to recover the castaways.
“Let’s get out of here and find your other three helpers,” Tom said finally. “We must get back to the gorge in which we left the flying boat. Brannigan will believe we are completely lost.”
“And maybe we are,” said Ned, again pessimistic. “No knowing whether we can get down into that valley again. And, once there, shall we be able to lift the Winged Arrow into the air?”
None of the others paid much attention to Ned’s gloomy words. Mr. Damon and Mr. Nestor were too much interested in hearing news from home and Tom’s brief account of the flight of the flying boat from America to Iceland and thence to this part of the Arctic Ocean to listen to Ned.
“It is wonderful!” declared Mr. Nestor. “One could scarcely believe that you would have so easily found this particular iceberg—and us upon it.”
“Thanks to the bear,” said Tom. “And if we get short of provisions we can go back and get a few bear steaks. Where is the entrance to this house?”
Mr. Nestor and Mr. Damon led the way. In two minutes they were out on the open ice, on the side of one of the ice hills over which the explorers had previously flown in the flying boat.
“How far are we from the place where we left the Winged Arrow, Captain?” asked Tom of Olaf Karofsen.
“It iss so far as that peak—yes? Maype ten mile. But my odder t’ree men——?”
Almost immediately the party sighted the trio of sailors coming up the slope from the ice field. Two of them bore a frozen seal between them. The other carried the guns and a rope. When they saw Captain Karofsen and the others they shrieked their joy and, dropping the seal, scrambled up the ice slope as fast as possible.
In their own language they broke into a concerted account of their adventures since the Kalrye had been wrecked. It was easy for the Americans to know when the sailors spoke of the loss of Captain Karofsen’s brother and nephew. The schooner captain grew very, very grave.
“I wish we might search that chasm you speak of for those men,” Tom whispered to Mr. Damon. “You say they carried a bag of provisions, too?”
“Bless my emergency ration, Tom Swift!” whispered the eccentric gentleman. “We yelled there and waited around for an hour. There was not a sound rose from that hole. They must have been instantly killed.”
“But the money?”
“We-ell,” said Mr. Damon doubtfully. “Of course, all I thought of at first was the chance of our getting away from here. But now it looks different. It might be well to make a search for the treasure box. But first, let us see,” he added more vigorously, “if we can get your flying boat out of that hole you say she is in.”
That actually was the main thing to worry about. And even when the party had reached the brink of the gorge and fortunately found a traversable path to the bottom of it and came in sight of the flying boat, the question as to whether or no they could get the Winged Arrow into the air again was the all-important subject of their thoughts.