Stand By: The Story of a Boy's Achievement in Radio

  CHAPTER XIX

  IN THE GONDOLA

  "Be a good sport, Scotty! Crank her up and give me a call in about threeminutes. That's all the time I'll need to get up to thenavigation-room." Lee Renaud, Ye Tireless Radio Hound, as his shipmateshad laughingly dubbed him, pushed a batch of wireless outfit into thegrasp of Scotty McGraw, assistant port-engine tender, with a plea for alittle help in testing a new radio device.

  Lee began backing out of the narrow confines of the engine gondola, buthe never gained even the flimsy, swaying catwalk leading up into thehull. For, with a roar of fury, a sudden Arctic gale struck the ship. Itseemed to leap up out of the nowhere to whirl and pound the hugeenvelope at every point. Like so much meal in a sack, Renaud was flungcrashing back into the gondola.

  From other parts of the dirigible came rendings and crashings. It was asthough the great ship were caught in a giant's hand and flung hither andyon. The Arctic had lain bland and tractable for a space, while man inhis floating gas bubble had slipped into the frozen domain to rifle itof its stone-sheathed treasures. In suddenly awakened fury, the Arcticloosed its weapons of sub-zero, knife-edged gale, hail, sleet, andhurricane swirl that sucked and battered and tore.

  On through the storm-darkened air, the dirigible plunged, swoop andcheck, swoop and check, now half capsized, now riding high, now ridinglow. Mountains fell away into blackness; the white land was left behind.They were over the frozen sea. All control of the ship was gone, allsense of direction lost. It might be a hundred miles, a thousand milesoff its course.

  Like a toy of the winds, the huge silver bubble was tossed high on themad currents of the ocean of air. In some upper stratum, a rushing,swirling river of the winds caught the dirigible in its grasp and sweptthe lost ship back into the north faster than any of its human load hadever traveled before.

  A hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles an hour--then the speedindicators broke!

  Every part of the ship seemed out of touch with every other part. So faras any human connection was concerned, the engine gondolas, the hull,the fore-car might have been so many separate planets hurtling throughspace.

  Lee Renaud, battered and banged almost to pulp, thought all feeling wasgone from him forever. Yet in one awful flash, he sensed what wasbefalling them now. As though the river of air had reached the edge ofsome unseen, mighty precipice, and flowed over in a deadly, rushingtorrent, the ship was sucked down and down over the invisible Niagara.Through a stratum of sleet it tore and gathered an ice sheathing ofdangerous weight.

  From an engine nacelle came a jerk of machinery striving to lift thegreat bag. Out of the hull rained tanks and stores, as frantic handscast off ballast to try to save the ship. But it was impossible to haltthe down plunge of the huge ship. In another moment, the Nardak scrapedthe ice of the polar sea, its port side grinding against the ice.

  As the port gondola crashed, Renaud had a fleeting sense of beingviolently projected into space, then smashing heavily into the snow.Black mist swept through his brain, cleared. He lay, a mass of aches.Then his eyelids flicked open. He tried to scream as he gazed upward.

  The dirigible, freed of the weight of one engine cabin, had shot high inthe air again!

  In that moment, Renaud saw Harrison, the meteorologist, and CaptainBartlot standing at an observation opening and looking down in distress.Their eyes, wide with apprehension, seemed fixed on him until the hugeballoon disappeared in the mist. From somewhere on high, a piece or twomore of ballast crashed down and fell far out on the ice. A little latera thin streak of smoke showed up against the northern sky. Had thedirigible caught fire, or was this merely a smoke signal?

  More terrible than the bitter cold creeping into Renaud's body was thedesolation creeping into his heart.