The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole, R. M. Ballantyne [7 ebook reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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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.
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
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