At one place where they had laboriously cut steps in the ice coming up, they disregarded them altogether, and slid down the slippery green slope at terrific speed, slowing up enough when they reached a level space to climb to their feet. Joe, weakened by his fall, was unable to hold the furious pace, and toward the last Bob ran on one side of him and Herb on the other, helping him along over the most difficult places.
At length they sighted the ocean, and this gave them heart for a final wild sprint. To their joy, they saw that Captain Springer had replaced the rowboat by the ship’s motorboat, so that they could get away more quickly.
The men in the boat saw them and came in close to the ice, uttering encouraging shouts. Summoning up their last ounce of energy, the landing party rushed over the last hundred yards and leaped helter-skelter into the boat.
The launch turned, and, with the engine roaring at top speed, tore away from the iceberg. In a few minutes they were alongside the _Meteor_, the falls were hooked on, and the motorboat was lifted out of the water while the _Meteor_ got under way.
They had hardly gone a quarter of a mile when a deafening explosion rent the air, and the iceberg, which a few seconds before had looked so solid and substantial, seemed to dissolve into thin air. For a time a thick vapor hung over the spot, and when it thinned out, nothing was to be seen of the big iceberg but splintered ice cakes bobbing about on the foam-crested waves.
“One more iceberg bit the dust!” exclaimed Jimmy, in a melodramatic tone.
“Rather wet dust,” returned Herb, with a grin. “But look at the big chunks of ice floating about. There must be a thousand of those baby bergs.”
“They’re too small to do any damage,” remarked Bob. “They’ll soon melt; and, anyway, if a vessel touched them she’d nose them aside.”
“Johnson was telling me the other day that the fishing smacks tow in some of those small chunks, and so lay in their summer ice supply,” remarked Jimmy.
“At any rate, that makes them of some use in the world,” affirmed Herb.
“How are you feeling now, Joe?” asked Bob, turning to his chum.
“I’m all right,” answered Joe. “But I never want to have such a close call as I had on that berg. If you hadn’t got to me just as you did, I’d have gone up with the berg.”