The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole

“Hold on, uncle!” cried Alf, “I think I see a splendid specimen of—”

The crack of Leo’s whip, and the yelping of the team, drowned the rest of the sentence, and Alf was whirled away from his splendid specimen, (whatever it was), for ever!

“It is a piece of great good fortune,” said the Captain, as they swept along over the hard and level snow, “that the Eskimos have left their boats on this land, for now I shall have two strings to my bow.”

“What is the other string?” asked Leo, as he administered a flip to the flank of a lazy dog.

“Ah, that remains to be seen, lad,” replied the Captain.

“Why, what a tyrant you are, uncle!” exclaimed Alf, who had recovered from his disappointment about the splendid specimen. “You won’t tell us anything, almost. Who ever before heard of the men of an expedition to the North Pole being kept in ignorance of the means by which they were to get there?”

The Captain’s reply was only a twinkle of the eye.

“Father wants to fill you with bliss, Alf,” said Benjy, “according to your own notions of that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean, Ben?”

“Why, have we not all heard you often quote the words:– ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’”

“Hear, hear! That’s it, Benjy,” said the Captain, with a nod and a short laugh, while his son assumed the satisfied gravity of look appropriate to one who has made a hit; “I won’t decrease his bliss by removing his ignorance yet awhile.”

“Hain’t Buzzby got nuffin’ to say on that ’ere pint?” whispered Butterface to Benjy, who sat just in front of him.

“Ah! to be sure. I say, Alf,” said the boy with an earnest look, “hasn’t your favourite author got something to say about the bliss of ignorance? I’m almost sure I heard you muttering something in your dreams on that subject the other day.”

“Of course he has. He has a long poem on that subject. Here is a bit of it.”

Alf, whose memory was good, immediately recited the following:

“How sweet is ignorance! How soothing to the mind,To search for treasures in the brain, and nothing find!Consider. When the memory is richly stored,How apt the victim of redundant knowledge to be bored!When Nothing fills the chambers of the heart and brain,Then negative enjoyment comes with pleasures in her train!Descending on the clods of sense like summer rain.“Knowledge, ’tis said, gives power, and so it often does;Knowledge makes sorrow, too, around our pillows buzz.In debt I am, with little cash; I know it—and am sad.Of course, if I were ignorant of this—how glad!A loving friend, whom once I knew in glowing health,Has broken down, and also, somehow, lost his wealth.How sad the knowledge makes me! Better farIn ignorance to live, than hear of things that jar,And think of things that are not,—not of things that are.“‘If ignorance is bliss,’ the poet saith—why ‘if?’Why doubt a fact so clearly proven, stubborn, stiff?The heavy griefs and burdens of the world around,The hideous tyranny by which mankind is ground,The earthquake, tempest, rush of war, and wail of woe,Are all as though they were not—if I do not know!Wrapped in my robe of ignorance, what can I miss?Am I not saved from all—and more than all—of this?Do I not revel in a regal realm of bliss?”

“Bravo! Buzzby,” cried the Captain, “but, I say, Alf, don’t it seem to smack rather too much of selfishness?”

“Of course it does, uncle. I do not think Buzzby always sound in principle, and, like many poets, he is sometimes confused in his logic.”

“You’re right, Benjy, the land is clear enough now,” remarked the Captain, whose interest in Buzzby was not profound, and whose feelings towards logic bordered on the contemptuous, as is often the case with half-educated men, and, strange to say, sometimes with highly-educated men, as well as with the totally ignorant—so true is it that extremes meet!

In the course of a couple of hours the sledges drew near to the island, which proved to be a large but comparatively low one, rising not more than a hundred feet in any part. It was barren and ragged, with patches of reindeer moss growing in some parts, and dwarf willows in others. Myriads of sea-birds made it their home, and these received the invaders with clamorous cries, as if they knew that white men were a dangerous novelty, and objected to the innovation.

Despite their remonstrances, the party landed, and the Eskimos hurried over the rocks to that part of the island where they had left their kayaks and women’s boats in charge of a party of natives who were resident on the island at the time they passed, and from whom they had borrowed the dogs and sledges with which they had travelled south.

Meanwhile the white men took to rambling; Leo to shoot wild-fowl for supper, Alf to search for “specimens,” and Benjy to scramble among the rocks in search of anything that might “turn up.” Butterface assisted the latter in his explorations. While the rest were thus engaged, the Captain extemporised a flag-staff out of two spears lashed together with a small block at the top for the purpose of running up a flag, and formally taking possession of the island when they should re-assemble. This done, he wrote a brief outline of his recent doings, which he inserted in a ginger-beer bottle brought for that very purpose. Then he assisted Anders in making the encampment and preparing supper.

The two were yet in the midst of the latter operation when a shout was heard in the distance. Looking in the direction whence it came they saw Chingatok striding over the rocks towards them with unusual haste. He was followed by the other Eskimos, who came forward gesticulating violently.

“My countrymen have left the island,” said Chingatok when he came up.

“And taken the kayaks with them?” asked Captain Vane anxiously.

“Every one,” replied the giant.

This was depressing news to the Captain, who had counted much on making use of the Eskimo canoes in the event of his own appliances failing.

“Where have they gone, think you?” he asked.

“Tell Blackbeard,” replied Chingatok, turning to Anders, “that no one knows. Since they went away the lanes of open water have closed, and the ice is solid everywhere.”

“But where the kayak and the oomiak cannot float the sledge may go,” said the Captain.

“That is true; tell the pale chief he is wise, yet he knows not all things. Let him think. When he comes to the great open sea what will he do without canoes?”

“Huk!” exclaimed Oolichuk, with that look and tone which intimated his belief that the pale chief had received a “clincher.”

The chattering of the other Eskimos ceased for a moment or two as they awaited eagerly the Captain’s answer, but the Captain disappointed them. He merely said, “Well, we shall see. I may not know all things, Chingatok, nevertheless I know a deal more than you can guess at. Come now, let’s have supper, Anders; we can’t wait for the wanderers.”

As he spoke, three of the wanderers came into camp, namely Leo, Benjy, and Butterface.

“What’s come of Alf?” asked the Captain.

Neither Leo nor Benjy had seen him since they parted, a quarter of an hour after starting, and both had expected to find him in camp, but Butterface had seen him.

“Sawd him runnin’,” said the sable steward, “runnin’ like a mad kangaroo arter a smallish brute like a mouse. Nebber sawd nuffin’ like Massa Alf for runnin’.”

“Well, we can’t wait for him,” said the Captain, “I want to take possession of the island before supper. What shall we call it?”

“Disappointment Isle,” said Leo, “seeing that the Eskimos have failed us.”

“No—I won’t be ungrateful,” returned the Captain, “considering the successes already achieved.”

“Call it Content Isle, then,” suggested Benjy.

“But I am not content with partial success. Come, Butterface, haven’t you got a suggestion to make.”

The negro shook his woolly head. “No,” he said, “I’s ’orrible stoopid. Nebber could get nuffin’ to come out o’ my brain—sep w’en it’s knocked out by accident. You’s hard to please, massa. S’pose you mix de two,—dis’pintment an’ content,—an’ call ’im Half-an’-half Island.”

“Home is in sight now,” said Chingatok, who had taken no interest in the above discussion, as it was carried on in English. “A few days more and we should be there if we only had our kayaks.”

“There’s the name,” exclaimed the Captain eagerly when this was translated, “‘Home-in-sight,’ that will do.”

Rising quickly, he bent a Union Jack to the halyards of his primitive flag-staff, ran it up, and in the name of Queen Victoria took possession of Home-in-sight Island. After having given three hearty British cheers, in which the Eskimos tried to join, with but partial success, they buried the ginger-beer bottle under a heap of stones, a wooden cross was fixed on the top of the cairn, and then the party sat down to supper, while the Captain made a careful note of the latitude and longitude, which he had previously ascertained. This latest addition to Her Majesty’s dominions was put down by him in latitude 85 degrees 32 minutes, or about 288 geographical miles from the North Pole.

Chapter Ten.

A Sketcher in Imminent Danger. Difficulties increase, and are overcome as usual

The first night on Home-in-sight Island was not so undisturbed as might have been expected. The noisy gulls did indeed go to sleep at their proper bed-time, which, by the way, they must have ascertained by instinct, for the sun could be no certain guide, seeing that he shone all night as well as all day, and it would be too much to expect that gulls had sufficient powers of observation to note the great luminary’s exact relation to the horizon. Polar bears, like the Eskimo, had forsaken the spot. All nature, indeed, animate and inanimate, favoured the idea of repose when the explorers lay down to sleep on a mossy couch that was quite as soft as a feather bed, and much more springy.

The cause of disturbance was the prolonged absence of Alf Vandervell. That enthusiastic naturalist’s failure to appear at supper was nothing uncommon. His non-appearance when they lay down did indeed cause some surprise, but little or no anxiety, and they all dropped into a sound sleep which lasted till considerably beyond midnight. Then the Captain awoke with a feeling of uneasiness, started up on one elbow, yawned, and gazed dreamily around. The sun, which had just kissed his hand to the disappointed horizon and begun to re-ascend the sky, blinded the Captain with his beams, but did not prevent him from observing that Alf’s place was still vacant.

“Very odd,” he muttered, “Alf didn’t use to—to—w’at’s ’is name in—this—way—”

The Captain’s head dropped, his elbow relaxed, and he returned to the land of Nod for another half-hour.

Again he awoke with a start, and sat upright.

“This’ll never do,” he exclaimed, with a fierce yawn, “something must be wrong. Ho! Benjy!”

“Umph!” replied the boy, who, though personally light, was a heavy sleeper.

“Rouse up, Ben, Alf’s not come back. Where did you leave him?”

“Don’ know, Burrerface saw ’im las’—.” Benjy dropped off with a sigh, but was re-aroused by a rough shake from his father, who lay close to him.

“Come, Ben, stir up Butterface! We must go look for Alf.”

Butterface lay on the other side of Benjy, who, only half alive to what he was doing, raised his hand and let it fall heavily on the negro’s nose, by way of stirring him up.

“Hallo! massa Benjamin! You’s dreamin’ drefful strong dis mornin’.”

“Yer up, ol’ ebony!” groaned the boy.

In a few minutes the whole camp was roused; sleep was quickly banished by anxiety about the missing one; guns and rifles were loaded, and a regular search-expedition was hastily organised. They started off in groups in different directions, leaving the Eskimo women in charge of the camp.

The Captain headed one party, Chingatok another, and Leo with Benjy a third, while a few of the natives went off independently, in couples or alone.

“I was sure Alf would get into trouble,” said Benjy, as he trotted beside Leo, who strode over the ground in anxious haste. “That way he has of getting so absorbed in things that he forgets where he is, won’t make him a good explorer.”

“Not so sure of that, Ben,” returned Leo; “he can discover things that men who are less absorbed, like you, might fail to note. Let us go round this hillock on separate sides. We might pass him if we went together. Keep your eyes open as you go. He may have stumbled over one of those low precipices and broken a leg. Keep your ears cocked also, and give a shout now and then.”

We have said that the island was a low one, nevertheless it was extremely rugged, with little ridges and hollows everywhere, like miniature hills and valleys. Through one of these latter Benjy hurried, glancing from side to side as he went, like a red Indian on the war-path—which character, indeed, he thought of, and tried to imitate.

The little vale did not, however, as Leo had imagined, lead round the hillock. It diverged gradually to the right, and ascended towards the higher parts of the island. The path was so obstructed by rocks and boulders which had evidently been at one time under the pressure of ice, that the boy could not see far in any direction, except by mounting one of these. He had not gone far when, on turning the corner of a cliff which opened up another gorge to view, he beheld a sight which caused him to open mouth and eyes to their widest.

For there, seated on an eminence, with his back to a low precipice, not more than three or four hundred yards off, sat the missing explorer, with book on knees and pencil in hand—sketching; and there, seated on the top of the precipice, looking over the edge at the artist, skulked a huge Polar bear, taking as it were, a surreptitious lesson in drawing! The bear, probably supposing Alf to be a wandering seal, had dogged him to that position just as Benjy Vane discovered him, and then, finding the precipice too high for a leap perhaps, or doubting the character of his intended victim, he had paused in uncertainty on the edge.

The boy’s first impulse was to utter a shout of warning, for he had no gun wherewith to shoot the brute, but fear lest that might precipitate an attack restrained him. Benjy, however, was quick-witted. He saw that the leap was probably too much even for a Polar bear, and that the nature of the ground would necessitate a détour before it could get at the artist. These and other thoughts passed through his brain like the lightning flash, and he was on the point of turning to run back and give the alarm to Leo, when a rattling of stones occurred behind him—just beyond the point of rocks round which he had turned. In the tension of his excited nerves he felt as if he had suddenly become red hot. Could this be another bear? If so, what was he to do, whither to fly? A moment more would settle the question, for the rattle of stones continued as the steps advanced. The boy felt the hair rising on his head. Round came the unknown monster in the form of—a man!

“Ah, Benjy, I—”

But the appearance of Benjy’s countenance caused Leo to stop abruptly, both in walk and talk. He had found out his mistake about sending the boy round the hillock, and, turning back, had followed him.

“Ah! look there,” said Benjy, pointing at the tableau vivant on the hill-top.

Leo’s ready rifle leaped from his shoulder to his left palm, and a grim smile played on his lips, for long service in a volunteer corps had made him a good judge of distance as well as a sure and deadly shot.

“Stand back, Benjy, behind this boulder,” he whispered. “I’ll lean on it to make more certain.”

He was deliberately arranging the rifle while speaking, but never for one instant took his eye off the bear, which still stood motionless, with one paw raised, as if petrified with amazement at what it saw. As for Alf, he went on intently with his work, lifting and lowering his eyes continuously, putting in bold dashes here, or tender touches there; holding out the book occasionally at arm’s length to regard his work, with head first on one side, then on the other, and, in short, going through all those graceful and familiar little evolutions of artistic procedure which arouse one’s home feelings so powerfully everywhere—even in the Arctic regions! Little did the artist know who was his uninvited pupil on that sunny summer night!

With one knee resting on a rock, and his rifle on the boulder, Leo took a steady, somewhat lengthened aim, and fired. The result was stupendous! Not only did the shot reverberate with crashing echoes among surrounding cliffs and boulders, but a dying howl from the bear burst over the island, like the thunder of a heavy gun, and went booming over the frozen sea. No wonder that the horrified Alf leapt nearly his own height into the air and scattered his drawing-materials right and left like chaff. He threw up his arms, and wheeled frantically round just in time to receive the murdered bear into his very bosom! They rolled down a small slope together, and then, falling apart, lay prone and apparently dead upon the ground.

You may be sure that Leo soon had his brother’s head on his knee, and was calling to him in an agony of fear, quite regardless of the fact that the bear lay at his elbow, giving a few terrific kicks as its huge life oozed out through a bullet-hole in its heart, while Benjy, half weeping with sympathy, half laughing with glee, ran to a neighbouring pool to fetch water in his cap.

A little of the refreshing liquid dashed on his face and poured down his throat soon restored Alf, who had only been stunned by the fall.

“What induced you to keep on sketching all night?” asked Leo, after the first explanations were over.

“All night?” repeated Alf in surprise, “have I been away all night? What time is it?”

“Three o’clock in the morning at the very least,” said Leo. “The sun is pretty high, as you might have seen if you had looked at it.”

“But he never looked at it,” said Benjy, whose eyes were not yet quite dry, “he never looks at anything, or thinks of anything, when he goes sketching.”

“Surely you must allow that at least I look at and think of my work,” said Alf, rising from the ground and sitting down on the rock from which he had been so rudely roused; “but you are half right, Benjy. The sun was at my back, you see, hid from me by the cliff over which the bear tumbled, and I had no thoughts for time, or eyes for nature, except the portion I was busy with—by the way, where is it?”

“What, your sketch?”

“Ay, and the colours. I wouldn’t lose these for a sight of the Pole itself. Look for them, Ben, my boy, I still feel somewhat giddy.”

In a few minutes the sketch and drawing-materials were collected, undamaged, and the three returned to camp, Alf leaning on Leo’s arm. On the way thither they met the Captain’s party, and afterwards the band led by Chingatok. The latter was mightily amused by the adventure, and continued for a considerable time afterwards to upheave his huge shoulders with suppressed laughter.

When the whole party was re-assembled the hour was so late, and they had all been so thoroughly excited, that no one felt inclined to sleep again. It was resolved, therefore, at once to commence the operations of a new day. Butterface was set to prepare coffee, and the Eskimos began breakfast with strips of raw blubber, while steaks of Leo’s bear were being cooked.

Meanwhile Chingatok expressed a wish to see the drawing which had so nearly cost the artist his life.

Alf was delighted to exhibit and explain it.

For some time the giant gazed at it in silence. Then he rested his forehead in his huge hand as if in meditation.

It was truly a clever sketch of a surpassingly lovely scene. In the foreground was part of the island with its pearl-grey rocks, red-brown earth, and green mosses, in the midst of which lay a calm pool, like the island’s eye looking up to heaven and reflecting the bright indescribable blue of the midnight sky. Further on was a mass of cold grey rocks. Beyond lay the northern ice-pack, which extended in chaotic confusion away to the distant horizon, but the chaos was somewhat relieved by the presence of lakelets which shone here and there over its surface like shields of glittering azure and burnished gold.

“Ask him what he thinks of it,” said Leo to Anders, a little surprised at Chingatok’s prolonged silence.

“I cannot speak,” answered the giant, “my mind is bursting and my heart is full. With my finger I have drawn faces on the snow. I have seen men put wonderful things on flat rocks with a piece of stone, but this!—this is my country made little. It looks as if I could walk in it, yet it is flat!”

“The giant is rather complimentary,” laughed Benjy, when this was translated; “to my eye your sketch is little better than a daub.”

“It is a daub that causes me much anxiety,” said the Captain, who now looked at the drawing for the first time. “D’you mean to tell me, Alf, that you’ve been true to nature when you sketched that pack?”

“As true as I could make it, uncle.”

“I’ll answer for its truth,” said Leo, “and so will Benjy, for we both saw the view from the top of the island, though we paid little heed to it, being too much occupied with Alf and the bear at the time. The pack is even more rugged than he has drawn it, and it extends quite unbroken to the horizon.”

The Captain’s usually hopeful expression forsook him for a little as he commented on his bad fortune.

“The season advances, you see,” he said, “and it’s never very long at the best. I had hoped we were done with this troublesome ‘sea of ancient ice,’ but it seems to turn up everywhere, and from past experience we know that the crossing of it is slow work, as well as hard. However, we mustn’t lose heart. ‘Nebber say die,’ as Butterface is fond of remarking.”

“Yis, Massa, nebber say die, but allers say ‘lib, to de top ob your bent.’ Dems my ’pinions w’en dey’s wanted. Also ‘go a-hid.’ Dat’s a grand sent’ment—was borned ’mong de Yankees, an’ I stoled it w’en I left ole Virginny.”

“What says Chingatok?” asked the Captain of the Eskimo, who was still seated with the sketch on his knees in profound meditation.

“Blackbeard has trouble before him,” answered the uncompromising giant, without removing his eyes from the paper. “There,” he said, pointing to the pack, “you have three days’ hard work. After that three days’ easy and swift work. After that no more go on. Must come back.”

“He speaks in riddles, Anders. What does he mean by the three days of hard work coming to an end?”

“I mean,” said Chingatok, “that the ice was loose when I came to this island. It is now closed. The white men must toil, toil, toil—very slow over the ice for three days, then they will come to smooth ice, where the dogs may run for three days. Then they will come to another island, like this one, on the far-off side of which there is no ice—nothing but sea, sea, sea. Our kayaks are gone,” continued the giant, sadly, “we must come back and travel many days before we find things to make new ones.”

While he was speaking, Captain Vane’s face brightened up.

“Are you sure of what you say, Chingatok?”

“Chingatok is sure,” replied the Eskimo quietly.

“Then we’ll conquer our difficulties after all. Come, boys, let’s waste no more time in idle talk, but harness the dogs, and be off at once.”

Of course the party had to travel round the island, for there was neither ice nor snow on it. When the other side was reached the real difficulties of the journey were fully realised. During the whole of that day and the next they were almost continuously engaged in dragging the sledges over masses of ice, some of which rose to thirty feet above the general level. If the reader will try to imagine a very small ant or beetle dragging its property over a newly macadamised road, he will have a faint conception of the nature of the work. To some extent the dogs were a hindrance rather than a help, especially when passing over broken fragments, for they were always tumbling into holes and cracks, out of which they had to be dragged, and were much given to venting their ill-humour on each other, sometimes going in for a free fight, in the course of which they tied their traces into indescribable knots, and drove their Eskimo masters furious. On such occasions the whips—both lash and handle—were applied with unsparing vigour until the creatures were cowed.

Danger, also, as well as toil, was encountered during the journey. On the evening of the second day the sledge driven by Oolichuk diverged a little from the line of march towards what seemed an easier passage over the hummocks. They had just gained the top of an ice-block, which, unknown to the driver, overhung its base. When the dogs reached the edge of the mass, it suddenly gave way. Down went the team with a united howl of despair. Their weight jerked the sledge forward, another mass of the ice gave way, and over went the whole affair. In the fall the lashings broke, and Oolichuk, with several of his kindred, including poor little Oblooria, went down in a shower of skins, packages, bags, and Eskimo cooking utensils.