The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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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!
So, over it they went, but they soon began to wish they had tried any other plan, for the snow-track quickly came to an end, and then the difficulty of passing even the empty sledges from one ice mass to another was very great, while the process of carrying forward the goods on the shoulders of the men was exceedingly laborious. The poor dogs, too, were constantly falling between masses, and dragging each other down, so that they gave more trouble at last than they were worth.
In all these trying circumstances, the Eskimo women were almost as useful