The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole

“Ay, how?” repeated Alf, “that is the question.”

“Come, come, Alf, let Shakespeare alone,” said the pert Benjy, “if you must quote, confine yourself to Buzzby.”

“Nay, Benjy, be not so severe. It was but a slip. Besides, our leader has not forbidden our carrying a whole library in our heads, so long as we take only one book in our pockets. But, uncle, you have not yet told us how you intend to cross that amazing barrier which Benjy has appropriately styled an ice-jumble.”

“How, boy?” returned the Captain, who had been gazing eagerly in all directions while they talked, “it is impossible for me to say how. All that I can speak of with certainty as to our future movements is, that the road by which we have come to the top of this cliff will lead us to the bottom again, where Toolooha is preparing for us an excellent supper of bear-steaks and tea. One step at a time, lads, is my motto; when that is taken we shall see clearly how and where to take the next.”

A sound sleep was the step which the whole party took after that which led to the bear-steaks. Then Captain Vane arose, ordered the dogs to be harnessed to the sledges, and, laying his course due north, steered straight out upon the sea of ancient ice.

Chapter Eight.

Difficulties and Dangers increase, and the Captain expounds his Views

The first part of the journey over the rugged ice was not so difficult as had been anticipated, because they found a number of openings—narrow lanes, as it were—winding between the masses, most of which were wide enough to permit of the passage of the sledges; and when they chanced to come on a gap that was too narrow, they easily widened it with their hatchets and ice-chisels.

There was, however, some danger connected with this process, for some of the mighty blocks of ice amongst which they moved were piled in such positions that it only required a few choppings at their base to bring them down in ruins on their heads. One instance of this kind sufficed to warn them effectually.

Captain Vane’s dog-sledge was leading the way at the time. Leo drove it, for by that time the Eskimos had taught him how to use the short-handled whip with the lash full fifteen feet long, and Leo was an apt pupil in every athletic and manly exercise. Beside him sat the Captain, Alf, Benjy, and Butterface—the black visage of the latter absolutely shining with delight at the novelty of the situation. Behind came the sledge of Chingatok, which, besides being laden with bear-rugs, sealskins, junks of meat, and a host of indescribable Eskimo implements, carried himself and the precious persons of Toolooha and Tekkona. Next came the sledge of the laughter-loving Oolichuk, with the timid Oblooria and another woman. Then followed the sledges of Ivitchuk and Akeetolik, laden with the rest of the Eskimo women and goods, and last of all came Captain Vane’s two English-made sledges, heavily-laden with the goods and provisions of the explorers. These latter sledges, although made in England, had been constructed on the principle of the native sledge, namely, with the parts fastened by means of walrus-sinew lashings instead of nails, which last would have snapped like glass in the winter frosts of the Polar regions, besides being incapable of standing the twistings and shocks of ice-travel.

All the dogs being fresh, and the floor of the lanes not too rough, the strangely-assorted party trotted merrily along, causing the echoes among the great ice-blocks, spires, and obelisks, to ring to the music of their chatting, and the cracks of their powerful whips. Suddenly, a shout at the front, and an abrupt pull up, brought the whole column to a halt. The Captain’s dogs had broken into a gallop. On turning suddenly round a spur of a glacier about as big as Saint Paul’s Cathedral, they went swish into a shallow pond which had been formed on the ice. It was not deep, but there was sufficient water in it to send a deluge of spray over the travellers.

A burst of laughter greeted the incident as they sprang off the sledge, and waded to the dry ice a few yards ahead.

“No damage done,” exclaimed the Captain, as he assisted the dogs to haul the sledge out of the water.

“No damage!” repeated Benjy, with a rueful look, “why, I’m soaked from top to toe!”

“Yes, you’ve got the worst of it,” said Leo, with a laugh; “that comes of being forward, Benjy. You would insist on sitting in front.”

“Well, it is some comfort,” retorted Benjy, squeezing the water from his garments, “that Alf is as wet as myself, for that gives us an opportunity of sympathising with each other. Eh, Alf? Does Buzzby offer no consolatory remarks for such an occasion as this?”

“O yes,” replied Alf; “in his beautiful poem on Melancholy, sixth canto, Buzzby says:—

“‘When trouble, like a curtain spread,
Obscures the clouded brain,
And worries on the weary head
Descend like soaking rain—
Lift up th’umbrella of the heart,
Stride manfully along;
Defy depression’s dreary dart,
And shout in gleeful song.’”

“Come, Alf, clap on to this tow-rope, an’ stop your nonsense,” said Captain Vane, who was not in a poetical frame of mind just then.

“Dat is mos’ boosiful potry!” exclaimed Butterface, with an immense display of eyes and teeth, as he lent a willing hand to haul out the sledge. “Mos’ boosiful. But he’s rader a strong rem’dy, massa, don’ you tink? Not bery easy to git up a gleefoo’ shout when one’s down in de mout’ bery bad, eh!”

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 pass. It was narrowed by a buttress, 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 masses. 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 mass 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 masses, 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 passage 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, masses, and drifts on a gigantic scale were heaved up in such dire confusion, that nothing having the faintest resemblance to a track or passage could be found.

“It’s hard work, this,” remarked the Captain to Leo one evening, seating himself on a mass 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 Butterface 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 constitution, 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 mass 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 mass of many tons in weight was loosened by the fall of the smaller lump, and rolled down with a thunderous roar, causing Butterface, 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 space 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 passed.

“There’s a deal of ice-rubbish in these regions,” remarked Benjy, eyeing the wildly heaped masses with a grave face, and heaving a deep sigh.

“Yes, Massa Benjy, bery too much altogidder,” said Butterface, 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!