The Giant of the North, Robert Michael Ballantyne [autobiographies to read .TXT] 📗

Perhaps they may have been blown out to sea!"

This latter thought caused an involuntary shudder. Looking round, he observed that the depression of the sun towards the horizon indicated that night had set in.

"This will never do," he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "Leo will be lost. I _must_ risk it!"

Turning as he spoke, he ran back to the spot where he had left the water-dress, which he immediately put on. Then, leaving gun and game on the beach, he boldly entered the sea, and struck out with feet and paddle for Poloeland.

Although sorely buffeted by the rising waves, and several times overwhelmed, his waterproof costume proved well able to bear him up, and with comparatively little fatigue he reached the land in less than two hours. Without waiting to take the dress off, he ran up to the Eskimo village and gave the alarm.

While these events were going on among the islets, Captain Vane and Alphonse Vandervell had been far otherwise engaged.

"Come, Alf," said the Captain, that same morning, after Leo and his party had started on their expedition, "let you and me go off on a scientific excursion,--on what we may style a botanico-geologico-meteorological survey."

"With all my heart, uncle, and let us take Butterface with us, and Oolichuk."

"Ay, lad, and Ivitchuk and Akeetolik too, and Chingatok if you will, for I've fixed on a spot whereon to pitch an observatory, and we must set to work on it without further delay. Indeed I would have got it into working order long ago if it had not been for my hope that the cessation of this miserable war would have enabled us to get nearer the North Pole this summer."

The party soon started for the highest peak of the island of Poloe--or Poloeland, as Alf preferred to call it. Oolichuk carried on his broad shoulders one of those mysterious cases out of which the Captain was so fond of taking machines wherewith to astonish the natives.

Indeed it was plain to see that the natives who accompanied them on this occasion expected some sort of surprise, despite the Captain's earnest assurance that there was nothing in the box except a few meteorological instruments. How the Captain translated to the Eskimos the word meteorological we have never been able to ascertain. His own explanation is that he did it in a roundabout manner which they failed to comprehend, and which he himself could not elucidate.

On the way up the hill, Alf made several interesting discoveries of plants which were quite new to him.

"Ho! stop, I say, uncle," he exclaimed for the twentieth time that day, as he picked up some object of interest.

"What now, lad?" said the Captain, stopping and wiping his heated brow.

"Here is another specimen of these petrifactions--look!"

"He means a vegetable o' some sort turned to stone, Chingatok," explained the Captain, as he examined the specimen with an interested though unscientific eye.

"You remember, uncle, the explanation I gave you some time ago," said the enthusiastic Alf, "about Professor Heer of Zurich, who came to the conclusion that primeval forests once existed in these now treeless Arctic regions, from the fossils of oak, elm, pine, and maple leaves discovered there. Well, I found a fossil of a plane leaf the other day,--not a very good one, to be sure--and now, here is a splendid specimen of a petrified oak-leaf. Don't you trace it quite plainly?"

"Well, lad," returned the Captain, frowning at the specimen, "I do believe you're right. There does seem to be the mark of a leaf there, and there is some ground for your theory that this land may have been once covered with trees, though it's hard to believe that when we look at it."

"An evidence, uncle, that we should not be too ready to judge by appearances," said Alf, as they resumed their upward march.

The top gained, a space was quickly selected and cleared, and a simple hut of flat stones begun, while the Captain unpacked his box. It contained a barometer, a maximum and minimum self-registering thermometer, wet and dry bulb, also a black bulb thermometer, a one-eighth-inch rain-gauge, and several other instruments.

"I have another box of similar instruments, Alf, down below," said the Captain, as he laid them carefully out, "and I hope, by comparing the results obtained up here with those obtained at the level of the sea, to carry home a series of notes which will be of considerable value to science."

When the Captain had finished laying them out, the Eskimos retired to a little distance, and regarded them for some minutes with anxious expectancy; but, as the strange things did not burst, or go up like sky-rockets, they soon returned with a somewhat disappointed look to their hut-building.

The work was quickly completed, for Eskimos are expert builders in their way, and the instruments had been carefully set up under shelter when the first symptoms of the storm began.

"I hope the sportsmen have returned," said the Captain, looking gravely round the horizon.

"No doubt they have," said Alf, preparing to descend the mountain. "Leo is not naturally reckless, and if he were, the cautious Anders would be a drag on him."

An hour later they regained the Eskimo village, just as Benjy came running, in a state of dripping consternation, from the sea.

Need it be said that an instant and vigorous search was instituted? Not only did a band of the stoutest warriors, headed by Chingatok, set off in a fleet of kayaks, but the Captain and his companions started without delay in the two remaining india-rubber boats, and, flying their kites, despite the risk of doing so in a gale, went away in eager haste over the foaming billows.

After exerting themselves to the uttermost, they failed to discover the slightest trace of the lost boat. The storm passed quickly, and a calm succeeded, enabling them to prosecute the search more effectively with oar and paddle, but with no better result.

Day after day passed, and still no member of the band--Englishman or Eskimo--would relax his efforts, or admit that hope was sinking. But they had to admit it at last, and, after three weeks of unremitting toil, they were compelled to give up in absolute despair. The most sanguine was driven to the terrible conclusion that Leo, Anders, and timid little Oblooria were lost.

It was an awful blow. What cared Alf or the Captain now for discovery, or scientific investigation! The poor negro, who had never at any time cared for plants, rocks, or Poles, was sunk in the profoundest depths of sorrow. Benjy's gay spirit was utterly broken. Oolichuk's hearty laugh was silenced, and a cloud of settled melancholy descended over the entire village of Poloe.


CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.


FATE OF THE LOST ONES.

Leo, Anders, and timid little Oblooria, however, were not lost! Their case was bad enough, but it had not quite come to that.

On parting from Benjy, as described in the last chapter, these three went after a walrus, which coquetted with them instead of attacking, and drew them a considerable distance away from the island. This would have been a matter of trifling import if the weather had remained calm, but, as we have seen, a sudden and violent gale arose.

When the coming squall was first observed the boat was far to leeward of Paradise Isle, and as that island happened to be one of the most northerly of the group over which Amalatok ruled, they were thus far to leeward of any land with the exception of a solitary sugar-loaf rock near the horizon. Still Leo and his companions were not impressed with any sense of danger. They had been so long accustomed to calms, and to moving about in the india-rubber boats by means of paddles with perfect ease and security, that they had half forgotten the force of wind. Besides, the walrus was still playing with them provokingly--keeping just out of rifle-shot as if he had studied fire-arms and knew their range exactly.

"The rascal!" exclaimed Leo at last, losing patience, "he will never let us come an inch nearer."

"Try 'im once more," said Anders, who was a keen sportsman, "push him, paddle strong. Ho! Oblooria, paddle hard and queek."

Although the interpreter, being in a facetious mood, addressed Oblooria in English, she quite understood his significant gestures, and bent to her work with a degree of energy and power quite surprising in one apparently so fragile. Leo also used his oars, (for they had both oars and paddles), with such good-will that the boat skimmed over the Arctic sea like a northern diver, and the distance between them and the walrus was perceptibly lessened.

"I don't like the looks o' the southern sky," said Leo, regarding the horizon with knitted brows.

"Hims black 'nough--any'ow," said Anders.

"Hold. I'll have a farewell shot at the brute, and give up the chase," said Leo, laying down the oars and grasping his rifle.

The ball seemed to take effect, for the walrus dived immediately with a violent splutter, and was seen no more.

By this time the squall was hissing towards them so fast that the hunters, giving up all thought of the walrus, turned at once and made for the land, but land by that time lay far off on the southern horizon with a dark foam-flecked sea between it and them.

"There's no fear of the boat, Oblooria," said Leo, glancing over his shoulder at the girl, who sat crouching to meet the first burst of the coming storm, "but you must hold on tight to the life-lines."

There was no need to caution Anders. That worthy was already on his knees embracing a thwart--his teeth clenched as he gazed over the bow.

On it came like a whirlwind of the tropics, and rushed right over the low round gunwale of the boat, sweeping loose articles overboard, and carrying her bodily to leeward. Leo had taken a turn of the life-lines round both thighs, and held manfully to his oars. These, after stooping to the first rush of wind and water, he plied with all his might, and was ably seconded by Oblooria as well as by the interpreter, but a very few minutes of effort sufficed to convince them that they laboured in vain. They did not even "hold their own," as sailors have it, but drifted slowly, yet steadily, to the north.

"It's impossible to make head against _this_," said Leo, suddenly ceasing his efforts, "and I count it a piece of good fortune, for which we cannot be too thankful, that there is still land to leeward of us."

He pointed to the sugar-loaf rock before mentioned, towards which they were now rapidly drifting.

"Nothing to eat dere. Nothing to drink," said Anders, gloomily.

"Oh! that won't matter much. A squall like this can't last long. We shall soon be able to start again for home, no doubt. I say, Anders, what are these creatures off the point there? They seem too large and black for sea-birds, and not the shape of seals or walruses."

The interpreter gazed earnestly at the objects in question for some moments without answering. The rock which they were quickly nearing was rugged, barren, and steep on its southern face, against which the waves were