  Fear lent wings to the three boys as they saw the awful wall of snow and ice bounding down the gorge upon them. With one accord they rushed toward the steep slope on their left, scrambling up it in frantic efforts to gain a height out of reach of the avalanche, before it descended and crushed them under its ponderous plunging weight. The dog team sensed its peril instinctively and struggled after the boys, dragging the heavy sledge behind them. Toma, slightly in the rear, grasped the sledge and began helping the dogs in their unequal fight for safety. “Leave the sledge go!” shouted Dick to the young Indian. “Save yourself.” But the courageous Toma did not heed. Stubbornly, he stayed by the sledge, falling far behind his companions. Then, with a roar that shook the walls of the gorge as if an earthquake had occurred, the avalanche plunged past on its way to the tundra far below. Dick and Sandy barely escaped the flying ice and stones and with a cry of despair they saw Toma with the sledge and dog team vanish in a swirl of flying snow. The avalanche thundered on, sight and sound of it dying away down the gorge as quickly as it had come. Dick and Sandy were left high on the wall of the desolate gorge, gazing with sad eyes at the point where Toma and the dog team had disappeared. “It happened so suddenly I can hardly realize it,” Sandy spoke in a low voice. “Poor Toma.” “I won’t give up hope yet,” Dick declared grimly. “Toma was not caught by the full force of the avalanche. You must remember he and the dogs were almost out of the way when they were hit. Let’s look along the slope.” Sandy followed Dick to the bottom of the gorge, and the two began picking their way along the path of the avalanche. Every now and then huge masses of snow, left adhering to the walls of the gorge, loosened and fell, starting miniature snow slides in their wake, but Dick and Sandy kept their eyes open and managed to avoid these dangers by a wide margin. They had retraced their upward trail about two hundred yards when there was borne to their ears the faint but unmistakable bark of a dog. “Listen!” Dick grasped Sandy’s arm, as they stopped dead still. Again there echoed in the canyon the sharp bark of an excited dog. “It sounds like one of our Eskimo dogs,” Sandy spoke in a subdued voice, scarcely able to believe his ears. “But for the life of me I can’t tell where it comes from.” “Let’s walk on a little further,” Dick suggested. They continued on their way for a few steps, then stopped again. The dog had barked again, and now the sound seemed to come from above and behind them. “Why not shout Toma’s name?” said Sandy. “If he’s alive he’ll hear us.” Dick thought this an excellent idea and in unison they raised their voices. “Toma! Toma!” they shouted at the tops of their lungs, and paused to listen intently. A second of silence, then the faraway crags of the glacier threw back their cries like mocking laughter. Drawing deep breaths for another shout, they hesitated. Several dogs had commenced to bark, and were making a veritable bedlam of racket, what with the echoes that were flying about. “It’s our dogs!” ejaculated the amazed boys. “Come on. Toma may be alive,” Dick sang out, charging up the slope of the gorge, with Sandy close at his heels. Half way up the side of the gorge they came suddenly upon the dogs in a snow filled ledge. There were ten of the twelve dogs alive and well, the other two had been crushed to death under a huge boulder deposited there by the avalanche. The sledge of supplies, badly twisted and smashed, lay overturned, half-buried in the snow, but still hitched to the tangled dogs. Eagerly the boys searched the wreckage, but at first there was no sign of Toma. Then one of the dogs, whining plaintively, began pawing into a heap of packed snow. The boys rushed to the dog and found he had uncovered a boot. Silently, the boys attacked the packed snow with mittens and boots, and in five minutes they dragged their young Indian friend free of the lodged snow. “Pray he’s alive!” Dick implored, as they lay the quiet form upon some sledge packing. Toma’s dark face was darker still, as if he had smothered, yet as the boys chafed his hands and listened for heart beats, a flicker of eye lashes showed a sign of life. Redoubling their efforts to bring the boy back, they were finally rewarded by a deep sigh from the dusky lips, and presently Toma’s dark eyes were open. “Humph!” Toma grunted as he sat up uncertainly, and vigorously shook himself like a big dog. “No can breathe under snow. Think um see Happy Hunting Grounds.” “It’s a miracle you didn’t!” exclaimed Dick fervently. “Tell us how it all happened,” Sandy urged. “Not know much,” Toma blinked, “come too quick. Something hit me. I see many stars, an’ whirl, whirl in snow. Feel like fly like bird, then big bump. All still. I can no breathe. All get like night, then I see you fellas.” Overjoyed at the recovery of Toma, the boys could do little but discuss the narrow escape for some time. Finally they set to work untangling the dogs, and when that was done they started to repair the sledge. It took more than three hours to fix the sledge so it was worthy of the trail, but they at last had the worst breaks spliced and lashed with leather thongs. By this time they were all so tired that they decided to pitch camp and fix something to eat. This they did as soon as they were on the floor of the gorge. “We don’t need to be afraid of any more snow slides for some time to come,” Dick relieved their fears in that direction. “All the loose ice and stones was cleared out by that big avalanche.” After an appetizing meal of broiled musk-ox, the boys slept for several hours. When they awakened they noticed for the first time a change in the sunlight, and were concerned at the approach of winter which this signaled. “Seems strange to see evening come again,” remarked Sandy. “Wonder how it would feel to go to bed in honest-to-goodness darkness again?” “If we don’t get a move on we’ll get more darkness than we want,” said Dick, referring to the approach of the Arctic’s long night. But when the boys started up the gorge again it was no darker. So far, all the night they were to experience for a few weeks was to be several hours of twilight. Not far up the gorge, beyond the point where the avalanche had narrowly missed destroying them, Dick called the attention of his chum to three tiny figures walking along the rim of the gorge above them. “I wonder if those men could be Moonshine Sam and his two companions,” said Dick. “They’ve had just about time to come this far if they had headed this way shortly after we stopped trailing them.” “Well, I hope they won’t try any monkeyshines like starting another avalanche,” Sandy shivered. “When I die I don’t want to get that kind of a sendoff for the Happy Hunting Grounds. What do you say, Toma?” The young Indian grunted his emphatic sanction of Sandy’s preferences, while all three watched the men on the cliff. The men they thought might be Moonshine Sam and the two half-breeds from Mistak’s band, kept abreast of the boys for nearly a half hour, then as the gorge began to grow shallower upon nearing the plateau down from which it led, they disappeared. “If they ever get wind of the fact that we know Corporal Thalman is still alive, our lives won’t be worth a cent,” Dick expressed his thoughts aloud. “They’ll put an end to Corporal Thalman right away, too, if they think for a minute we have a chance to rescue him—if they haven’t done that already.” The boys hurried on, and soon came out of the gorge upon what they were quite sure was the top of the glacier. An icy wind, that cut to the very marrow of their bones, blew across the vast, white field of ice. But they struck out bravely across the lonely forbidding desert of the north, hoping soon to locate the first of the three main fissures marked on the map. They were now traveling southwest with the sun in their eyes, and for the first time since they saw genuine “sun-dogs.” The phenomenon was intensely interesting and for a time attracted almost all their attention. The sun-dogs were in the form of four miniature suns situated one above, one below, and one on either side of the big disc of light that was the source of them. They were not really suns, however, but reflections of the sun upon the countless particles of frost in the air. One of the “dogs” was somewhat like the rainbow, for it seemed to hang just a few feet ahead of the dog team, dancing just out of reach, like a will-o’-the-wisp, as they plodded along. Then they came upon a deep fissure in the glacier which temporarily crowded the sun-dogs out of their minds. The crack was not an exceptionally large one in comparison to other glacial fissures they had seen, being only about four feet across at the widest points. Several smaller fissures were indicated on the map as preceding the first main fissure, so the boys crossed the gap by jumping, improvising a bridge with the sledge for those dogs to cross over which were too stubborn to make the leap. “We may be misled after all by these fissures,” Dick spoke when they had resumed their journey “New cracks form pretty often, and it’s possible the main fissures Corporal Thalman observed while Mistak was taking him to the prison pit are not the main ones any longer.” “Well, I don’t know about that,” Sandy replied. “A lot of small fissures might show up in eight months’ time, but these big fissures are very old and they wouldn’t change much.” By this time they had reached another small fissure, about the size of the first one, but much longer. As far as they could see on either side of them the crooked crack stretched away like a huge, black snake, wriggling across the snow-bound glacier roof. Keeping a rough account of the miles they had traversed since reaching the top of the glacier, they believed the first main fissure could not be far away according to the map. An hour after crossing the first small fissure, they reached what they were almost certain was the first main fissure. In places it yawned to an unestimable depth, and at many points was more than twenty feet in width. After sledging along the rim of it for a half mile they located a natural bridge of ice over which they crossed without mishap. Excited by their success so far, they increased their pace, again crossing numerous small chasms in the glacier before arriving at the rim of the second main fissure. This they finally contrived to bridge at a point where a jutting ice ledge partly spanned the seemingly bottomless void. From there on, the top of the glacier ceased to be level. Great holes yawned everywhere amidst heaps of shattered ice many feet in height. Apparently, at some time years ago, two divisions of the glacier had met there in their slow progress, crumbling their giant fronts upon one another. In the midst of the veritable “bad lands” of ice they came upon what they were reasonably certain was the third main fissure, somewhere at the bottom of which was the pit in which Corporal Thalman had been imprisoned. But the immensity of the task still ahead of them awed the boys. For, though they had reached the fissure, it was miles long and they had no way of judging any nearer than five or ten miles just where the prison pit was located. “There’s nothing to do but look for a way of climbing down to the bottom of the fissure,” Dick finally spoke. “Mistak must know a way to get down there, and if we look long enough, we can find it.” “Maybe we ought to wait until the policemen get here,” Sandy expressed his doubts, while gazing down into the black chasm that was the main fissure. “No, it’s best we keep on trying since we’ve come this far without any fatal accidents. Corporal McCarthy can trail us wherever we go, so there’s no need waiting for him and the Constable.” The boys set out along the glacier looking for a place that offered possibilities of descent into the fissure. It was slow going over the heaps of shattered ice, and before they had gone a mile they were worn out. They halted to rest in a shallow pit which protected them from the cold wind. As they sat there, Dick noticed that a small fissure about three feet wide and as high as a man’s head opened out of a bulwark of ice in front of them. The crack seemed to lead downward at a sharp slant. “That hole looks like it might lead down to the bottom of the fissure,” Dick said to Sandy and Toma. “Let’s go into it and investigate.” After resting a few more minutes, they got up and walked into the passage. Advancing cautiously, they reached an underground chamber, about twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and somewhat higher than their heads. The sunlight reached the chamber through its entrance and the dim rays lighted up a very beautiful scene. The walls and roof of the natural cavity were formed of crystallized moisture, shaped in many grotesque and fantastic figures. “I believe this is part of the crystal grottoes Corporal Thalman mentioned in his message!” Dick exclaimed examining the glittering walls. “Maybe we just found the outlet that the Corporal failed to find,” Sandy brightened. But upon investigating further they were disappointed. The first chamber led into a second and smaller chamber which had no outlet, and seemed the end of the cavern. After sounding the walls to make certain they could not break into a larger cavity, the boys made their way back to the narrow passage leading up to the outer air. Dick went first, and as he stopped into the sunlight a premonition of danger seized him. But before he could act to defend himself, a shadow was flung across his path and a heavy weight descended upon his head and shoulders. Dick went to the ice, stunned and half-blinded. |
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