the only living creature (except the wolves) that inhabited this
awful desert. There was a vague chance of keeping from freezing
to death as long as he clung to the large, warm animal; while,
seated alone upon this bleak shore, with his clothes wringing
wet, and the cold breath of the glacier sweeping down upon him, he
would die slowly and miserably with hunger and cold. He was just
contemplating this prospect, seeing himself in spirit lying dead
upon the shore of the lake, and picturing to himself the grief of
his brother and father, when suddenly his glance was arrested by
what seemed a faint column of smoke rising from among the bowlders.
The herd of reindeer had evidently made the same discovery, for
they paused, in a startled manner, and wheeled about toward the
easterly shore, past which a branch of the glacier was pushing
downward into the lower fiord-valley.
Magnie, who had by this time made up his mind not to give up his
present place except for a better one, strained his eye in the
opposite direction, to make sure that he was not deceived; and
having satisfied himself that what he saw was really smoke, he
determined to leap from his seat at the very first opportunity. But
as yet the speed of the buck made such a venture unsafe. With every
step, however, the territory was becoming more irregular, and made
the progress even of a reindeer difficult.
Magnus drew up his feet, and was about to slide off, having planned
to drop with as slight a shock as possible upon a flat moss-grown
rock, when, to his utter amazement, he saw a human figure standing
at the edge of the glacier, and aiming a rifle, as it appeared,
straight at his head. He tried to scream, but terror choked his
voice. He could not bring forth a sound. And before even the
thought had taken shape in his bewildered brain he saw a flash,
and heard the report of a shot which rumbled away with tremendous
reverberations among the glaciers. There was a surging sound in his
ears, and strange lights danced before his eyes. He thought he must
be dead.
II.
Magnie never knew how long he was unconscious. The first thing he
remembered was a delicious sense of warmth and comfort stealing
through him, and strange, unintelligible sounds buzzing in the air
about him. Somebody was talking kindly to him, and a large, warm
hand was gliding over his forehead and cheeks. The peace and warmth
were grateful to him after the intense strain of his dangerous
ride. He was even loth to open his eyes when his reviving memory
began to make the situation clear to him.
“It was a reckless shot, Harry,” he heard someone say in a foreign
tongue, which he soon recognized as English, “even if it did turn
out well. Suppose you had sent your bullet crashing through the
young fellow instead of the buck. How would you have felt then?”
“I should have felt very badly, I am sure,” answered a younger
voice, which obviously belonged to Magnie’s rescuer; “but I
followed my usual way of doing things. If I didn’t act that way,
I shouldn’t act at all. And you will admit, Uncle, it is a queer
sort of thing to see a fellow come riding on a reindeer buck, in
the midst of a wild herd, and in a trackless wilderness like this,
where nobody but wolves or geologists would be apt to discover any
attractions. Now, I saw by the young man’s respectable appearance
that he couldn’t be a geologist; and if he was a wolf, I didn’t
mind much if I did shoot him.”
At this point Magnie opened his eyes and stared wonderingly about
him. He found himself in a small, cramped room, the walls of
which were draped with canvas, and scarcely high enough under the
ceiling to allow a man to stand erect. Against the walls a number
of shining brass instruments were leaning, and in a corner there
was a hearth, the smoke of which escaped through a hole in the
roof. Two bunks filled with moss, with a sheet and a blanket thrown
over each, completed the outfit of the primitive dwelling. But
Magnie was more interested in the people than in the looks of the
room. A large, blond, middle-aged man, inclined to stoutness, was
holding Magnie’s hand as if counting his pulse-beat, and a very
good-looking young fellow, of about his own age, was standing at
the hearth, turning a spit upon which was a venison steak.
“Hallo! Our young friend is returning from the land of Nod,” said
the youth who had been addressed as Harry. “I am glad you didn’t
start on a longer journey, young chap, when I fired at you; for if
you had you would have interfered seriously with my comfort.”
Magnie, who was a fair English scholar, understood perfectly what
was said to him, but several minutes elapsed before he could
collect himself sufficiently to answer. In order to gain time,
he made an effort to raise, himself and take a closer look at
his surroundings, but was forced by the older man to abandon the
attempt.
“Not so fast, my dear, not so fast;” he said, stooping over him,
and gently pushing him back into a reclining position. “You must
remember that you have a big lump on your head from your fall, and
it won’t do to be frisky just yet. But before conversing further,
it might be well to ascertain whether we understand each other.”
“Yes, I think--I think--I do,” stammered Magnie. “I know some
English.”
“Ah, then we shall get along charmingly,” the man remarked, with
an encouraging smile. “And I think Harry’s venison steak is done
by this time; and dinner, as you know, affords the most delightful
opportunity for getting acquainted. Gunnar, our guide, who is
outside skinning your reindeer buck, will soon present himself
and serve the dinner. Here he is, and he is our cook, butler,
chambermaid, laundress, beast of burden, and interpreter, all in
one.”
The man to whom the professor alluded was at this moment seen
crawling on his hands and knees through the low door-way, which his
bulky figure completely filled. He was a Norwegian peasant of the
ordinary sort, with a square, rudely cut face, dull blue eyes, and
a tuft of towy hair hanging down over his forehead. With one hand
he was dragging the skin of the buck, and between his teeth he held
an ugly-looking knife.
“Ve haf got to bury him,” he said.
“Bury him!” cried Harry. “Why, you blood-thirsty wretch, don’t you
see he is sitting there, looking as bright as a sixpence?”
“I mean de buck,” replied Gunnar, imperturbably.
“And why do you wish to bury the buck? I would much rather eat him.
This steak here has a most tempting flavor, and I am quite tired of
canned abominations by this time.”
“De volves vill be sure to scent de meat, now dat it is flayed, and
before an hour ve might haf a whole congregation of dem here.”
“Well, then, we will shoot them down,” insisted the cheerful Harry.
“Come, now, Uncle, and let us have a civilized dinner. I don’t
pretend to be an expert in the noble art of cookery; but if this
tastes as good as it smells, I wouldn’t exchange it for a Delmonico
banquet. And if the wolves, as Gunnar says, can smell a dead
reindeer miles away, they would be likely to smell a venison steak
from the ends of creation. Perhaps, if we don’t hurry, all the
wolves of the earth may invite themselves to our dinner.”
Gunnar, upon whom this fanciful raillery was lost, was still
standing on all-fours in the door, with his front half in the warm
room and his rearward portion in the arctic regions without. He
was gazing helplessly from one to another, as if asking for an
explanation of all this superfluous talk. “Vill you cawme and help
me, Mester Harry?” he asked at last, stolidly.
“Yes, when I have had my dinner I will, Mester Gunnar,” answered
Harry, gayly.
“Vel, I haf notting more to say, den,” grumbled the guide; “but it
vould vonder me much if, before you are troo, you von’t have some
unbidden guests.”
“All right, Gunnar--the more the merrier,” retorted Harry as, with
exaggerated imitation of a waiter’s manner, he distributed plates,
knives, and napkins to Magnie and his uncle.
They now fell to chatting, and Magnie learned, after having
given a brief account of himself, that his entertainers were
Professor Winchester, an American geologist, and his nephew, Harry
Winchester, who was accompanying his uncle, chiefly for the fun
of the thing, and also for the purpose of seeing the world and
picking up some crumbs of scientific knowledge. The professor was
especially interested in glaciers and their action in ages past
upon the surface of the earth, and, as the Norwegian glaciers had
never been thoroughly studied, he had determined to devote a couple
of months to observations and measurements, with a view to settling
some mooted geological questions upon which he had almost staked
his reputation.
They had just finished the steak, which would perhaps have been
tenderer if it had not been so fresh, and were helping themselves
to the contents of a jar of raspberry preserves, when Harry
suddenly dropped his spoon and turned, with a serious face, to his
uncle.
“Did you hear that?” he said.
“No; what was it?”
Harry waited for a minute; then, as a wild, doleful howl was heard,
he laid his hand on the professor’s arm, and remarked: “The old
fellow was right. We shall have unbidden guests.”
“But they are hardly dangerous in these regions, so far as I can
learn,” said the professor, reassuringly.
“That depends upon their number. We could tackle a dozen; but two
dozen we might find troublesome. At any rate, they have spoiled my
appetite for raspberry jam, and that is something I sha’n’t soon
forgive them.”
Three or four howls sounding nearer, and echoing with terrible
distinctness from the glaciers, seemed to depress Harry’s spirits
still further, and he put the jar away and began to examine the
lock of his rifle.
“They are evidently summoning a mass-meeting,” remarked the
professor, as another chorus of howls re-echoed from the glacier.
“I wish we had more guns.”
“And I wish mine were a Remington or a Springfield breech-loader,
with a dozen cartridges in it!” Harry exclaimed. “These
double-barrelled Norwegian machines, with two shots in them, are
really good for nothing in an emergency. They are antediluvian both
in shape and construction.”
He had scarcely finished this lament, when Gunnar’s huge form
reappeared in the door, quadruped fashion, and made an attempt to
enter. But his great bulk nearly filled the narrow room, and made
it impossible for the others to move. He examined silently first
Harry’s rifle, then his own, cut off a slice of steak with his
pocket-knife, and was about to crawl out again, when the professor,
who could not quite conceal his anxiety, asked him what he had done
with the reindeer.
“Oh!” he answered, triumphantly, “I haf buried him among de stones,
vhere he vill be safe from all de volves in de vorld.”
“But, my dear fellow,” ejaculated the professor, hotly, “why
didn’t you rather let the wolves have it? Then, at least, they
would spare us.”
“You surely vouldn’t gif a goot fresh reindeer, legs and all, to a
pack of skountrelly volves, vould you?”
“I would much rather give them that than give them myself.”
“But it is vort tventy dollars, if you can get it down fresh and
sell it to de English yachts,” protested Gunnar, stolidly.
“Yes, yes; but you great stupid,” cried the professor in despair,
“what do you think my life is worth? and Master Harry’s? and this
young fellow’s?” (pointing to Magnie). “Now go as quick as you can
and dig the deer out again.”
Gunnar, scarcely able to comprehend such criminal wastefulness,
was backing out cautiously with his feet foremost, when suddenly
he gave a scream and a jump which nearly raised the roof from
the hut. It was evident that he had been bitten. In the same
moment a fresh chorus of howls resounded without, mingled with
sharp, whining barks, expressive of hunger and ferocity. There
was something shudderingly wild and mournful in these long-drawn
discords, as they rose toward the sky in this lonely desert; and
brave as he was, Magnie could not restrain the terror which he
felt stealing upon him. Weakened by his icy bath, moreover, and by
the nervous strain of his first adventure, he had no great desire
to encounter a pack of ravenous wolves. Still, he manned himself
for the occasion and, in as steady a voice as he could command,
begged the professor to hand him some weapon. Harry, who had
instinctively taken the lead, had just time to reach him a long
hunting-knife, and arm his uncle with an ax, when, through the door
which Gunnar had left open, two wolves came leaping in and paused
in bewilderment at the sight of the fire on the hearth. They seemed
dazed by the light, and stood panting and blinking, with their
trembling red tongues lolling out of their mouths. Harry, whose
gun was useless at such close range, snatched the ax away from the
professor, and at one blow split the skull of one of the intruders,
while Magnie ran his knife up to the very hilt in the neck of the
other. The beast was, however, by no means dead after that, but
leaped up on his assailant’s chest, and would have given him an
ugly wound in the neck had not the professor torn it away and flung
it down upon the fire, where, with a howling whine, it expired. The
professor had also found time to bolt the door before more visitors
could enter; and two successive shots without seemed to indicate
that Gunnar was holding his own against the pack. But the question
was, how long would he succeed in keeping them at bay? He had fired
both his shots, and he would scarcely have a chance to load again,
with the hungry beasts leaping about him. This they read in one
another’s faces, but no one was anxious to anticipate the other in
uttering his dread.
“Help, help!” cried Gunnar, in dire need.
“Take your hand away, Uncle!” demanded Harry. “I am going out to
help him.”
“For your life’s sake, Harry,” implored the professor, “don’t go!
Let me go! What would your mother say to me if I should return
without you?”
“I’ll come back again, Uncle, don’t you fear,” said the youth, with
feigned cheerfulness; “but I won’t let this poor fellow perish
before my very eyes, even though he is a fool.”
“It was his foolishness which brought this danger upon us,”
remonstrated the professor.
“He knew no better,” cried Harry, tearing the door open, and with
ax uplifted rushing out into the twilight. What he saw seemed
merely a dark mass, huddled together and swaying sideways, from
which now and then a black figure detached itself with a howl,
jumped wildly about, and again joined the dark, struggling mass. He
could distinguish Gunnar’s head, and his arms fighting desperately,
and, from the yelps and howls of the wolves, he concluded that he
had thrown away the rifle and was using his knife with good effect.
“Help!” he yelled, “help!”
“You shall have it, old fellow,” cried Harry, plunging forward and
swinging his ax about him; and the professor, who had followed
close at his heels, shouting at the top of his voice, pressed in
Harry’s wake right into the centre of the furious pack. But, at
that very instant, there came a long “Hallo-o!” from the lake
below, and a rifle-bullet flew whistling above their heads and
struck a rock scarcely a yard above the professor’s hat. Several
wolves lay gasping and yelping on the ground, and the rest slunk
aside. Another shot followed, and a large beast made a leap and
fell dead among the stones. Gunnar, who was lying bleeding upon
the ground, was helped to his feet, and supported by Harry and the
professor to the door of the cottage.
“Hallo, there!” shouted Harry, in response to the call from below.
“Hallo!” someone shouted back.
The figures of three men were now seen looming up in the dusk,
and Magnie, who instinctively knew who they were, sprang to meet
them, and in another moment lay sobbing in his brother’s arms.
The poor lad was so completely unnerved by the prolonged suspense
and excitement, that he had to be carried back into the hut,
and his brother, after having hurriedly introduced himself to
the professor, came very near giving way to his feelings, too.
Gunnar’s wounds, which were numerous, though not serious, were
washed and bandaged by Grim Hering-Luck; and having been wrapped
in a horse-blanket, to keep out the cold, he was stowed away in a
bunk and was soon asleep. As the hut was too small to admit all
the company at once, Grim and Bjarne remained outside, and busied
themselves in skinning the seven wolves which had fallen on the
field of battle. Harry, who had got a bad bite in his arm, which
he refused to regard as serious, consented with reluctance to his
uncle’s surgery, and insisted upon sitting up and conversing with
Olaf Birk, to whom he had taken a great liking. But after a while
the conversation began to lag, and tired heads began to droop; and
when, about midnight, Grim crept in to see how his invalid was
doing, he found the professor reclining on some loose moss upon
the floor, while Harry was snoring peacefully in a bunk, using
Olaf’s back for a pillow. And Olaf, in spite of his uncomfortable
attitude, seemed also to have found his way to the land of Nod.
Grim, knowing the danger of exposure in this cold glacier air,
covered them all up with skins and horse-blankets, threw a few dry
sticks upon the fire, and resumed his post as sentinel at the door.
The next morning Professor Winchester and his nephew accepted
Olaf’s invitation to spend a few days at Hasselrud, and without
further adventures the whole caravan descended into the valley,
calling on their way at the _saeter_ where Edwin had been left. It
appeared, when they came to discuss the strange incidents of the
preceding day, that it was Magnie’s silk handkerchief which had
enabled them to track him to the edge of the lake, and, by means of
a raft, which Bjarne kept hidden among the stones in a little bay,
they had been enabled to cross, leaving their horses in charge of a
shepherd boy whom they had found tending goats close by.
The reindeer cow which Olaf had killed was safely carried down
to the valley, and two wolf-skins were presented to Magnie by
Harry Winchester. The other wolf-skins, as well as the skin of
the reindeer buck, Bjarne prepared in a special manner, and Harry
looked forward with much pleasure to seeing them as rugs upon the
floor of his room at college; and he positively swelled with pride
when he imagined himself relating to his admiring fellow-students
the adventures which had brought him these precious possessions.
THORWALD AND THE STAR-CHILDREN.
I.
Thorwald’s mother was very ill. The fever burned and throbbed in
her veins; she lay, all day long and all night long, with her eyes
wide open, and could not sleep. The doctor sat at her bedside and
looked at her through his spectacles; but she grew worse instead of
better.
“Unless she can sleep a sound, natural sleep,” he said, “there is
no hope for her, I fear.”
It was to Thorwald’s father that he said this, but Thorwald heard
what he said. The little boy, with his dog Hector, was sitting
mournfully upon the great wolfskin outside his mother’s door.
“Is my mamma very ill?” he asked the doctor, but the tears choked
his voice, and he hid his face in the hair of Hector’s shaggy neck.
“Yes, child,” answered the doctor; “very ill.”
“And will God take my mamma away from me?” he faltered, extricating
himself from Hector’s embrace, and trying hard to steady his voice
and look brave.
“I am afraid He will, my child,” said the doctor, gravely.
“But could I not do something for her, doctor?”
The long suppressed tears now broke forth, and trickled down over
the boy’s cheeks.
“_You_, a child, what can you do?” said the doctor, kindly, and
shook his head.
Just then there was a great noise in the air. The chimes in the
steeple of the village church pealed forth a joyous Christmas
carol, and the sound soared, rushing as with invisible wing-beats
through the clear, frosty air. For it was Christmas-eve, and the
bells were, according to Norse custom, “ringing-in the festival.”
Thorwald stood long listening, with folded hands, until the bells
seemed to take up the doctor’s last words, and chime: “What can
you do, what can you do, what can you do?” Surely, there could
be no doubt that that was what the bells were saying. The clear
little silvery bells that rang out the high notes were every moment
growing more impatient, and now the great heavy bell joined them,
too, and tolled out slowly, in a deep bass voice, “Thor--wald!” and
then all the little ones chimed in with the chorus, as rapidly as
the stiff iron tongues could wag: “What can you do, what can you
do, what can you do? Thorwald, what can you do, what can you do,
what can you do?”
“A child--ah, what can a child do?” thought Thorwald. “Christ was
himself a child once, and He saved the whole world. And on a night
like this, when all the world is glad because it is His birthday,
He perhaps will remember how a little boy feels who loves his
mamma, and cannot bear to lose her. If I only knew where He is now,
I would go to Him, even if it were ever so far, and tell Him how
much we all love mamma, and I would promise Him to be the best boy
in all the world, if He would allow her to stay with us.”
Now the church-bells suddenly stopped, though the air still kept
quivering for some minutes with faint reverberations of sound. It
was very quiet in the large, old-fashioned house. The servants
stole about on tiptoe, and spoke to each other in hurried whispers
when they met in the halls. A dim lamp, with a bluish globe, hung
under the ceiling and sent a faint, moon-like light over the broad
oaken staircase, upon the first landing of which a large Dutch
clock stood in a sort of niche, and ticked and ticked patiently
in the twilight. It was only five o’clock in the afternoon, and
yet the moon had been up for more than an hour, and the stars were
twinkling in the sky, and the aurora borealis swept with broad
sheets of light through the air, like a huge fan, the handle of
which was hidden beneath the North Pole; you almost imagined you
heard it whizzing past your ears as it flashed upward to the zenith
and flared along the horizon. For at that season of the year the
sun sets at about two o’clock in the northern part of Norway, and
the day is then but four hours long, while the night is twenty. To
Thorwald that was a perfectly proper and natural arrangement; for
he had always known it so in winter, and he would have found it
very singular if the sun had neglected to hide behind the mountains
at about two o’clock on Christmas-eve.
But poor Thorwald heeded little the wonders of the sky that day.
He heard the clock going, “Tick--tack, tick--tack,” and he knew
that the precious moments were flying, and he had not yet decided
what he could do which might please God so well that he would
consent to let his dear mamma remain upon earth. He thought of
making a vow to be very good all his life long; but it occurred
to him that before he would have time to prove the sincerity of
his promise, God might already have taken his mamma away. He must
find some shorter and surer method. Down on the knoll, near the
river, he knew there lived a woman whom all the peasants held in
great repute, and who was known in the parish as “Wise Marthie.”
He had always been half afraid of her, because she was very old
and wrinkled, and looked so much like the fairy godmother in his
storybook, who was not invited to the christening feast, and who
revenged herself by stinging the princess with a spindle, so that
she had to go to sleep for a hundred years. But if she were so
wise, as all the people said, perhaps she might tell him what he
should do to save the life of his mamma. Hardly had this thought
struck him before he seized his cap and overcoat (for it was a
bitter cold night), and ran to the stable to fetch his skees.[10]
Then down he slid over the steep hill-side. The wind whistled in
his ears, and the loose snow whirled about him and settled in his
hair, and all over his trousers and his coat. When he reached Wise
Marthie’s cottage, down on the knoll, he looked like a wandering
snow image. He paused for a moment at the door; then took heart and
gave three bold raps with his skee-staff. He heard someone groping
about within, and at length a square hole in the door was opened,
and the head of the revengeful fairy godmother was thrust out
through the opening.
“Who is there?” asked Wise Marthie, harshly (for, of course, it was
none other than she). Then as she saw the small boy, covered all
over with snow, she added, in a friendlier voice: “Ah! gentlefolk
out walking in this rough weather?”
“O Marthie!” cried Thorwald, anxiously, “my mamma is very ill----”
He wished to say more, but Marthie here opened the lower panel of
the door, while the upper one remained closed, and invited him to
enter.
“Bend your head,” she said, “or you will knock against the door. I
am a poor woman, and can’t afford to waste precious heat by opening
both panels.”
Thorwald shook the snow from his coat, set his skees against the
wall outside, and entered the cottage.
“Take a seat here at the fire,” said the old woman, pointing to a
wooden block which stood close to the hearth. “You must be very
cold, and you can warm your hands while you tell me your errand.”