The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole

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.

Fortunately, they dropped on a slope of ice which broke their fall, and, as it were, shunted them all safely, though violently, to the lower level of the pack.

Beyond a few scratches and bruises, no evil resulted from this accident to these hardy natives of the north.

That night they all encamped, as on the previous night, in the midst of the pack, spreading their skins and furs on the flattest ice they could find, and keeping as far from overhanging lumps as possible.

“What does Blackbeard mean by coming here?” asked Chingatok of Anders, as they lay side by side, gazing up at the blue sky awaiting sleep. “We cannot swim over the sea, and we have no boats.”

“I don’t know,” answered the interpreter. “Our chief is a wonderful man. He does things that seem to be all wrong, but they turn out mostly to be all right.”

“Does he ever speak of a Great Spirit?” asked the giant in a solemn tone.

“Not to me,” replied the other, “but I hear him sometimes speaking to his little boy about his God.”

“Then he must know his God,” returned Chingatok. “Has he seen him—spoken to him?”

Anders was a good deal surprised as well as puzzled by the questions put by his new friend. His extremely commonplace mind had never been exercised by such ideas. “I never asked him about that,” he said, “and he never told me. Perhaps he will tell you if you ask him.”

The interpreter turned on his side with a sigh and went to sleep. The giant lay on his back gazing long and steadily with a wistful look at the unbroken vault of sky, whose vast profundity seemed to thrust him mercilessly back. As he gazed, a little cloud, light as a puff of eider-down, and golden as the sun from which its lustre came, floated into the range of his vision. He smiled, for the thought that light may suddenly arise when all around seems blank gave his inquiring spirit rest, and he soon joined the slumbering band who lay upon the ice around him.

According to Chingatok’s prophecy, on the third day the fagged and weary discoverers surmounted their first difficulty, and came upon comparatively smooth ice, the surface of which resembled hard-trodden snow, and was sufficiently free from obstructing lumps to admit of rapid sledge travelling. It was late when they reached it, but as they could now all sit on the sledges and leave the hard work to the dogs, the leader resolved to continue the advance without resting.

“It’s time enough to stop when we’re stopped,” he remarked to Leo, while making preparations to start. “We will sleep at the first obstruction we meet with, if it’s a sufficiently troublesome one. See that the things are well lashed on all the sledges, Alf. Remember that I hold you responsible for lost articles.”

“And what am I responsible for, father?” asked Benjy with a pert look.

“For keeping out of mischief, Ben. That’s the most I can expect of you.”

“You are only a sort of negative blessing to us, you see, Benjy,” said Alf, as he stooped to tighten a rope. “It’s not so much what you do, as what you don’t do, that rejoices us.”

“I’m glad of that,” retorted the boy, arranging himself comfortably on his father’s sledge, “because I won’t do anything at all for some hours to come, which ought to fill you all with perfect felicity. Awake me, Leo, if we chance to upset.”

“Now then, all ready?” cried the Captain. “Off you go, then—clap on all sail!”

Crack went the mighty whips, howl went the dogs, and the sledges were soon skimming over the sea at the rate of ten miles an hour. Of course they did not keep that pace up very long. It became necessary to rest at times, also, to give the dogs a little food. When this latter process had been completed, the teams became so lively that they tried to runaway.

“Let them run,” said the Captain to Leo.

“And help them on,” added Benjy.

Leo took the advice of both, applied the lash, and increased the speed so much that the sledge swung from side to side on the smooth places, sometimes catching on a lump of ice, and all but throwing out its occupants. The Eskimos entered into the spirit of their leaders. They also plied their lashes, and, being more dexterous than Leo, soon converted the journey into a race, in which Chingatok—his giant arm flourishing an appropriately huge whip—was rapidly coming to the front when a tremendous shout in the rear caused them to pull up. Looking back, Alf’s sledge was seen inverted and mixed, as it were, with the team, while Alf himself and his Eskimo friends were sprawling around on the ice. No damage was done to life or limb, but a sledge-runner had been partially broken, and could not be mended,—so said Oolichuk—in less than an hour.

“This, then,” said the Captain, “is our first obstruction, so here we will make our beds for the night.”

Chapter Eleven.

Another Island discovered—The Englishmen and Eskimos alike are Astonished in more Ways than one

As Chingatok had predicted, on the sixth day from Home-in-sight Island the party came to another island, where the great pack abruptly terminated. It was not large, probably ten or twelve miles in length, from the Eskimo account, but the ends of it could not be seen from the spot where they landed. At that point it was only two miles wide, and on the opposite side its shores were laved by an open sea, which was quite free from ice, with the exception of a few scattered floes and bergs—a sea whose waves fell in slow regular cadence on a pebbly beach, and whose horizon was an unbroken line barely distinguishable from the sky.

Close to it a few black rocks showed above the water, around which great numbers of gulls, puffins, and other sea-birds disported themselves in clamorous joy; sometimes flying to the shore as if to have a look at the newcomers, and then sheering off with a scream—it might be a laugh—to tell their comrades what they had seen.

“Here, then, at last, is the open Polar Sea,” said Captain Vane, after the first long silent gaze of joy and admiration. “I have no doubt of it whatever. And now we shall proceed, I hope without interruption, to the Pole!”

“Of course you do not intend that we should swim there, do you, uncle?” said Leo.

“Of course not, my boy. In those big cases, which have cost us so much labour to bring here, I have three large and stout india-rubber boats—”

“Ha! I guessed as much,” exclaimed Alf.