It was with a feeling almost of regret that Bruce bent over the giant beast.  But it was with a sense of new power that he noted that seven of his bullets had crashed through the Arctic Goliath’s skull.

Again his mind was turned toward the plane.  Cold and hungry as they were, he realized that he and his two companions must spend the next hour making their craft safe from further damage.

Three hours, indeed, elapsed before they were again seated in the snow-cabin.  This time the primus stove was going and the coffee coming to a boil.

“Well,” said the Major, “I’m glad we’re all here.  We’ll be delayed for several days.  We may have lost the race.  But we won’t give up.  As long as our plane has wings we’ll keep on.  No race is ever lost until the goal is reached and passed.  Let’s eat.”

“Anyway,” said Barney, as he sipped his cup of hot coffee, “we won’t run out of dog meat and hamburger soon.  I’ll bet Bruce’s bear weighs a thousand pounds dressed.”

“Fourteen inches between the ears,” grinned Bruce proudly.

CHAPTER XIV

“Bombed”

Standing silently beside the aged engineer, Dave Tower gazed thoughtfully at the golden dome that flashed, then slowly darkened in the setting sun.  That yellow gleam did not lure him on, for the honor of helping to reach the Pole was more to him than money.  But Jarvis?  He perhaps had learned in his long years of labor that “the paths of glory lead but to the grave,” and now that he was growing old wealth would mean escape from toil and worry.  Perhaps, too, somewhere in the States a gray-haired wife awaited him to whom just a little of that gleaming gold would mean rest and peace as long as she might live.

So Dave looked at the golden dome and pondered what he ought to do.  When at last, he spoke, his tone was kind: 

“Jarvis,” he began, “as you know, I am in command of this craft.  The fact that it has been stolen and won back, more by your efforts than by anything I have done, does not change matters any.  I am still commander.”

Jarvis looked up with an impatient gesture, as if about to speak, but Dave kept on: 

“As captain of this submarine, I might order you below, and your refusal to do so would be mutiny.  But from the time we came aboard this craft we have been more like pals than commander and engineer.  I give you my word of honor I will never order you below.  If you go, you go of your own free will.”

Jarvis raised his face for a moment, and upon it was a look of growing hope.

“You know,” Dave continued, “what our duty is.  We shipped under the orders of the Doctor.  Those orders still go.  No matter how fine the chances are that we are letting slip, we are bound to do as the Doctor wants.

“More than that, we have friends back there who had only two days’ supply of food when we left them.  They are living in a village of superstitious, treacherous savages, who may attack and murder them at any moment.  Jarvis,” he touched the old man’s hand, “we are American seamen.  Will you forget your flag and your shipmates for gold?”