Chapter XXI: Lost

How long it was before he came back to consciousness, Slim Tyler never knew.

He woke to find himself lying on his back, with dense darkness all about him. For a long time his dazed senses failed to take in the situation in which he found himself.

"Wonder how long I've been sleeping?" he asked himself confusedly. "Why hasn't Jerry waked me up? He needs sleep as much as I do. He's been having a long spell at the controls. Time I relieved the old boy."

He tried to rise, but sank back with a groan of pain.

"Must be those auk bites," he murmured. "Hope there wasn't any poison in them. Thought I used plenty of iodine, though. Gee, but this bed is cold!"

He put out his hand and felt ice. The shock aroused him.

"What in thunder!" he exclaimed, as he felt about him for some of the familiar objects of the plane.

His hands encountered only empty air.

Then in a flash it all came back to him--the study of the instruments, his suggestion to Jerry that they rise higher, the black mass looming up, the crash!

They had struck, then. Hit the mountain side and gone down. The _Hope_ was gone. And Jerry! And Dick! Good old Jerry and Dick! Where were they? Slim Tyler groaned in anguish.

His own awful plight for the moment hardly interested him. It was the fate of his companions that tore at his soul. He was at least alive. But they?

"Lying dead, perhaps," he moaned. "Or, still worse, perhaps maimed for life."

So this was the end of the expedition on which he had placed such high hopes, in the working out of which he had encountered and overcome so many perils!

All wasted! Sheer waste! The bitter sarcasm of it! Coming on a mission of rescue and now himself a derelict!

But Slim Tyler did not spend long in these soul-searing reflections. His indomitable will awoke and stirred him to action.

How did he know that his companions were dead? he asked himself. He himself had escaped with life. Might not they have had equal luck? He must look for them, and at once.

By a tremendous effort he brought himself to a sitting position. He could not repress a groan as he did so. He was bruised and sore all over.

He flexed his arms, though the operation caused him intense agony. But at least they obeyed his will. They were not broken.

He felt his legs gingerly. No broken bones there!

A surge of hope thrilled through his veins. He was not crippled, doomed to freeze or starve until death should come to his relief!

With infinite pain and effort he managed to get upon his feet. Then he applied himself to rubbing himself vigorously until the numbness left his limbs and he was able to move about, though haltingly.

Even though he could move about, he had not found freedom of action. For the night wrapped about him like a blanket. He could hardly see his hand before his face. For all he knew, he might be on the brink of a precipice. The first step forward might hurl him down into a chasm hundreds of feet deep.

Inaction was maddening, but it would be sheer insanity to attempt to move forward in that darkness. There was no alternative. He must wait till daylight broke.

How long would that be? He had not the slightest idea how long he had lain there unconscious. He took out his watch and held it to his ear. It had stopped.

He summoned all his stoicism and steeled himself to the hardest task in the world--to wait!

In those dreary hours of waiting he had plenty of time to take stock of his situation. The inventory was depressing.

As far as he knew, he was alone--alone in thousands of square miles of uninhabited, ice-clad territory.

Even if his strength held out, he might wander over it for months without coming in contact with a human soul.

But how could his strength hold out? He had no food and no way of getting any. Already the pangs of hunger were assailing him.

There were of course provisions in the _Hope_. But where was the _Hope_? Perhaps at the bottom of some inaccessible chasm. Perhaps it had caught fire in the crash and been consumed. It might have gone down one slope of the mountain, while he himself had been cast down another.

While he was immersed in these gloomy reflections the night wore itself away. With the first glimmer of light that came from the east, Slim Tyler looked with straining eyes about him.

He found himself on an icy plateau at the bottom of a mountain slope. Not ten feet in front of him was a yawning crevasse leading down to an unknown depth. Similar gorges were in evidence everywhere. A more forbidding, dreary, desolate landscape could not have been imagined.

Nothing familiar met Slim's eyes. No Jerry Marbury! No Dick Mylert! No plane!

He was lost! Lost in Greenland!