Читать книгу Lost at the South Pole, or, Ted Scott in Blizzard Land - J. W. Duffield - Страница 4

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Red tongues of fire were darting from many parts of a spacious and handsome house that stood in the midst of a considerable estate. Columns of black smoke were rising in the air and some shreds of it wove in and out of the plane.

Recovering from his moment of stupefaction, Ted Scott shot quick glances about for a landing place.

He could not come down in the grounds immediately surrounding the house, because of the shrubs and trees. At a little distance to the right, however, was a fairly level field. Ted made for this. He pushed on the stick and the nose of the plane turned downward. The young aviator selected what seemed to be the best space for landing and brought the plane down lightly. It ran along for a way and stopped. Before it had come to a complete pause Ted had flung himself out of it and was running with all his speed toward the house, in which the flames were steadily gaining headway.

Even as he ran, it occurred to Ted that it was strange there was no human figure to be seen. A place so large must have required quite a staff of servants, and it was natural to expect that some of these would be in evidence.

But there were no frantic people about, no screams, none of the signs of terror that such a catastrophe usually invoked. Perhaps, Ted thought as he sped along, the house was closed for the summer. He ardently hoped that such might be the case.

But as he neared the imperiled structure his ears were greeted by piercing screams.

“Save me! Save me!” came in shrieks of mortal terror.

He looked in vain at first for the source of the screams. The crackling of the blaze made it difficult to locate the sounds.

They did not come from the front of the house, which was fully enveloped in flames and smoke.

He raced around the right side of the house. There was no one there. To the left. Then he knew whence the shrieks were coming.

Leaning from a window in the third story was a woman of middle age. Her face was contorted with deadly fear. At every instant she looked behind her to see if the flames were encroaching on the room in which she had taken refuge. From her throat came scream after scream.

She caught sight of Ted and her shrieks redoubled in volume. She leaned far out and held out her arms to him.

“Save me!” she screamed. “Save me!”

“I will,” Ted shouted back.

He looked frantically about for a ladder. There was none to be seen.

“Hurry! Hurry!” urged the woman. “The door is burning down!”

In her desperation she climbed up on the window sill, as though she intended to leap out.

“Don’t jump!” shouted Ted. “You’ll be killed if you do. Wait! I’ll get to you.”

His eyes had lighted on a great tree standing near, one of whose heavy boughs came close to the window in which the woman was standing.

He knew that there was no chance of getting through the front of the house and reaching the room. The stairway must be a mass of flames. No one could go through that way and live. The tree was the only hope. A forlorn hope, perhaps, but the only one.

Ted threw off his coat, rushed to the tree and began to climb.

While the young aviator is making his way up with all the power of his muscular arms and legs, it may be well, for the benefit of those who have not read the preceding volumes of this series, to tell who Ted Scott was and what had been his adventures up to the time this story opens.

Ted had no memory of his father or mother. He had been brought, an orphaned child, to Bromville, a thriving town in the Middle West, by James and Miranda Wilson, a couple who had migrated with him from New England. They had few worldly goods, but were wholesome, kindly people who sent the child to school and did all they could for his comfort and well being. They died within a few months of each other when Ted was about ten years old, and the little fellow was left to the tender mercies of the world.

The forlorn condition of the little waif touched the hearts of Eben and Charity Browning, a childless couple, and they adopted Ted as their own. They were goodness itself to him, and he loved them as devotedly as though they had been his real parents.

Eben Browning, hale, friendly, upright, was the proprietor of the Bromville House, a hotel that had once been the leading one of the town. Eben’s geniality and Charity’s cooking had brought it a good deal of custom in the early days.

But a marked change took place in Eben’s fortunes when the Devally-Hipson plant, a mammoth concern that manufactured airplanes, was established in Bromville. A host of workmen and officials came in the wake of the plant and the quiet little town became a center of bustling activity. What had been good enough for it in the early days was good enough no longer. New hotels, equipped with all modern facilities, sprang up almost over night, and the homely, comfortable Bromville House was thrown into the shade.

The hardest blow of all came when the great Hotel Excelsior was built. This was a magnificent hotel, up to the minute in all its appointments and with a splendid golf course attached that drew tournament players from all parts of the country.

Against the proprietor of this hotel Eben had a special grievance. Eben had owned the ground on which the building and golf links and had sold it to Brewster Gale for what he regarded as a fair price. But, apart from the few hundred dollars paid to bind the bargain, Eben did not receive the rest of the purchase price. Gale was utterly unscrupulous and by the aid of legal technicalities and cunning lawyers he so maneuvered that poor Eben was frozen out entirely.

Ted, as he grew older, did all he could to help his foster parents. He worked about the place, painting, repairing, running errands. Then, when he was old enough, he got a position in the airplane factory and was so diligent, so clever, so ingenious, that he rapidly rose from one position to another until he was earning good wages, all of which he turned over to the old folks.

The making of airplanes fascinated him. He loved the work and everything pertaining to it. But he was not satisfied merely with making planes. He wanted to fly them. The one consuming, burning ambition of his life was to be an aviator. At every flying meet he was an absorbed and fascinated spectator. But what chance did he have to realize his longing! To go to a flying school would cost him more dollars than he had cents. Besides the expense, his foster parents would be without his wages all the time he was learning.

But fate sent Walter Hapworth to the plant one morning. He was a wealthy young business man and an expert at golf. At the moment he was in Bromville to take part in a golf tournament on the Hotel Excelsior course. He had had most thrills that sport could give and he thought to get a new one by taking up flying. He dropped over to the Devally-Hipson works to look over the planes and Ted was assigned to show him around. Ted answered so readily all questions that were asked, showed such an astonishing grasp of every detail that Hapworth was strongly attracted toward him.

Learning the boy’s ambition to become an airman, Hapworth offered to bear all his expenses for going to a flying school and enough, also, to cover the wages he would otherwise lose. Ted was delighted and accepted the money as a loan, which he afterward paid back.

At the flying school Ted soon became a star. He was a born airman, and his skill, his courage, his coolness rapidly developed him into one of the most expert of flyers. On leaving the school he secured a position in the Air Mail Service. His route was between Chicago and St. Louis and he soon became the most daring and valued aviator in the whole division.

At about that time the whole country was agog with interest over a prize of twenty-five thousand dollars that had been offered for the first successful airplane flight over the Atlantic from New York to Paris, a feat that up to that time had never been accomplished. Some of the most famous airmen of America had entered for the contest, and discussion was rife as to which of these would win the prize.

Ted had been deeply stirred by the offer and would have given the world to be able to compete. But he had no money to speak of, and it would require perhaps fifteen thousand dollars to procure a plane and provide for other necessary expenses. So he put the matter regretfully aside as impossible.

But here again Walter Hapworth came to his help. He learned of Ted’s desire and offered to back him. Ted accepted and hurried off to San Francisco to supervise the building and testing of the plane destined for the ocean journey.

Then one day Ted Scott jumped into his plane on the Pacific coast, shot like a bullet over the Sierras and the Rockies and landed at one jump in St. Louis in the fastest time that had ever been made by a man traveling alone in a plane.

When, scarcely waiting to take breath, he made New York in a second jump, the field was black with the crowds that had gathered to greet this young Lochinvar. He had become famous in a night and America rang with his name.

A few days were spent on the field tuning up the plane, getting fuel and supplies and making the last preparations for the momentous trip. Then one misty morning Ted Scott lifted his plane into the skies and turned its nose toward the yeasty surges of the Atlantic.

What perils he faced and conquered on that hazardous trip, how he winged his way through fog and sleet and gale, how with high heart and dauntless courage he faced dangers that would have appalled the stoutest heart, how he hit the Irish coast, skimmed across great Britain, over the English Channel and swooped down like a lone eagle on Paris, winning the prize and setting the world aflame, is told in the first volume of this series, entitled: “Over the Ocean to Paris.”

Ted woke the next day to find himself famous. No event for a generation had so stirred the imagination of the world. America went wild over him. Europe heaped him with honors. And when he came back to the hearts of his own people he received one of the greatest ovations recorded in history.

Soon after his return a terrible Mississippi flood took place. Ted enlisted in the aviation section of the Red Cross and his untiring work in the devastated districts added more laurels to those he already wore. Later on he rejoined the Air Mail Service in the Rocky Mountain Division, its most dangerous section, and had many thrilling adventures amid the peaks and gorges.

A prize was offered for the fastest flight over the Pacific from the Pacific Coast to Hawaii, which Ted Scott won after encountering great perils on his flight. These perils were matched a little while later when he headed a rescue expedition over the West Indies in search of missing flyers who had gone on a hunt for hidden pearls. Again, in Mexico, he came in contact with bandits, and at one time came so close to death that the noose was tightening about his neck.

But adventure was the very breath of life to the young aviator and he found plenty of it when he brought to justice a band of mail robbers in the Western wilds. There was no lack of adventure either when he made an overseas flight from America to Australia and incidentally found that he was carrying a madman in his plane.

In the course of these exploits he solved certain personal problems. He vindicated the memory of his dead father, who had been falsely accused of a crime and had died before his innocence was made manifest. He also unearthed facts that proved Brewster Gale’s rascality and restored to Eben Browning the money of which he had been defrauded.

The activity and audacity of a diamond smuggling ring operating over the Canadian border enabled Ted to do a signal service to his country in capturing the criminals. Shortly afterwards he was on a journey to the coast when he was caught in a blizzard, rendered unconscious and would have frozen to death, if it had not been for the courage of a young girl, Grace Larue.

Ted was intensely grateful to his young deliverer and he soon had an opportunity to prove his gratitude. The father of Grace, a noted explorer, Hamilton Larue, had been lost with his party in the jungles of Brazil. Ted organized an expedition and set out by plane in search of the missing ones.

What dangers he encountered in those fearful jungles, dangers from snakes, jaguars, and other terrors of the wild; the battles he had with cannibals and headhunters; the thrilling climax when he rescued the explorers from the tower in which they had been held prisoners; all is narrated in the preceding volume of this series, entitled: “Over the Jungle Trails.”

Now to return to Ted Scott as with desperate energy he makes his way up the huge tree near the burning house, the screams of the frantic woman ringing in his ears.

He reached the first bough and swung himself up into the body of the tree. Then he mounted higher until he stood on the heavy bough that extended almost to the side of the house and a little beneath the window at which the woman stood.

As he advanced, holding to the bough above to steady himself, he could see through the window that the door at the back was already a glowing ember that threatened at any moment to collapse and let in the devouring flames.

Once that door was down, the flames, caught by the draught from the open window, would envelop the woman at once.

She sensed that danger and her screams were heart rending.

“They’ll get me! They’ll get me!” she shrieked. “I must jump! I’d rather be crushed than burned to death.”

“No! No! Don’t jump!” commanded Ted. “I’ll be with you now in another second.”

He got within two feet of the window. He could go no further.

He planted his feet firmly on the bough and with one hand held with a death grip the branch above. Then he extended his right arm in a sort of semi-circle.

“Jump!” he commanded. “I’ll catch you.”

She covered her face with trembling hands.

“Oh, I can’t!” she wailed. “You’ll let me drop. You can’t hold me!”

“Jump, I tell you!” shouted Ted. “It’s your only chance.”

Still she hesitated.

The door went down. The flames rushed in. The woman jumped!