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.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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