Dragging the snow from his eyes, Rainey stared about him.  There, not five paces from him, lay the tiger with a bullet in his brain, while beside the body stood Thompson.

“Well,” said the hunter with a grin, “you’re sure some mouse!”

“And you’re some shot!” said Rainey, floundering through the snow to his companion’s side.  “I guess that’s the finest tiger skin in the world.”

“It’s yours as much as mine,” answered Thompson.  “We’ll go share and share alike.”

CHAPTER XIII

BRUCE AND THE BEAR

During this time of mishaps and adventures for the submarine party, what was happening to the boys and the Major in their airplane?  With fair wind and weather they might well have been on the return journey from the Pole.  But fair wind and weather are not for long in the Arctic.  They were, indeed, on their way.  As they shot away into the air from the native village near the trader’s schooner, they heard the natives calling one word in unison.  It was the Eskimo name for Thunder-bird.

The Major smiled happily at the boys as the plane soared upward.

Barney was again at the wheel.  Two things he dreaded now:  engine trouble, which might be brought on by poor gasoline, and an Arctic blizzard.  If forced to land at any time, they would be in great danger of a crash, and a storm would double the danger.

But there could never have been a more wonderful day than that on which they left the little camp for the great adventure.  Not a cloud whitened the blue dome of the sky, not a breath of air stirred.  Soon the sun sank from sight, and twilight, strange and wonderful, lasting through three long hours, faded slowly into night.  Then below them lay yellow lights and deep purple shadows, with here and there a stretch of black, which told of open water between floes.

The air grew colder as night came on, and speeding northward they saw the thermometer dropping degree by degree, and felt the chill creep through their garments in defiance of their electrical heating device.  Barney began to worry about the effect of this intense cold on the tempered steel of his engines and the many-layered wood of his propellers; but as they sped on hour after hour, this restlessness left him.

But what was this?  He found the machine shooting through space with greater freedom.  One answer there was:  a storm.  They had been caught in the advance of a blizzard; how great and terrible, none could tell.

“Going to storm.  Better land,” telephoned the Major.

Obeying his orders, the boy dropped to a lower level.  Here the wind was more intense and the air was filled with fine particles of snow which raced with them, only to glide away into the background.  The whole ice-floe was already gray and indistinct from the drift.  To pick a landing-place seemed impossible.  For several moments of agonizing suspense they sped on; then, just as they were about to despair, there appeared before them a long expanse of white.  Wide as three city boulevards, endless in extent, it appeared to offer just the opportunity they were seeking.