Mr. Wakefield Damon was possessed of a bulldog trait. When he once set his teeth into a thing he would not let go until he had mastered it.

While Tom and the others were giving way to excitement over the result to the flying boat of the shock it had undergone, Mr. Damon (when once the door in the hull was opened) leaped out and stared up the slope of the ice peak to see if he could again observe the curl of smoke which had been rising from that height as the flying boat passed over it.

“There is somebody up there. Bless my tortoise-shell glasses! there must be somebody up there. Smoke doesn’t come out of a hill of ice by any natural means, that is sure.”

But he did not see the smoke now. He called to Olaf Karofsen. He had picked up a few words of the Old Norse dialect much used by the people of the “back end” of Iceland, and the schooner captain spoke that language, too.

So the other Americans in the party did not understand what Mr. Damon and the captain were so excitedly talking about.

“What made that smoke, Captain?” demanded Mr. Damon.

“Fire,” declared the man promptly.

“And fire in an iceberg is not a common thing. Over there is the crevasse where we lost your poor brother and his boy. Bless my icepick! but there is something strange about this.”

“We will go see,” declared the captain.

He hurried for a coil of rope and a rifle. Unnoticed by the others, the giant seaman and his employer climbed the slope of the ice mountain. Tom and his helpers were overhauling the airtight pontoon that swung from the left wing of the flying boat. This was the part injured by the latest collision.

“It must be that I am not so well able to judge distances as I was,” the young inventor grumbled. “To smash a wing twice, hand running, as you might say!”

“It was a puff of wind did this for you,” declared Ned. “I would not blame my eyesight.”

To work in the open on the ice with a living gale blowing down from the Pole was by no means a comfortable situation. The mechanicians had to take turns in working on the broken wing and pontoon. A man might easily freeze his hands while working without gloves. Two gasoline stoves were brought out of the flying boat and set up on the ice right where the repair gang worked. The cook served hot coffee by the gallon. The passengers did all they could to help, but that was little.

Suddenly Mr. Nestor noticed the absence of Mr. Damon and the schooner captain. He asked:

“Have they gone hunting? Why did they climb that hill, do you suppose, Tom?”

“Didn’t we see some smoke up there?” queried Tom, only mildly interested. “Why, yes! Mr. Damon was talking about smoke from the ice peak, and that got me interested—interested enough to scale the old plane across the shoulder of that hill,” and the young inventor laughed rather ruefully.

“There’s something going on up there, Mr. Swift!” exclaimed Kingston suddenly. “See there?”

He pointed up the heights. Several hundred feet above the plain the big seaman was standing and waving his arms wildly to attract attention. Now his voice came booming down from the eminence:

“Mis-der Swift! Mis-der Swift!” he singsonged. “Send up a couple of my bullies undt a pread pag. Hurry oop!”

“Wonder what’s going on up there,” remarked Ned, as Tom waved to a couple of the seamen to obey their skipper’s demand.

“Let’s have a look ourselves,” Kingston said, and started up the ascent.

Tom could not go; but there was nothing to keep Ned back, so he fell in behind the wireless operator. Besides, one could keep warm on the ice only while in motion. The two young fellows swarmed up the hill as fast as they could travel, while the sailors came on in their rear with the bag.

Ned and his companion found Captain Karofsen on a little shelf of the hill. He was much excited and his face was again a smile.

“It is wonderful! Wonderful!” he declared. “Come with me, young gentlemen. It is wonderful.”

“I bet it is,” commented Ned. “But just what is it?”

They fell in behind the excited captain of the Kalrye, who led them along the shelf, around an abrupt corner, and brought them out upon a small plateau in which there was a sink. Mr. Damon was lying flat upon his stomach and looking down into this chasm. He turned his red face toward Ned and Kingston and burst out with:

“Bless my Italian gardens! here is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. Did you bring that rope?”

“It’s coming,” said Ned. “What is the matter down there, Mr. Damon?”

“Greatest thing in the world, Ned!” exclaimed the eccentric gentleman. “The coincidence is wonderful. Who would ever have thought it! Well!”

“It’s wonderful, all right,” repeated the puzzled Ned. “Both you and Captain Karofsen say so. But just what is it?”

“Come here! See yonder? Half a mile or so away is the crevasse down which those two unfortunate men tumbled who were carrying my chest of Danish gold. We never expected to see them again—or the chest. And I guess the chest is done for,” admitted the excited Mr. Damon.

Ned and the operator were now beside him. They knelt on the ice and likewise peered down into the blue-white depths of the sink. Ned uttered a shout of amazement.

“What do you know about this!” murmured Kingston.

Under an out-thrust shelf of ice and on the bottom of the hole a small fire was smouldering. Two muffled figures lay beside this tiny fire. But they moved, first one and then the other raising his head and then waving a feeble hand to the spectators on the brink of the ice wall.

“The lost seamen?” demanded New Newton of Mr. Damon.

“Karofsen’s brother and nephew,” the gentleman answered. “I don’t care about the lost gold! The men are still alive! They must have suffered terribly. And how they found fuel for even that little fire, I don’t see.”

The eager schooner captain just then arrived with the pair of seamen he had called. They had a coil of rope long enough to reach to the bottom of the cleft in the ice.

It was plain that the men below could not help themselves. Kingston, who was the lightest of the party, volunteered to go down.

“Take the pag vonce,” said Karofsen eagerly. “I pet you it vill come handy—yes? Now, are you ready?”

The operator swung out from the ice, and fending himself from the wall with feet and hands, was lowered safely to the floor of the sink. As soon as he stood upon his feet there he disengaged himself from the loop of the rope and ran across to the two men.

They tried to struggle up, but both dropped back. They were weak from lack of nourishment and their extremities were undoubtedly frost-bitten. The older man insisted by gestures (he could speak but few English words) that Kingston aid his son, first of all.

The wireless operator seized the boy in his arms and staggered across the sink with him. He fastened him safely in the noose and gave the signal for those above to “hoist away.”

Although the turning body of the youth scraped several times against the ice, he was not hurt while his uncle and the sailors drew him up. Kingston, when he saw him swinging near the top, ran back to the other man. The latter had struggled to his knees and seized the bread bag that Kingston had brought down with him by Karofsen’s advice.

What he wished to do with the bag puzzled Kingston for a moment. Then he saw what had been cached under the overshot ledge of ice, well back against the wall.

“Right-o, my man!” the operator cried. “I am wise to it. Here! Let me do all that. We’ll send the bag up before you go up. I quite understand.”

He was much excited. And the situation was indeed an exciting one. Kingston knew that the spectators at the top of the ice cliff were going to feel much amazement when that bread bag swung up there at the end of the noose.

The heavy bag swung out of his sight. Then came a yell. Mr. Damon almost fell over the brink of the wall.

“Bless my coupon bonds and the interest on my mortgages, these courageous men have saved my thirty thousand dollars! It’s gold! They broke up the chest to make a fire, but here is the money intact.

“Here, Olaf! Swing your brother up here in a hurry. I want to hug him. Bless my last red cent! if we get off of this giant iceberg alive, he and his boy shall never know want as long as they live.

“Lay onto the line, lads! Now, haul! Bless my hemp and cordage! If that line parts now, we’ll lose one of the most honest men who ever walked on two feet. Altogether, now!”