Читать книгу Don Sturdy Across the North Pole or Cast Away in the Land of Ice - J. W. Duffield - Страница 3

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“The last one in is a Chinaman!” cried Don Sturdy, as he ran from a tent toward the bank of a creek, closely followed by two companions.

This was a stigma not to be borne without a strenuous struggle to avert it, and a spirited race ensued over the hundred yards of green turf that had to be covered before the creek was reached.

Don reached the bank first, and, pausing just long enough to get his balance, lifted his hands over his head and dived into the cool waters. Before he came up again, Teddy Allison had followed him, and an instant later there was a third splash, and Fred Turner had joined the other two.

Don shook the water from his eyes and looked mischievously at Fred.

“Don’t know that I ought to bathe in the same water with a Chink,” he said grinning.

“We ought to keep a good distance between us and the Yellow Peril,” declared Teddy.

“How about the red peril?” Fred came back at Teddy, looking significantly at the lad’s mop of flaming red hair that had won him the nickname of “Brick.”

“Guess that will hold you for a while, Brick,” laughed Don, as he struck out downstream.

The three boys were all good swimmers, and they enjoyed themselves to the full for an hour or more, practicing fancy strokes and dives, the coolness of the water having an added charm because of its contrast with the sweltering heat of the day.

“If we’d only had something of this kind in the Sahara Desert, eh, Brick?” suggested Don.

“’Twould have been just what the doctor ordered,” agreed Brick. “Or in the Egyptian desert, either. One was about as hot as the other.”

“I’d have been willing to stand either of them, if I could have been where you fellows have been and seen what you’ve seen,” remarked Fred.

“Still,” he added cheerily, “I’ve got no kick coming when I think of the difference between me now and what I was a year ago. If anybody had told me then that instead of being a cripple I’d be standing on two good legs and able to run races with you fellows, I’d have thought he was just kidding me along. And I owe it all to you, Don.”

“To my Uncle Amos, you mean,” declared Don. “He was the hero in that matter. He was the one who found the drug that cured you.”

“But you were the one that got him to do it,” persisted Fred. “I tell you, fellows, that since that time it’s been like living in another world.”

The boys sported about a little longer in the water and quitted it with reluctance. They had a good rubdown in their tent, slipped into their street clothes, and then, immensely refreshed, threw themselves down in the shade of a great elm tree.

“Gee!” remarked Don, “Uncle Frank has all the luck.”

“What do you mean?” asked Teddy lazily. “Somebody remember him in his will, or what?”

“He’s going on an expedition to the North Pole,” answered Don enviously.

“What?” exclaimed Fred.

“Sounds mighty good to me in this hot weather,” said Teddy. “I’d like to be there at this minute throwing snowballs at the Eskimos. But what’s he going up there for?”

“He’s heard of a new species of polar bear to be found up that way,” Don replied; “and he’s been commissioned by a zoölogical society to get some specimens, if he can.”

“He can, if any one can,” declared Teddy emphatically. “If the bears hear that he’s coming they’ll take to their holes. I guess that’s the only kind of big game left in the world that he hasn’t taken a shot at. Grizzlies, tigers, lions, elephants—isn’t he ever going to get enough?”

“It’s a mighty risky voyage,” put in Fred. “I hope his ship doesn’t get stuck in the ice.”

“No danger of that, I guess,” rejoined Don, “seeing that he’s going in an airship.”

There was an exclamation of amazement from both his hearers.

“You mean an airplane?” asked Teddy.

“No,” replied Don. “In a big dirigible, like that one that came sailing over here the other day, the one shaped like a big cigar that shone like silver in the sun.”

“Going to sail in a ship like that to the North Pole?” exclaimed Fred. “how does he know he can? It’s never been done.”

“That doesn’t say it can’t be done,” was the reply. “There’s got to be a first time for everything. Uncle Frank seems to be pretty certain that the Red Monarch—that’s the name of the airship—can get there all right.”

“I didn’t know he owned an airship,” said Teddy.

“He doesn’t,” replied Don, with a smile. “He’s just going as a passenger with an expedition that’s flying to the North Pole.”

“What are they going there for?” asked Fred. “I thought the Pole had already been discovered by Peary.”

“So it has,” said Don. “But all that Peary did was to find the spot, mark it, and then hike back as fast as he could to his ship, so as to save himself from freezing or starving to death. But there’s a vast amount of territory in the neighborhood of the Pole, hundreds and thousands of miles of it, that nobody knows anything about. No one knows how much of it is land and how much is water. There may be lands rich in silver and gold, and even with all kinds of strange bird and animal and plant life.

“At any rate, a big scientific society wants to find out all about it, and so they’ve equipped a big airship and are sending it up there. Uncle Frank heard about it and arranged to go along. Of course, they were only too glad to have him, because of his strength and courage and his reputation as a hunter and explorer.”

“Oh, how I’d like to go with him!” exclaimed Teddy.

“Not a chance in the world, old boy,” said Don. “Unless,” he added, with a grin, “you do the stowaway act, as you did when you went to Egypt.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t work twice,” replied Teddy. “But I’d give everything I’ve got to be able to go along.”

“Same here,” chimed in Fred wistfully.

“Don’t you think you could work it, Don?” urged Teddy. “Your Uncle Frank would do anything in the world for you, if you’d ask him.”

“I’ve already asked him for myself,” replied Don. “You don’t think I’d let a chance like that go by without trying for it, do you? But there was nothing doing. The airship can carry only a limited number—about thirty or so, I think is the figure—and Uncle Frank says that the list is all made up. So that’s that, bad luck to it.”

“Look at this pair of peaches coming along,” Teddy interjected.

They looked in the direction indicated by his glance and saw two figures advancing along the road that ran almost parallel to the creek, but at some little distance from it.

One was a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, as nearly as they could judge, rather dissipated looking, with pasty complexion and eyes set closely together. He was of heavy build, but the heaviness suggested flabbiness rather than hard muscle. A cigarette hung loosely between his lips, and his walk was a combination of a shuffle and a swagger.

His companion was a man of, perhaps, thirty years, of dark complexion, with a hatchet face, receding chin and furtive eyes. There were evil markings on his face that told of loose living. He was dressed in flashy raiment, and a big stone, either real or paste, gleamed in his tie while another glittered in a ring on his little finger.

They were by no means an attractive pair, as they sauntered along, engaged so earnestly in conversation that they did not seem to notice the presence of the trio on the bank of the creek.

“This is a mighty hick town,” the boys heard the man say to his companion. “It ought to be easy to pull off almost anything in a burg like this.”

“Just a bunch of rubes,” the boy answered, with a sneer on his weak face. “The kind that fall for gold bricks and who would buy Central Park or the Brooklyn Bridge if any bunco man offered to sell them for ten dollars apiece. It’s a sin and a shame to do anything to them. They’re too easy.”

They passed on, and the boys looked at each other with grins on their faces.

“Cheap sports from the city,” remarked Brick. “Wonder what they’re doing up here? Do you know either one of them, Don?”

“Never saw them before,” replied Don. “And I’m not especially anxious to see either of them again. I shouldn’t wonder if they’re up to mischief of some kind.”

“I’ll bet the man is a tough customer,” surmised Fred. “Did you see the peculiar walk he had? It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d done the lockstep some time.”

“And did you hear what he said about pulling off something?” asked Teddy.

“Oh, well, that may have been just brag to impress the boy who was with him,” remarked Don. “That fellow was listening to him as though he were the real thing. And you could see by his talk that he was trying to be just as tough and ‘wise’ as the man himself.”

The three chums soon dismissed the fellows from mind and chatted of other things. Don, at last, looked at his watch and sat up with a start.

“Didn’t think it was so late,” he remarked. “I’ll have to be getting a move on me. I have to go on an errand to Mr. Thompson, about a little business matter for Uncle Frank, and I promised Uncle Amos that, later on, I’d help him get up the catalogue of those minerals of his.”

“Some little busy bee,” remarked Teddy, grinning. “On a hot afternoon like this, I’d rather be a drone.”

“That’s the easiest thing you do,” retorted Don. “All right, then, you stay here and chin with Fred. I’ll just run over to Thompson’s and stop for you on the way back.”

Mr. Thompson was the lawyer who transacted all of Captain Sturdy’s legal business, and on this occasion he was preparing some papers for his client’s signature, so that Don had to wait a little longer than he had expected.

To save time on his way back to Teddy and Fred, Don took a short cut that led over some rough ground and across a little gully at the foot of a hill.

The gully was only five or six feet deep, and Don, in his hurry, instead of scrambling down the side, leaped down as he reached the brink.

At the instant he did so, he saw below him the man and boy to whom his attention had been drawn earlier in the afternoon. But it was too late, and though he tried to change the direction of his jump even while he was in the air, he could not help bumping heavily against the boy and sending him sprawling to the ground, knocking from his hand a sandwich he had been munching.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” cried Don, as he rushed toward the lad to help him up.

But the boy kicked at him in rage, and his face was livid as he scrambled to his feet.

“What do you mean by that, you clumsy clown?” he shouted. “You ought to have a good clip in the jaw for that.”

“Sure he ought,” growled his companion. “Why don’t you hand him one, Jake? Show him where he get’s off.”

The blood rushed to Don’s face, but he tried to keep his temper.

“I told you I was sorry,” he said. “You can surely see it was an accident. I didn’t know you were there. I ought to have looked before I jumped.”

“A lot of good that does me,” howled the boy. “You’ve spoiled my sandwich and you’ve made me scrape my shins. I ought to take it out of your hide.”

“Atta boy,” encouraged his companion. “Show him that it doesn’t pay to monkey with fellows like us. We’re nobody’s meat.”

The boy picked up the sandwich and hurled it at Don’s head. Don dodged and threw himself into a position of defense as both of the strangers advanced toward him with their fists clenched.