Mark aimed at once fierce beast, but missed his shot, and, slipping on the ice, fell right in the animal’s path.  In an instant the brute was upon him.

“Lie on your back and cover your head with your arms!” shouted Andy, as he ran toward the animal.  Mark did as he was told.  The dog endeavored to bite him, but the stout furs on his back prevented much damage being done.  Then, having secured a large chunk of ice, Andy ran up behind the beast and stretched it out with a well-directed blow.  Mark was saved, and scrambled to his feet uninjured.

Suddenly there sounded a series of sharp reports as if a rifle was being discharged.  The refugees looked up, expecting to see some armed force coming to their aid.  Instead, they beheld the Esquimaux driver approaching on the run.  He was swinging his long-lashed whip, which he had secured from the crack in the ice where he had stuck it, and was snapping it vigorously.

At the same time he called in his native language to the dogs to lie down.  The brutes heard the cracking of the cruel thong, whose force they knew but too well, and they recognized their master’s voice.  On came the Esquimaux, until, reaching the pack of dogs, he laid about among them with good will, the blows of the whip bringing blood.

Sticking their tails between their legs, the remaining dogs ran away with frightened yelps.  The driver had come in the nick of time.

“That was quite a fright!” panted Andy, when the excitement was at an end.  “My, but those were fierce brutes!”

While the dogs that were left alive among the pack, including several wounded ones, withdrew to a far end of the ice floe, the adventurers crawled back under the tent for a much-needed rest.  The Esquimaux, with a silence worthy of an American Indian, took up his position in the small doorway.

It was growing much colder, and the big chunk of ice that served the refugees as a raft was moving quite rapidly over a choppy sea.

It was several hours later that the Esquimaux with a loud cry attracted all the others to the tent opening.  He pointed ahead.

“I believe we’re drifting back to shore!” shouted Andy.

CHAPTER XXVII

BACK TO THE SHIP

With anxious eyes the adventurers crawled out on the floe and gazed ahead.  Across the black stretch of water could be seen a dim whiteness.  It looked like the main ice pack, but they realized that it might be only another floe or berg.  The current was setting strong in the direction of it.

“We will soon learn our fate,” said the professor.  “We should be up to it in an hour.”

In less time than that they were near enough to the white mass to tell that it was no floe or berg, but the main field of ice, part of that from which they had been separated.

“I don’t know as we’ll be much better off when we get there,” said Andy.  “There are not dogs enough left to draw the sled, and if we have to walk back to where the airship is, providing this Esquimaux can find it, we’ll freeze.”