Alf"s reply was checked by the necessity for remounting the sledge and resuming the journey. Those in rear avoided the pond by going round it.
"The weather"s warm, anyhow, and that"s a comfort," remarked Benjy, as he settled down in his wet garments. "We can"t freeze in summer, you know, and--"
He stopped abruptly, for it became apparent just then that the opening close ahead of them was too narrow for the sledge to pa.s.s. It was narrowed by a b.u.t.tress, or projection, of the cathedral-berg, which jutted up close to a vast obelisk of ice about forty feet high, if not higher.
"Nothing for it, boys, but to cut through," said the Captain, jumping out, and seizing an axe, as the sledge was jammed between the ma.s.ses.
The dogs lay down to rest and pant while the men were at work.
"It"s cut an" come again in dem regins," muttered the negro steward, also seizing an axe, and attacking the base of the obelisk.
A sudden cry of alarm from the whole party caused him to desist and look up. He echoed the cry and sprang back swiftly, for the huge ma.s.s of ice having been just on the balance, one slash at its base had destroyed the equilibrium, and it was leaning slowly over with a deep grinding sound.
A moment later the motion was swift, and it fell with a terrible crash, bursting into a thousand fragments, scattering lumps and glittering morsels far and wide, and causing the whole ice-field to tremble. The concussion overturned several other ma.s.ses, which had been in the same nicely-balanced condition, some near at hand, others out of sight, though within earshot, and, for a moment, the travellers felt as if the surrounding pack were disrupting everywhere and falling into utter ruin, but in a few seconds the sounds ceased, and again all was quiet.
Fortunately, the obelisk which had been overturned fell towards the north--away from the party; but although it thus narrowly missed crushing them all in one icy tomb, it blocked up their path so completely that the remainder of that day had to be spent in cutting a pa.s.sage through it.
Need we say that, after this, they were careful how they used their axes and ice-chisels?
Soon after the occurrence of this incident, the labyrinths among the ice became more broken, tortuous, and bewildering. At last they ceased altogether, and the travellers were compelled to take an almost straight course right over everything, for blocks, ma.s.ses, and drifts on a gigantic scale were heaved up in such dire confusion, that nothing having the faintest resemblance to a track or pa.s.sage could be found.
"It"s hard work, this," remarked the Captain to Leo one evening, seating himself on a ma.s.s of ice which he had just chopped from an obstruction, and wiping the perspiration from his brow.
"Hard, indeed," said Leo, sitting down beside him, "I fear it begins to tell upon poor Benjy. You should really order him to rest more than he does, uncle."
A grim smile of satisfaction played for a minute on the Captain"s rugged face, as he glanced at his son, who, a short distance ahead, was hacking at the ice with a pick-axe, in company with Alf and b.u.t.terface and the Eskimo men.
"It"ll do him good, lad," replied the Captain. "Hard work is just what my Benjy needs. He"s not very stout, to be sure, but there is nothing wrong with his const.i.tution, and he"s got plenty of spirit."
This was indeed true. Benjy had too much spirit for his somewhat slender frame, but his father, being a herculean man, did not quite perceive that what was good for himself might be too much for his son.
Captain Vane was, however, the reverse of a harsh man. He pondered what Leo had said, and soon afterwards went up to his son.
"Benjy, my lad."
"Yes, father," said the boy, dropping the head of his pick-axe on the ice, resting his hands on the haft, and looking up with a flushed countenance.
"You should rest a bit now and then, Benjy. You"ll knock yourself up if you don"t."
"Rest a bit, father! Why, I"ve just had a rest, and I"m not tired--that is, not very. Ain"t it fun, father? And the ice cuts up so easily, and flies about so splendidly--see here."
With flashing eyes our little hero raised his pick and drove it into the ice at which he had been working, with all his force, so that a great rent was made, and a ma.s.s the size of a dressing-table sprang from the side of a berg, and, falling down, burst into a shower of sparkling gems. But this was not all. To Benjy"s intense delight, a ma.s.s of many tons in weight was loosened by the fall of the smaller lump, and rolled down with a thunderous roar, causing b.u.t.terface, who was too near it, to jump out of the way with an amount of agility that threw the whole party into fits of laughter.
"What d"ye think o" that, father?"
"I think it"s somewhat dangerous," answered the Captain, recovering his gravity and re-shouldering his axe. "However, as long as you enjoy the work, it can"t hurt you, so go ahead, my boy; it"ll be a long time before you cut away too much o" the Polar ice!"
Reaching a slightly open s.p.a.ce beyond this point, the dogs were harnessed, and the party advanced for a mile or so, when they came to another obstruction worse than that which they had previously pa.s.sed.
"There"s a deal of ice-rubbish in these regions," remarked Benjy, eyeing the wildly heaped ma.s.ses with a grave face, and heaving a deep sigh.
"Yes, Ma.s.sa Benjy, bery too much altogidder," said b.u.t.terface, echoing the sigh.
"Come, we won"t cut through this," cried Captain Vane in a cheery voice; "we"ll try to go over it. There is a considerable drift of old snow that seems to offer a sort of track. What says Chingatok?"
The easy-going Eskimo said that it would be as well to go over it as through it, perhaps better!
So, over it they went, but they soon began to wish they had tried any other plan, for the snow-track quickly came to an end, and then the difficulty of pa.s.sing even the empty sledges from one ice ma.s.s to another was very great, while the process of carrying forward the goods on the shoulders of the men was exceedingly laborious. The poor dogs, too, were constantly falling between ma.s.ses, and dragging each other down, so that they gave more trouble at last than they were worth.
In all these trying circ.u.mstances, the Eskimo women were almost as useful as the men. Indeed they would have been quite as useful if they had been as strong, and they bore the fatigues and trials of the journey with the placid good humour, and apparent, if not real, humility of their race.
At last, one afternoon, our discoverers came suddenly to the edge of this great barrier of ancient ice, and beheld, from an elevated plateau to which they had climbed, a scene which was calculated to rouse in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s feelings at once of admiration and despair, for there, stretching away below them for several miles, lay a sea of comparatively level ice, and beyond it a chain of stupendous glaciers, which presented an apparently impa.s.sable barrier--a huge continuous wall of ice that seemed to rise into the very sky.
This chain bore all the evidences of being very old ice--compared to which that of the so-called "ancient sea" was absolutely juvenile. On the ice-plain, which was apparently illimitable to the right and left, were hundreds of pools of water in which the icebergs, the golden clouds, the sun, and the blue sky were reflected, and on the surface of which myriads of Arctic wild-fowl were sporting about, making the air vocal with their plaintive cries, and ruffling the gla.s.sy surfaces of the lakes with their dipping wings. The heads of seals were also observed here and there.
"These will stop us at last," said Alf, pointing to the bergs with a profound sigh.
"No, they won"t," remarked the Captain quietly. "_Nothing_ will stop us!"
"That"s true, anyhow, uncle," returned Alf; "for if it be, as Chingatok thinks, that we are in search of nothing, of course when we find nothing, nothing will stop us!"
"Why, Alf," said Leo, "I wonder that you, who are usually in an enthusiastic and poetical frame of mind, should be depressed by distant difficulties, instead of admiring such a splendid sight of birds and beasts enjoying themselves in what I may style an Arctic heaven. You should take example by Benjy."
That youth did indeed afford a bright example of rapt enthusiasm just then, for, standing a little apart by himself, he gazed at the scene with flushed face, open mouth, and glittering eyes, in speechless delight.
"Ask Chingatok if he ever saw this range before," said the Captain to Anders, on recovering from his first feeling of surprise.
No, Chingatok had never seen it, except, indeed, the tops of the bergs-- at sea, in the far distance--but he had often heard of it from some of his countrymen, who, like himself, were fond of exploring. But that sea of ice was not there, he said, when he had pa.s.sed on his journey southward. It had drifted there, since that time, from the great sea.
"Ah! the great sea that he speaks of is just what we must find and cross over," muttered the Captain to himself.
"But how are we to cross over it, uncle?" asked Leo.
The Captain replied with one of his quiet glances. His followers had long become accustomed to this silent method of declining to reply, and forbore to press the subject.
"Come now, boys, get ready to descend to the plain. We"ll have to do it with caution."
There was, indeed, ground for caution. We have said that they had climbed to an elevated plateau on one of the small bergs which formed the outside margin of the rugged ice. The side of this berg was a steep slope of hard snow, so steep that they thought it unwise to attempt the descent by what in Switzerland is termed glissading.
"We"ll have to zig-zag down, I think," continued the Captain, settling himself on his sledge; but the Captain"s dogs thought otherwise. Under a sudden impulse of reckless free-will, the whole team, giving vent to a howl of mingled glee and fear, dashed down the slope at full gallop. Of course they were overtaken in a few seconds by the sledge, which not only ran into them, but sent them sprawling on their backs right and left. Then it met a slight obstruction, and itself upset, sending Captain Vane and his companions, with its other contents, into the midst of the struggling dogs. With momentarily increasing speed this avalanche of mixed dead and living matter went sliding, hurtling, swinging, shouting, struggling, and yelling to the bottom. Fortunately, there was no obstruction there, else had destruction been inevitable.
The slope merged gradually into the level plain, over which the avalanche swept for a considerable distance before the momentum of their flight was expended.
When at length they stopped, and disentangled themselves from the knot into which the traces had tied them, it was found that no one was materially hurt. Looking up at the height down which they had come, they beheld the Eskimos standing at the top with outstretched arms in the att.i.tude of men who glare in speechless horror. But these did not stand thus long. Descending by a more circuitous route, they soon rejoined the Captain"s party, and then, as the night was far advanced, they encamped on the edge of the ice-plain, on a part that was bathed in the beams of the ever-circling sun.
That night at supper Captain Vane was unusually thoughtful and silent.
"You"re not losing heart, are you, uncle?" asked Leo, during a pause.
"No, lad, certainly not," replied the Captain, dreamily.
"You"ve not been b.u.mped very badly in the tumble, father, have you?"