"No use hollering till we are out of the woods," said Frank; "the current may make another turn before we land near the ships."

This checked the enthusiasm and the boys all fell to anxiously watching the course their floe was likely to pursue.

"There's our whale," shouted Billy, suddenly. "Look what a smash on the nose he got."

The great monster seemed to have recovered from its swoon and was now swimming in slow circles round the floe, eyeing the boys malevolently, but not offering to attack them. Evidently it was wondering, in its own mind, what it had struck when it collided with the boat and the floe.

The floe drifted onward, with the vessels' forms every moment growing larger to the boys' view. All at once a welcome sound rang out on the nipping polar air.

"Boom!"

"They have missed us and are firing the gun," cried Frank.

"That's what," rejoined Billy; "and we are going to get a terrible lecture when we get back on board, too."

Soon the floe, drifting steadily southward, by the strange freak of the antarctic current, came in view of the lookouts on the ships, who had been posted as soon as the boys were missed. The boats were at once despatched, and headed for the little ice island.

The killer whale suddenly took it into his head, as the boats drew near, to try one more attack, but Dr. Watson Gregg, the ship's surgeon, who stood in the bow of the first boat, saw the ferocious monster coming and, with three quick bullets from a magazine rifle, ended the great brute's career forever. His huge, black bulk, with its whitish belly and great jaws, floated on the surface for a few minutes, and the boys estimated his length at about thirty feet.

"Room enough there to have swallowed us all up," commented Billy, as they gazed at the monster.

"Well, young men, what have you got to say for yourselves?" asked Dr.

Gregg, as the boats drew alongside.

The boys all looked shamefaced as they got into the boat, and two sailors a.s.sisted the half-frozen professor into it. They realized that they had been guilty of a breach of discipline in taking off the boat, and that, moreover, their disobedience had cost the expedition one of its valuable a.s.sets, for there was no hope of ever putting the smashed craft together again.

On their return to the ship Captain Hazzard did not say much to them, but what he did say, as Billy remarked afterward, "burned a hole in you."

However, after a hearty dinner and a change of clothing, they all, even the professor--who seemed none the worse for the effects of his cold bath--cheered up a bit, more especially as Captain Barrington had announced that he had a plan for getting the ship off the reef. Ben Stubbs, who had, with his crew, been taken off the end of the obstruction by another boat, had announced that the depth of the obstruction did not seem to exceed twenty feet and its greatest width forty. Where the ship's bow rested the breadth was about thirty feet and the depth not more than twenty.

"My gracious," suddenly cried the professor as the boys came out from dinner; "I have suffered a terrible loss!"

His face was so grave, and he seemed so worried, that the boys inquired sympathetically what it was that he had lost.

"My bucket, my dredging bucket," wailed the scientist. "I was too cold to examine it thoroughly and I recollect now that I am sure it had some sort of sea-creatures in the bottom of it."

"What has become of it?" asked Frank, hardly able to keep from laughing.

"I left it on the ice floe," wailed the professor. "I must have it."

"Well, if it's on the floe it will have to stay there," remarked Frank. "There seems to be no way of getting it off."

"I wonder if the captain wouldn't send out some men in a boat to look for it," hopefully exclaimed the collector, suddenly.

"I shouldn't advise you to ask him," remarked Ben Stubbs, who just then came up, his arms laden with packages. "We've lost one boat through going after peppermints or specimints, or whatever you call 'em."

"Possibly, as you say, it would not be wise," agreed the professor; "never mind, perhaps I can catch a fur-bearing pollywog at the South Pole."

He seemed quite cheered up at this reflection and smiled happily at the thought of achieving his dream.

"What have you got there, Ben?" asked Billy, pointing to the queer-looking boxes and packages the boatswain was carrying.

"Dynamite, battery boxes, and fuses," replied the old sailor.

"Whatever for?" asked the young reporter. "Are you going to blow up the ship?"

"Not exactly, but we are going to blow her OUT."

"Dynamite the ice, you mean?"

"That's it."

"Hurray, we'll soon be free of the ice-drift," cried Harry, as they followed the boatswain forward and watched while he and several of the crew drilled holes in the ice and adjusted the dynamite on either side of the bow, at a distance of about two hundred feet from the ship in either direction.

Caps of fulminate of mercury were then affixed to the explosive and wires led from it to the battery boxes.

"How will that free us?" asked the professor, who, like most men who devote all their time to one subject, was profoundly ignorant of anything but deep sea life and natural history.

"It is the nature of dynamite to explode downwards," said Frank. "When that charge is set off it will blow the ice away on either side and we shall float freely once more."

"Wonderful," exclaimed the professor. "I had better get my deep sea net. The explosion may kill some curious fish when it goes off."

He hurried away to get the article in question, while the boys stood beside Captain Hazzard, who was about to explode the heavy charges.

Everybody was ordered to hold tight to something, and then the commander pushed the switch.

"Click!"

A mighty roar followed and the ship seemed to rise in the air. But only for an instant. The next minute she settled back and those on board her broke out in a cheer as they realized that they once more floated free of the great ice-reef.

The two ends of the obstruction having been blown off by the dynamite, the center portion was not buoyant enough to support the weight of the Southern Cross, and went sc.r.a.ping and b.u.mping beneath her to bob up harmlessly to the surface at her stern.

There was only one dissenting voice in the general enthusiasm that reigned on board at the thought that they were now able to proceed, and that was the professor's. He had been untangling a forgotten rare specimen of deep-sea lobster from his net, when the explosion came.

In his agitation at the vessel's sudden heave and the unexpected noise, he had let his hand slip and the creature had seized him by the thumb. With a roar of pain the professor flung it from him and it flopped overboard.

"Hurray! we are off the reef, professor," shouted Frank, running aft to help adjust a stern cable that had been thrown out when the Southern Cross grounded.

"So I see, but I have lost a rare specimen of deep-sea lobster,"

groaned the professor, peering over the side of the ship to see if there were any hope of recapturing his prize.

The anchor of the Southern Cross was dropped to hold her firmly while the steel hawser was reconnected with the Brutus, and soon the coal ship and her consort were steaming steadily onward toward the Barrier and the polar night.

It grew steadily colder, but the boys did not mind the exhilarating atmosphere. They had games of ball and clambered about in the rigging, and kept in a fine glow in this way. The professor tried to join them at these games, but a tumble from halfway up the slippery main shrouds into a pile of snow, in which he was half smothered, soon checked his enthusiasm, and he thereafter devoted himself to cla.s.sifying his specimens.

Great albatross now began to wheel round the vessel and the sailors caught some of the monster white and gray birds with long strings to which they had attached bits of bread and other bait. These were flung out into the air and the greedy creatures, making a dive for them, soon found themselves choking. They were then easily hauled to deck.

Captain Hazzard, who disliked unnecessary cruelty, had given strict orders that the birds were to be released after their capture, and this was always done. The birds, however, seemed in no wise to profit by their lessons, for one bird, on the leg of which a copper ring had been placed to identify him, was captured again and again.

The professor, particularly, was interested in this sport, and devised a sort of la.s.so with a wire ring in it, with which he designed to capture the largest of the great birds, a monster with a wing spread of fully ten feet. Day after day he patiently coaxed the creature near with bits of bread, but the bird, with great cunning, came quite close to get the bread, but as soon as it saw the professor getting ready to swing his "lariat" it vanished.