The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound
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Laura Lee Hope >> The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound
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CHAPTER XVII
THE RESCUE
"What happened?"
"There must have been an ice slide!"
It was Alice who asked the question, and Paul who answered it. Standing
in the darkened ice cave, through the walls of which, however, some
light filtered, the four looked anxiously at one another.
"It was the dancing that did it," declared Ruth, in a low voice. "It
loosened the ice and it slid down."
"Perhaps not," said Paul, not wanting Alice blamed, for she had proposed
the light-footed stepping about on the slippery floor of the cavern. "It
might have slid down itself."
"Well, let's see what the situation is," proposed Russ. "We can't stay
in here too long, for it's freezing cold."
"Yes, let's see if we can get out," added Paul.
"See if we _can_ get out!" repeated Ruth. "Why, is there any danger that
we can not?"
"Every danger in the world, I should say," spoke Russ, and there was a
worried note in his voice. "I don't want to alarm you," he went on, "but
the fact is that we are shut up in this ice cave."
"Oh, don't say that!" cried Ruth.
"Why shouldn't he--if it's true?" asked Alice. "Let's face the
situation, whatever it is. Russ, will you see just how bad it is?"
Without speaking, the young moving picture operator went to the hole
through which they had stooped to enter the cavern. In a moment he came
back.
"It's closed tighter than a drum," he announced. "A lot of ice slid down
from above and closed the entrance to the cave as if a door had been
shoved across it. We can't get out!"
For a moment no one spoke, and then Paul asked, quietly:
"What are we going to do?"
"Have you a knife?" asked Russ.
"A knife? Yes, but what good is that?"
"We've got to cut our way out--that's all."
Ruth and Alice looked at each other. They began to understand what it
meant.
"Someone from Elk Lodge may come for us--if we don't get back,"
murmured the younger girl, in what was almost a whisper.
"Yes, they may, but it's dangerous to wait," said Paul. "It is cold in
here, and it isn't getting any warmer. It's like being locked in a
refrigerator. We've got to keep in motion or we'll freeze."
"Then let's tackle that block of ice at the entrance," suggested Russ.
"Get out your knife and we'll see if we can't cut a hole large enough to
crawl through."
If you have tried to cut with a pocket knife even the small piece of ice
which you get in your refrigerator, you can appreciate the task that
confronted the two young men. A solid block of ice had slid down from
some higher point, and had blocked the opening to the odd cavern. But
the two were not daunted. They realized the necessity of getting out,
and that within a short time. Though they were all warmly dressed, the
air of the cavern was chilly, to say the least.
"Keep moving, girls!" called Russ to Ruth and Alice, as he and Paul
chipped away at the ice. "This exercise will keep us warm; but you need
to do something to keep your blood in circulation. Here, take my coat!"
he called, as he arose from his knees, and tossed the garment to Ruth.
"I shall do nothing of the sort!" she answered, promptly. "You need it
yourself."
"No, I don't," he replied, earnestly. "It only bothers me when I try to
cut the ice. Please take it."
"But I can't get it on over my cloak."
"Yes, you can. Put it around your shoulders. I'll show you how." And he
did it quickly, wrapping it warmly around her.
"Here, Alice, you take mine!" cried Paul, as he saw what his companion
had done. "You need it more than I do, and I can't get at that ice with
a big coat like this on."
In spite of her protests he put it about her, and the added warmth of
the garments was comforting to the girls.
The boys, really, were better off without them, for they had much
vigorous work before them, and in the narrow quarters the heavy coats
only hampered them.
For it was an exceedingly narrow space in which they had to work. The
fall of the mass of ice had crushed part of the opening into the cave,
so that Russ and Paul had to crouch down and stoop in a most
uncomfortable position in order to reach the block that had closed the
doorway.
With their knives they hacked away at the frozen mass, sending the
chips flying. Much of it went in their faces and soon their cheeks were
glowing from the icy spray of splinters. Then, too, they had to stop
every now and then to clear away the accumulated ice crystals that fell
before the attack of their knives.
"Keep moving, girls," Paul urged Ruth and Alice. "Keep circling around
or you'll surely freeze."
"Let's dance," suggested Alice.
"Oh, how can you think of such a thing!" cried Ruth, "when it was that
which caused all the trouble."
"I'm not going to believe that!" declared Alice, firmly. "And it isn't
such a terrible thing to think of, at all. It will keep us warm, and
keep up our spirits."
And then she broke into a little one-step dance, whistling her own
accompaniment. Surely it was a strange proceeding, and yet it came
natural to Alice. The young men, too, took heart at her manner of
accepting the situation, and chopped away harder than ever at the ice
barrier.
"Think we'll make it?" asked Paul of Russ, in a low voice, when they had
been working for some time.
"We've got to make it," answered the other. "We've just got to get the
girls out."
"Of course," was the brief reply, as if that was all there was to it.
And yet, in their hearts, Russ and Paul felt a nameless fear. Ice, which
melts so easily under the warm and gentle influence of the sun, is
exceedingly hard when it is maintained at a low temperature, and truly
it was sufficiently cold in the cave.
Now and then the boys stopped to clear away the accumulation of ice
splinters, and to note how they were progressing. Yet they could hardly
tell, for they did not know how thick was the chunk of ice that covered
the cave opening. The edges of the opening itself were several feet in
thickness, and if this hole was completely filled it would mean many
hours of work with the pitifully inadequate tools at their disposal.
"How are we coming on?" asked Paul.
Russ looked back at the girls who, in one corner of the cave, were
pacing up and down to drive away the deadly cold.
"Not very well," he returned, in a low voice. "Don't talk--let's work."
He did not like to think of what might happen.
Desperately they labored, eating their way into the heart of the ice.
The splinters fell on their warm bodies, for they were perspiring now,
and there the frosty particles melted, wetting their garments through.
Suddenly Paul uttered a cry as he dug his knife savagely into the
barrier.
"What's the matter--cut yourself?" asked Russ.
"No," was the low-voiced reply. "But I've broken the big blade of my
knife. Now I'll have to use the smaller one."
It was a serious thing, for it meant a big decrease in the amount of ice
Paul could chop. But opening the small blade of the knife he kept
doggedly at the task.
It was growing darker now. They could observe this through the
translucent walls of the cave.
"Do you think they will come for us?" asked Ruth, in a low tone.
"Oh, yes, of course. If we don't get back by dark," responded Russ, as
cheerfully as he could. "But we'll be out before then. Come on, Paul.
Dig away!"
But it was very evident that they would not be out before dark. The ice
block was thicker than Russ and Paul imagined.
"Please rest!" begged Alice, after a period of hard work by the two
young men. "Please take a rest!"
"Can't afford a vacation," returned Russ, grimly.
But when he did halt for a moment, to get his breath, there came from
outside the cave a sound that sent all their hearts to beating joyfully
for it was the voice of some calling:
"Where are you? Where are you? Alice! Ruth!"
"Oh, it's daddy!" cried the girls together, and then Russ took up the
refrain, shouting:
"We're in the cave! Get axes and chop us out! We've only got our
knives!"
"We'll be with you in a moment!" said another voice, which they
recognized as that of Mr. Macksey. "We'll have to go for a couple of
axes!"
And then, as the hunter started back to Elk Lodge, Mr. DeVere, who
remained outside the ice cave, explained through a crevice in the ice
wall that made conversation possible how, becoming uneasy at the failure
of his daughters to return, he had set out, in company with Mr. Macksey
to look for them.
In their turn Ruth and Alice, with occasional words from Russ and Paul,
told how they had become imprisoned.
"Are you hurt?" asked Mr. DeVere, anxiously.
"Not a bit of it, but we're awfully cold, Daddy," replied Alice.
"We must give the boys back their coats," said Ruth to her sister in a
low tone. "They are not chopping now, and they'll freeze."
Russ and Paul did not want to accept their garments, but the girls were
insistent, and made them don the heavy coats. Then the four walked
rapidly around the cave to keep their blood in circulation.
"I wish Mr. Pertell would come and bring the camera," said Russ. "He
could get a good moving picture of the rescue."
"Maybe he will," suggested Paul.
There was a little silence, and then Mr. DeVere called, from outside the
cave;
"Here they come! Now you will soon be rescued! There's help enough to
chop away the whole cave!"
CHAPTER XVIII
SNOWBOUND
Alice and Ruth fairly flew together, holding their arms tightly about
one another in the excess of their emotion, as they heard this joyful
news shouted to them by their father.
Ruth cried on her sister's shoulder. She could not help it. Perhaps
Alice felt like crying, too, so great was the relief; but she was of a
different temperament. She laughed hysterically.
"Is Mr. Pertell there?" called Russ, getting down close to the hole he
and Paul had made in the ice barrier to enable his voice to carry
better. "Is he there, Mr. DeVere?"
"Yes, he's there, and I guess the whole company."
"Has he the camera?"
"That's what he has, Russ."
"Good! Tell him to get a moving picture of the rescue. We can fix up a
story to go with it."
"I will, Russ!" exclaimed the actor.
Then, as those within the ice cave waited, they faintly heard other
voices outside, and a little later the sound of axes vigorously applied
told that the ice which had imprisoned them was being chopped away.
Fast and furiously the rescuers worked. The ice flew about in a
sparkling spray as the keen weapons bit deep into it, and the hole grew
larger and larger.
Meanwhile Mr. Pertell was operating the moving picture camera, getting
view after view of the rescue. There were enough helpers so that his aid
was not needed in chopping the ice.
"There she goes!" cried Mr. Macksey, as his axe went through an opening
and into the cave. "I've made the hole!" and he capered about like a
boy, so delighted was he that he had been the first to bring aid to the
imprisoned ones.
"Oh, now we can get out!" cried Ruth, as she saw the head of the axe
come through.
"As if there had ever been any doubt of it," laughed Alice. She could
laugh now, but even with all her gay spirits, there had been a time, not
many minutes back, when it was quite a different story.
The hole once made, was soon enlarged, and then, when it was of
sufficient size to enable a person to crawl through, Russ shouted to
the rescuers;
"That'll do! Don't chop any more! We can wriggle out."
"Surely, yes," agreed Ruth, as the young moving picture operator looked
to her for confirmation. "I'm not a bit fussy," she added. "I've done
harder things than crawl on my hands and knees out of an ice cave."
"Don't chop any more!" called Paul, for Russ was leading Ruth to the
opening.
"Come ahead!" called Mr. DeVere, and a moment later he was holding his
daughter in his arms. Alice soon followed, and she too was clasped
tightly.
"Hurray!" cried Mr. Switzer, as Russ and Paul emerged from their strange
prison. "Dis is der best sight vot I have yet had in more as a month.
Half a pretzel!" he exclaimed, holding out one of the queer, twisted
things. He was never without them since the sled breakdown. He said they
were his mascots.
There was a scene of rejoicing, and even the gloomy Mr. Sneed
condescended to smile, and looked almost happy.
"There, I guess we can use this film in some sort of a play, if I have
to write it myself!" exclaimed Mr. Pertell, as he finished grinding
away at the camera crank. "I can call it 'Caught in The Ice,' or
something like that," he went on, "We can make some preliminary scenes,
and some others to follow, and get quite a play out of it."
"I'm glad you thought to bring the camera," said Russ. Even in the
stress of what had happened to him and his companions, his instinct as a
moving picture operator was ever foremost.
"We had better get them to Elk Lodge, and feed them upon something
warm," suggested Mr. Macksey. "I told the wife to have a good meal
ready, for I knew they would be chilled through."
"It _was_ pretty cold in there," confessed Alice.
"Oh, don't let's talk about it!" cried Ruth. "It was too terrible."
An examination of the exterior of the ice cave showed that just what the
young men surmised had taken place. A large chunk of ice had slid down
from above, and had jammed against the opening to the cavern.
Back at Elk Lodge, with warm garments on, the four who had passed
through such a trying experience soon forgot their troubles. They had to
tell all over again just what had happened, and the young men were
considered quite the heroes of the hour.
The next day none of the four was any the worse for the experience, save
in the matter of a nightmare memory, and that would gradually pass away.
Feeling that the two girls were not capable of doing any hard work in
posing for the camera that day, Mr. Pertell announced another vacation,
save that Russ was engaged in making some scenes of snow and ice
effects.
Late in the afternoon, when the shadows were lengthening, and the long
winter evening was about to close in, Alice, who was out on the side
porch, saw Mr. Macksey coming in from the barn. The hunter had an
anxious look on his face, and as he walked toward the house he cast
looks up at the sky now and then. And Alice heard him murmur:
"I don't like this! I don't for a cent, by hickory!"
"What's the matter now?" she asked, merrily. "Have you seen some of
those strange men about again, hunting on your preserves?"
"No, Miss Alice. Not this time," he replied, slowly.
"What is it then?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't like the looks of the weather."
"Do you think we're going to have another blizzard?" and there was a
note of alarm in her voice.
"I'm thinking that's what's coming," he made answer. "I never knew the
weather to act just this way before except once, and then we had the
worst storm I ever remember. That was when I was a boy, and more snow
fell in that one storm than in any three winters put together."
"Gracious! I hope that won't happen now!" cried the girl.
"So do I," went on the hunter. "And I'm going to take all precautions.
I'll get the men, and we'll pile the fodder in the barn so if we can't
get out to feed the stock they won't starve for a week, anyhow."
"Does it ever happen that you can't get out to the barns?" Alice wanted
to know.
"Indeed it does, young lady. When there is a heavy fall of snow, and the
wind blows hard, it drifts almost as high as the house. Yes, I think
we're in for a storm, and I'm going to get ready for it. Best to be on
the safe side."
A little later he and a number of his hired men, as well as some of the
picture players, were engaged in looking after the horses and cows.
Great piles of hay and grain were moved from the barns where the fodder
was kept in reserve, to the buildings where the stock were stabled.
"How about our rations?" asked Mr. Bunn, who was not of much help in
work of this sort. "Have we enough to last through a storm?"
"Well, we've got some," Mr. Macksey admitted. "But I own I would like a
little better stock in the Lodge. I counted on some supplies coming in
to-day; but they haven't arrived. We'll have to do the best we can."
"What is all the excitement about, Alice?" asked Ruth as she came out to
join her sister on the porch.
"A big storm coming, Mr. Macksey says. They're getting ready for it. I
want to see it!"
"Oh, Alice. Suppose it should be a blizzard!"
"Well, I want to see it anyhow. If it's going to come I can't stop it;
but I can enjoy it," Alice remarked in her characteristically
philosophical way.
There was a curious humming in the air, as though someone, a great way
off, were moaning in pain. It did not seem to be the wind, and yet it
was like the sigh of a breeze. But the gaunt-limbed trees did not bow
before this strange blast.
The air, too, had a bite and tingle to it as though it were filled with
invisible particles of ice. The clouds were lowering, and as the
afternoon wore away there sprang up in the west a black band of vapor,
almost like ink.
Alice induced Ruth to pay a visit to the barn, to watch the preparations
for providing for the stock. Even the animals seemed uneasy, as though
they sensed some impending disaster. The horses, always nervous, were
doubly so, and moved restlessly about, with pricked-up ears, and
startled neighs. The cows, too, lowed plaintively.
"Well, we've done all we can," announced Mr. Macksey, as night came on.
"Now all we can do is to wait. There's plenty of fuel in the cellar, and
we'll not freeze, at any rate."
There was a sense of gloom over all, as they sat in the big living room
of Elk Lodge that night, and looked at the blazing logs. Everyone
listened apprehensively, as though to hear the first message of the
impending storm.
The sighing of the wind, if wind it was that made that curious sound,
was more pronounced now, and as the blast came down the chimney it
scattered ashes and embers about, and at times rose to an uncanny wail.
"Oh, but that gives me the shivers!" exclaimed Miss Pennington, tossing
aside the novel in which she had tried to become interested. "This is
positively awful! I wish I were back in New York."
"So do I!" added her chum.
"Oh, but a good snow storm is glorious!" cried Alice. "I am just wild to
see it."
"That's right," exclaimed her father, with a smile. "Take a cheerful
view of it, anyhow."
Some one proposed a guessing game, and with that under way the spirits
of all revived somewhat. Then came another simple game, and the time
passed pleasantly.
Mr. Macksey, coming back from a trip to the side door, startled them all
by announcing:
"She's here!"
"Who?" asked his wife, looking up from her sewing.
"The storm! It's snowing like cotton batting!"
Alice rushed to the window. She shaded her eyes with her hands at the
side of her head and peered out. It seemed as though the lamplights
shone on a solid wall of white, so thickly was the snow falling.
The wind had now risen to a blast of hurricane-like velocity and it
fairly shook Elk Lodge, low and substantial as the house was.
By ones and twos the picture players went to their rooms, and soon
silence and darkness settled down over the Lodge. That is, silence
within the house, but outside there was the riot of the storm.
Two or three times during the night Alice awakened and, going to the
window, looked out. She could make out a dim whiteness, but that was
all. Around the window there was a little drift of snow on the sill,
where it had been blown through a crack.
And in the morning they were snowbound. So heavy was the fall of snow,
and so high had it drifted, that some of the lower windows were
completely covered, from the ground up. And before each door was such a
drift that it would be necessary to tunnel if they were to get out.
"The worst storm I ever see!" declared Mr. Macksey, as he closed the
door against the blast. "It would be death to go out in it now. We are
snowbound, by hickory!"
CHAPTER XIX
ON SHORT RATIONS
Apprehensive as all had been of the coming of the big storm, and fully
warned by the hunter, none of the picture players was quite prepared for
what they saw--or, rather, for what they could not see. For not a window
on the lower floor of the Lodge but was blocked by a bank of snow, so
that only the tops of the upper panes were clear of it. And through
those bits of glass all that could be seen was a whirling, swirling
mass, for the white flakes were still falling.
Not an outer door of the house but was blocked by a drift, and it was
useless to open the portals at present, as the snow fell into the room.
"But what are we to do?" asked Mr. Pertell, when the situation had been
made plain to him. "We can't take any moving pictures; can we?"
"Not in this storm," Mr. Macksey declared. "It would be as much as your
life is worth to go out. It is bitter cold and the wind cuts like a
knife!"
"I wish I could get some views," spoke Russ. "It would give New York
audiences something to talk about, to see moving pictures of a storm
like this."
"You might go up in the cupola on the roof," suggested Mr. Macksey. "You
could stand your camera up there and possibly get some views."
"I'll do it!" cried Russ.
"And may I come?" asked Alice, always ready for an adventure of that
sort.
"Come along!" he cried, gaily.
The cupola was more for ornament than use, but it was large enough for
the purpose of Russ. After breakfast he took his moving picture camera
up there, and managed through the windows, to get some fairly good
pictures. The trouble was, however, that the snow was falling so thickly
that it obscured the view. At times there would come a lull in the
storm, and then Russ was able to get scenes showing the great black
woods, and the white banks of snow.
"Oh, but it's cold work!" he cried, as he stopped to warm his hands, for
the little room on the roof was draughty, and the snow blew in.
"It's a wonderful storm," cried Alice. "I wouldn't have missed it for
worlds!"
All that day the storm raged, and all that night. There was nothing
which could be done out of doors, and so the players and the men of the
Lodge were forced to remain within. Great fires were kept up, for the
temperature was very low.
The wise forethought of Mr. Macksey in providing for the stock prevented
the animals from starving, as they would have done had not a supply of
fodder been left for them. For it was out of the question to get to the
barns.
After two days the storm ceased, the skies cleared and the sun shone.
But on what a totally different scene than before the coming of the
great blizzard!
There had been plenty of snow in Deerfield before, but now there was so
much that one old man, who worked for Mr. Macksey, said he never
recalled the like, and he had seen many bad storms.
"Well, now to tunnel out!" exclaimed Mr. Macksey when it had been
ascertained, by an observation from the cupola, that the fall of snow
was over. "We'll see if we can't raise the embargo."
But it was no easy matter. All the doors were blocked by drifts, and in
making a tunnel through snow it is just as necessary to have some place
to put the removed material as it is in tunneling through the side of a
hill.
"We can't start in and dig from the door, for we'd have to pile the snow
in the room back of us," said the hunter. "So the only other plan is to
get outside, somehow, and work up to the house, tossing the snow to one
side. I may have to dig a trench instead of a tunnel. I'll soon find
out."
Finally it was decided that the men should go to the second story, out
on a balcony that opened from Mr. DeVere's room, and get down into the
snow that way. They would use snowshoes so as to have some support, and
thus they could attack the drifts.
This plan was followed. Fortunately Mr. Macksey had thought to bring in
snow shovels before the storm came, and with these the men attacked the
big white piles.
It was hard work, but they labored with a will, and there were enough of
them to make an effective attack. Mr. Macksey, in spite of the fact that
he had food and water for his stock, was anxious to see how the animals
were doing. So he directed that first paths, tunnels or trenches be made
to the various barns.
In some places, around the lee of a building, the ground was bare of
snow, and in other places the drifts were fully fifteen feet high.
Russ, who had not gone out to shovel snow, was observed to be nailing
some light broad boards together in a peculiar way.
"What are you making?" Ruth asked him.
"Snowshoes for my camera," was his surprising answer.
"Snowshoes for your camera?"
"Yes, I want to get out and take some views, but I can't stand the thin
legs of the camera on the snow. They'd pierce through it. So I'm going
to put a broad board under each leg, and that will hold the machine up
as well as snowshoes hold me."
"What a clever idea!" she cried. "I'm going to watch you. What sort of
views do you expect to get?"
"Some showing the men digging us out. We can get up a film story and
call it 'Prisoners of the Snow,' or something like that."
"Fine!" cried Alice. "I'm coming out, too."
She and Ruth got their snowshoes, and by this time the men had a deep
trench up to the front door, so that it was not necessary for the girls
to go out by the way of the balcony. They were delighted with the
strange scene, and Russ obtained many fine pictures of the men laboring
in the snow.
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