"Found what, my son?--his nothing--his Nort Pole?"
"Yes, my father, he has found his Nort Pole."
"Is he going to carry it away with him in his soft wind-boat?" asked the old chief with a half-humorous, half-contemptuous leer.
"And," continued Chingatok, who was too earnest about the matter to take notice of his father"s levity, "his Nort Pole is _something_ after all!
It is not nothing, for I heard him say he is standing on it. No man can stand on nothing; therefore his Nort Pole which he stands on must be something."
"He is standing on my outlook. He must not carry _that_ away," remarked Makitok with a portentous frown.
"Boh!" exclaimed Amalatok, rising impatiently. "I will not listen to the nonsense of Blackbeard. Have I not heard him say that the world stands on nothing, spins on nothing, and rolls continually round the sun? How can anything spin on nothing? And as to the sun, use your own eyes. Do you not see that for a long time it rolls round the world, for a long time it rolls in a circle above us, and for a long time it rolls away altogether, leaving us all in darkness? My son, these Kablunets are ignorant fools, and you are not much better for believing them.
Boo! I have no patience with the nonsense talk of Blackbeard."
The old chief flung angrily out of the hut, leaving his more philosophic son to continue the discussion of the earth"s mysteries with Makitok, the reputed wizard of the furthest possible north.
Note. The writer has often waded knee-deep in such boots, for hours at a time, on the swampy sh.o.r.es of Hudson"s Bay, without wetting his feet in the slightest degree.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
TELLS, AMONG OTHER THINGS, OF A NOTABLE DISCOVERY.
Soon after this, signs of approaching winter began to make their appearance in the regions of the North Pole. The sun, which at first had been as a familiar friend night and day, had begun to absent himself not only all night, but during a large portion of each day, giving sure though quiet hints of his intention to forsake the region altogether, and leave it to the six months" reign of night. Frost began to render the nights bitterly cold. The birds, having brought forth and brought up their young, were betaking themselves to more temperate regions, leaving only such creatures as bears, seals, walruses, foxes, wolves, and men, to enjoy, or endure, the regions of the frigid zone.
Suddenly there came a day in October when all the elemental fiends and furies of the Arctic circle seemed to be let loose in wildest revelry.
It was a turning-point in the Arctic seasons.
By that time Captain Vane and his party had transported all their belongings to Great Isle, where they had taken up their abode beside old Makitok. They had, with that wizard"s permission, built to themselves a temporary stone hut, as Benjy Vane facetiously said, "on the very top of the North Pole itself;" that is, on the little mound or truncated cone of rock, in the centre of the Great Isle, on which they had already set up the observatory, and which cone was, in very truth, as nearly as possible the exact position of that long-sought-for imaginary point of earth as could be ascertained by repeated and careful observations, made with the best of scientific instruments by thoroughly capable men.
Chingatok and his father, with a large band of their followers and some of their women, had also encamped, by permission, round the Pole, where, in the intervals of the chase, they watched, with solemn and unflagging interest, the incomprehensible doings of the white men.
The storm referred to began with heavy snow--that slow, quiet, down-floating of great flakes which is so pleasant, even restful, in its effect on the senses. At first it seemed as if a golden haze were mixed with the snowfall, suggesting the idea that the sun"s rays were penetrating it.
"Most beautiful!" said Leo, who sat beside the Captain and his friends on the North Pole enjoying the view through the open doorway of the hut, and sipping a cup of coffee.
"It reminds me," said Alf, "of Buzzby"s lines:--
"`The snowflakes falling softly In the morning"s golden prime, Suggestive of a gentle touch And the silent flight of Time.""
"Behold a more powerful reminder of the flight of Time!" said Benjy, pointing to the aged Makitok, who, with white beard and snow-besprinkled person, came slowly towards them like the living embodiment of "Old Father Christmas."
"Come," said Leo, hastening to a.s.sist the old man, "let me help you up the Pole."
Leo, and indeed all the party, had fallen in with Benjy"s humour, and habitually referred thus to their mound.
"Why comes the ancient one here through the snow?" said Captain Vane, rising and offering Makitok his seat, which was an empty packing-case.
"Surely my friend does not think we would forget him? Does not Benjy always carry him his morning cup of coffee when the weather is too bad for him to come hither?"
"Truly," returned the old man, sitting down with a sigh, "the Kablunets are kind. They never forget. Bunjee never fails to bring the cuffy, though he does sometimes pretend to forget the shoogre, till I have tasted it and made a bad face; then he laughs and remembers that the shoogre is in his pouch. It is his little way. But I come not to-day for cuffy; I come to warn. There is danger in the air. Blackbeard must take his strange things," (thus he referred to the philosophical instruments), "away from here--from--ha!--from Nort Pole, and put them in my hut, where they will be safe."
The Captain did not at once reply. Turning to his companions he said--
"I see no particular reason to fear this `danger in the air." I"ll go and consult Chingatok or his father on the point."
"The ancient one, as you call him," said Benjy, "seems to be growing timid with age."
"The youthful one," retorted the Captain, "seems to be growing insolent with age. Go, you scamp, and tell Amalatok I want to speak with him."
Whatever faults our young hero had, disobedience was not one of them.
He rose promptly, and soon returned with the chief of Poloeland.
Amalatok confirmed the wizard"s opinions, and both opinions were still more powerfully confirmed, while he was speaking, by a gust of wind which suddenly came rushing at them as if from all points of the compa.s.s, converging at the Pole and shooting upwards like a whirlwind, carrying several hats of the party with volumes of the now wildly agitated snow up into the sky.
There was no room for further hesitation.
"Why, Ma.s.sa Bunjay, I thought my woolly scalp he hoed up "long wid my hat!" cried b.u.t.terface, leaping up in obedience to the Captain"s hurried order to look sharp and lend a hand.
In a short time all the instruments were removed from the observatory and carefully housed in Makitok"s hut. Even while they were thus engaged the storm burst on them with excessive violence. The snow which had been falling so softly, was caught up by the conflicting winds and hurled high into the air, or driven furiously over the valley in all directions, for the gale did not come from any fixed quarter; it rose and swooped and eddied about, driving the snow-drift now here, now there, and shrieking as if in wild delight at the chaotic havoc it was permitted to play.
"Confusion worse confounded!" gasped Leo, as he staggered past Alf with the last load on his shoulder.
"And yet there must be order _everywhere_," observed Chingatok, when, after all were safely housed in Makitok"s hut that evening, he heard Leo repeat that sentiment.
"Why do you think so, Chingatok?" asked the Captain with some curiosity.
"Because there is order even in my hut," returned the giant. "Pingasuk, (referring to his wife), keeps all things in perfect order. Is the World-Maker less wise than Pingasuk? Sometimes, no doubt, when Pingasuk is cooking, or arranging, things may seem in disorder to the eye of my little boy Meltik and the small one, (referring to baby), but when Meltik and the small one grow older and wiser, they will see that it is not so."
While Chingatok was speaking, a gust of wind more furious than ever struck the hut and shook it to its foundations. At the same time a loud rumbling sound was heard outside. Most of the men leaped up, caught hold of spears or knives, and rushed out. Through the driving drift they could just see that the observatory, which was a flimsy structure, had been swept clean away, and that the more solid hut was following it.
Even as they gazed they saw its roof caught up, and whirled off as if it had been a scroll of paper. The walls fell immediately after, and the stones rolled down the rocky cone with a loud rattling, which was partially drowned by the shrieking of the tempest.
For three days the storm lasted. During that time it was almost impossible to show face in the open air. On the night of the third day the fury of the wind abated. Then it suddenly became calm, but when b.u.t.terface opened the door, and attempted to go out, he found himself effectually checked by a wall of snow. The interior of the hut was pitch dark, and it was not until a lamp had been lighted that the party found they were buried alive!
To dig themselves out was not, however, a difficult matter. But what a scene presented itself to their view when they regained the upper air!
No metamorphosis conceived by Ovid or achieved by the magic lantern; no pantomimic transformation; no eccentricity of dreamland ever equalled it! When last seen, the valley was clothed in all the rich luxuriance of autumnal tints, and alive with the twitter and plaintive cry of bird-life. Now it was draped in the pure winding-sheet of winter, and silent in the repose of Arctic death. Nothing almost was visible but snow. Everything was whelmed in white. Only here and there a few of the st.u.r.dier clumps of bushes held up their loads like gigantic wedding-cakes, and broke the universal sameness of the scene. One raven was the only living representative of the birds that had fled. It soared calmly over the waste, as if it were the wizard who had wrought the change, and was admiring its work.
"Winter is upon us fairly now, friends," said Captain Vane as he surveyed the prospect from the Pole, which was itself all but buried in the universal drift, and capped with the hugest wedding-cake of all; "we shall have to accommodate ourselves to circ.u.mstances, and prepare for the campaign."
"I suppose the first thing we shall have to do is to build a snow-house," said Benjy, looking ruefully round, for, as usual, he was depressed by first appearances.
"Just so, Benjy; and the sooner we go to work the better."
Now, the reader must not hastily conclude that we are about to inflict on him or her a detailed narrative of a six months" residence at the North Pole. We have no such fell design. Much though there is to tell,--much of suffering, more of enjoyment, many adventures, numerous stirring incidents, and not a few mishaps--we shall pa.s.s over the most of it in total silence, and touch only on those points which are worthy of special notice.
Let us leap, then, into the very middle of the Arctic winter. It is continuously dark now. There is no day at all at the Pole; it is night all round. The last glimmer of the departing sun left them months ago; the next glimmer of his return will not reach them for months to come.
The northern Eskimos and their English visitors were well aware of that, nevertheless there was nothing of gloom or depressed spirits among them.