II
A Call for Help
Doggedly, the boys fought their way on through the blizzard.
Once Joe Hardy stumbled and fell prone in the snow. He was up again in a moment, but the incident testified to the difficulty of their progress. The cliff seemed no nearer. To add to their peril twilight was gathering and the gloom of the blizzard was intensified.
“We’ve got to make it,” Frank muttered, gritting his teeth.
The boys were strung out in single file, Chet Morton in the rear. All were tiring. Frank skated more slowly to give the others an opportunity of catching up. When they were together again he waved his arm toward the gray mass that loomed through the storm ahead.
“Almost there!”
His words gave all of them new courage, and they redoubled their efforts. In a short while the force of the wind seemed to be decreasing. They were now gaining the shelter of the cliff. The snow had not collected so heavily on the surface of the ice, and they made better progress. In a few minutes they had skated into an area of comparative calm. They could still hear the screaming of the wind, and when they looked back the entire lake was an inferno of swirling snow, but in the shelter of the steep rocks they were protected from the full fury of the blizzard.
“Some storm!” grunted Chet, as he skated slowly to the base of the cliff and sat down on a frost-encrusted boulder.
“I’ll say it is,” agreed Jerry Gilroy, following Chet’s example.
The Hardy boys leaned against the rocks. They were safe enough in this shelter unless the wind changed completely about, which was unlikely. With the approach of darkness it was growing colder, but all the boys were warmly clad and they had few fears on that score. Their chief worry was lest the storm should not die down in time to permit of their return to Bayport that night, because they knew their people would be worrying about them.
“I see where mother won’t let me go skating again,” declared Chet. “She’s always afraid I’ll get drowned or lost or something, and now she’ll get such a scare that I’ll never get out again.”
“Aunt Gertrude will crow over this for a month,” Joe put in. “She said before we started that we’d be sure to get into some kind of a mess.”
“Well, we’ll just have to wait here until the storm blows over, that’s all,” said Frank philosophically. “Even if it does get dark we can follow the river all right and get home easily enough. Perhaps the storm won’t last very long.”
The boys settled themselves down to wait in the lee of the high black rocks until the fury of the blizzard should have diminished. There seemed to be no indication that the storm was dying down and they resigned themselves to a wait of at least an hour. Frank scouted around in search of firewood, planning to light a blaze, but any wood there may have been along the shore had long since been snowed under and he had to give up the attempt.
While the boys are thus marooned by the storm in the shelter of the cliff it might be best to introduce them to new readers of this series.
Frank and Joe Hardy, sixteen and fifteen years old respectively, were the sons of Fenton Hardy, an internationally famous private detective, living in Bayport, on the Atlantic Coast. Although still in high school, both boys had inherited many of their father’s deductive tendencies and his ability in his chosen profession and it was their ambition to some day become detectives themselves.
Their father had made an enviable name for himself. For many years he was with the New York Police Department, but had resigned to accept cases on his own account. He was known as one of the most astute detectives in the country and had solved many mysteries that had baffled city police and detective forces.
In the first volume of this series, “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” Frank and Joe Hardy solved their first mystery, tracing down a mysterious theft of jewels and bonds from a mansion on the outskirts of Bayport after their father had been called in on the case and had been forced to admit himself checkmated. The boys had received a substantial reward for their efforts and had convinced their parents that they had marked abilities in the work they desired to follow.
The second volume, “The Hardy Boys: The House on the Cliff,” recounted the adventures of the boys in running down a criminal gang operating in Barmet Bay, and in the third volume, “The Hardy Boys: The Secret of the Old Mill,” they aided their father materially in rounding up another gang.
The volume just previous to the present volume, “The Hardy Boys: The Missing Chums,” told how they sought their chums, Chet Morton and Biff Hooper, who had been kidnapped by a gang of crooks and taken to a sinister island off the coast.
As the boys waited in the shelter of the rocks they talked of some of the adventures they had undergone.
“This is the first bit of excitement we’ve had since we left Blacksnake Island,” declared Chet. “I thought we were never going to have any adventures again.”
“This isn’t much of an adventure,” Frank said, smiling, “but perhaps it’s better than nothing. Although I must say it’s a mighty cold and uncomfortable one,” he added. “I wonder if we’ll ever have any adventures like the ones we’ve gone through already.”
“I think you’ve had your fill,” grumbled Jerry Gilroy. “You’ve had more excitement than any other two fellows in Bayport.”
“I suppose we have. Like the time the smugglers caught dad and kept him in the cave in the cliff and then caught us when we went to rescue him.”
“And the time we got into the old mill and found the gang at work,” added Joe.
“Or the fight on Blacksnake Island when you came after Biff Hooper and me,” Chet Morton put in. “You’ve had enough adventure to last you a lifetime. What are you kicking about?”
“I’m not kicking. Just wondering if we’ll ever have anything else happen to us.”
“If this blizzard keeps up all night you can chalk down another adventure in your little red book,” declared Jerry. “That is, if we don’t freeze to death.”
“Cheerful!”
“It doesn’t look as if the wind is dying down, anyway.”
They looked out into the swirling screen of snow. The wind, instead of diminishing, seemed to be increasing in fury and the snow was even sweeping in little gusts and eddies into their refuge at the base of the rocks. The swirling snow hid the opposite shore of the lake completely and the howling of the wind was rising in volume.
Suddenly they heard a strange crashing noise that came from directly overhead.
All looked up, startled.
“What was that?” asked Chet.
The crashing noise continued for a moment or so, then died away, drowned out by the roar of the wind and the sweep of the snow.
“Perhaps it was a tree blown over,” suggested Jerry.
“A tree wouldn’t make that much noise,” Frank objected. For the crash had been unusually loud and prolonged and it had seemed to be accompanied by the snapping of timbers.
The boys waited, listening, but the sound had died away.
“It was right above us,” Joe said.
Hardly had he spoken the words than there came a second crash, louder than the first, and then, with a rush and a roar, a great avalanche of snow came hurtling down upon the boys from the side of the cliff. The snow engulfed them, swept over them, almost buried them as they struggled to avoid it. Then, in all the uproar, they heard another thundering crash close at hand.
Spluttering and struggling to extricate themselves from the avalanche of snow that had swept down from above, the boys could scarcely realize what had happened. As for the origin of the crashing sound they had heard, it was still a mystery.
Then, above the clamor of the gale that seemed to rage in redoubled volume, they heard a faint cry. It came from the fog of swirling snow close by. Then the shrieking wind drowned the sound out, but the boys knew that it had been a cry for help.
Frank struggled free and lent Joe a helping hand until they were both clear of the great heap of snow and ice. Chet Morton and Jerry Gilroy also fought their way clear without difficulty, for the snow was soft and the avalanche had not been of great proportions.
“I heard someone call,” Frank shouted. “Listen.”
Shivering with cold, the boys stood knee-deep in snow and listened intently.
There came a lull in the gale.
Then, faintly, they heard the shout again.
“Help!” came the cry. “Help! Help!”
It came from somewhere immediately before them, and as the wind shifted just then Frank caught sight of a dark object against the surface of the snow.
“Come on!” he shouted to the others, and began plunging through the snow over to the object he had spied.
The boys reached it in a few minutes. To their unbounded astonishment they found that they were confronted by the side of a small cottage!