“GOOD-BYE, BOYS. IT WON’T BE FOR LONG”
And what a scene it was too.
Down below to the left was the still slumbering camp; the middle
distance was the eternal snow guarded by its hills, then came the
sea-beach, shingly now. They could even see their ships, next the dark
blue sea dotted or flecked with the white bergs big and small.
But on that sea-beach, when they drew it a little nearer by means of
their telescopes, what a scene of life and love and happiness!
The denizens of air and sea were all awake and busy. They could see
seals diving and swimming or basking in the sun, flocks of bright-winged
gulls, and penguins bustling about in every direction.
There was nothing but joy yonder. No attempt to solve the infinite, or
pluck from Heaven its greatest secrets.
Yonder was contentment unalloyed.
And there was sunshine over all; it glimmered in the sea in radiance
sublime, it spangled the snow and seemed to turn it into diamonds, it
filled earth and air, and best of all it filled the hearts of the lonely
beholders, till they were fain to smile at their recent gloom.
“A glorious scene, Curtis!”
“A glorious scene, Ingomar! That is our last look at the sea for a time,
but not for ever. Oh, no, not for ever!”
Then down they came from the mount, with faces a-shine in the gladsome
air.
* * * * *
That day’s journey was scarcely so long. The sun was resplendent, and at
the evening meal every one was happy and cheerful. Nay, but hopeful in
the extreme.
“I drink your healths in coffee, gentlemen, and may the united British
and American flags float in the future over every land and sea in all
the world. We’re bound for the end of the world, the place where people
jump off, you know, and I am not so very sure we shan’t eventually reach
it. But we mean to return without jumping off.”
And every one only spoke the feelings that were within him.
Coffee generally makes people wakeful. It does not if taken in the
Arctic or Antarctic. It makes one contented and happy, and even if drunk
last thing at night in this pure life-giving air, you get sleepy as
soon as you have wriggled into your bag, and doze off almost, though not
quite, before you have said your prayers. Still you have no fear.
Somehow there seems to be a protecting Power around you.
“Oh, watch ye well by daylight,
For angels watch at night.”
* * * * *
Before ten days of travel had been accomplished the country had grown
very wild indeed, the mountains high and rugged, some volcanic, while
many of the valleys they felt they must negotiate were in places half
choked with ice-boulders.
They seemed indeed to be glaciers that had been shaken and shattered by
earthquake or volcanic force. But this was merely conjecture. At all
events it made the progress extremely slow and hard.
The sledges had often to be unpacked and the parcels carried on the
ponies’ backs and on those of the good Yak-Yaks quite over the
obstructions. The animals of course had little difficulty in getting
over the obstacles, but often it fell to the lot of the men to lift and
carry the empty sledges.
In clear weather, and it was mostly clear, the plan of getting high up
on to some hill was constantly adopted, in order to find out the most
likely route.
This was not an agreeable duty, wild and weird although the scenery
was. But it was one that usually fell to the lot of Slap-dash himself
and one of his men.
Those Eskimos never tired.
Everything considered, they had kept their straight course with very few
détours indeed, and, in ten days’ time, had made the very excellent
record of a hundred and seventy miles.
Then came a wild blizzard from the south, with sheets of driving snow.
They found shelter behind a friendly precipice, creeping as closely
together--men and beasts--as possible, for warmth and protection. The
storm, which at times blew with hurricane force, delayed the advance for
four and twenty hours.
Most of the time was spent in bag.
Honest MacDonald -- Captain X---- --pooh-poohed the blast. He would not
turn into his bag.
“It’s a bit kittle storm,” he admitted; “but, losh! lads, I’ve seen mony
a waur in the Hielan’ hills, when tending my father’s bits of sheepies.”
MacDonald had Bobbie Burns’s poems to comfort him, and he drank coffee
and spun yarns the whole day long. He was a rare hand at telling a
story--especially a fish story--but they couldn’t have been _all_ true.
He generally ended every yarn with the words, “But that’s nothing. I’ll
gi’e ye anither.”
And each fresh story had a broader base than the previous. Not that they
were based on the solid truth.
That day he put a climax to his yarns by telling his listeners seriously
that, one morning in the Arctic regions, while on shore in Yak Land, he
found a stranded whale. He was looking at it when, “without a moment’s
warning, the sky became overcast, and a blizzard, boys, ten times wilder
than this, came on to blow.
“A blizzard,” he said, “that would have killed a regiment of Gordon
Highlanders!”
“And how did you escape?”
“Crept into the whale’s mouth, of course, and quickly too. But the
beggar wasna dead ava. The jaws closed, and I was a prisoner.
“I didn’t know what to dae, gintlemen; and I was getting short o’
breath, and expectin’ every minute the brute would wriggle off, as he
was sure to do at high water.
“I was in despair, boys, I can tell ye.”
“I should think so,” said Charlie.
“Suddenly,” said MacDonald, without moving a muscle, “I mindit me that I
had a packet o’ a terribly strong explosive in my pouch.
“To think was to act.
“I quickly stuck the long fuze, and raxed[E] my hand wi’ the parcel as
far as I could down the awful beast’s gullet.
“Nane ower soon, I can assure you.
“The beast was tickled a bit when I lichtit the fuse, and made at once
for the water.
“Whizz--bang! and the whole top of his head was blown off, and I walked
on shore!”
“And you weren’t hurt, Mac?”
“Weel, no, mon, but I must alloo I was a wee bit shaken.”
* * * * *
Slap-dash was early to the hill next morning. The weather was as bright
and fine as if blizzard had never been blowing.
When he came down his somewhat dirty face was sparkling with joy.
“As far as I can see, sah, top ob dis valley, she is one big big, long
long, sea ob snow.”
This was indeed glorious news.
And this tableland, when they got up to it, was found to stretch on for
probably twenty miles or more, and Slap-dash was not likely to make a
mistake in a matter of this kind.
Merrily they marched on this morning; Ingomar and the rest of the white
men--Eskimos are not black, however, when washed--beguiling the way with
cheerful conversation and with many a song, in the choruses of which
even Dumpty and the Yaks joined.
This was a little Republic, a Republic on the march; and although every
respect was paid by the men to their officers and superiors, there was
far more real communion than on ordinary occasions; so, on the road, or
squatting around in a circle of an evening, the simple sailors were
invited to sing and yarn, and they cheerfully responded.
MacDonald was not only the best yarn-spinner but the best singer in the
pack. Scottish songs, of course; and what nation has sweeter or more
heroic melodies than green Caledonia? But it was strange to hear the
rough doric voice raised here in this wild land of snow and ice, whether
in love lilts, such as “Annie Laurie,” or in those more than martial
songs, which so often led the sons of the heather to death or victory in
far-off foreign lands.
MacDonald’s was a voice that seemed to stir the heart-blood of even
Gruff. Hear him to-day, for instance, while the great caravan of daring
explorers was making its swift but almost silent passage over the
tableland, and close to the hills--
“There is many a man of the Cameron clan
That has followed his chief to the field,
And sworn to protect him or die by his side,
For a Cameron never can yield.”
And big, burly MacDonald swung his arm out towards the everlasting
hills as he sang the next verse--
“I hear the pibroch sounding, sounding,
Deep o’er yon mountains and glens,
While quick springing footsteps are trampling the heath,
’Tis the march of the Cameron men.”
This was a record day, in every sense of the word--a record in its
sunshine, its warmth, its joyfulness, and its mileage covered. Fancy,
thirty miles with all those burdens!
* * * * *
Another fortnight and over has passed and gone, and the scene is changed
somewhat. A fortnight of almost forced marches, of toils and struggles
with nature, most bravely and pluckily borne by all hands. Indeed, there
had been an utter absence of selfishness. Every one in sunshine, storm,
or tempest, seemed to think of others all the time, and not of himself.
But it had been hard work; oh, ever so hard and toilsome.
And now a camp must be formed, and a hut built--a huge, square igloo,
built of blocks of snow or ice in a corner of a glen they had found well
sheltered from the chilly southern blasts, on somewhat raised ground,
too, so that even a snow blizzard would be little likely to bury them
alive. But the construction of the igloo, and the storage of the food
for men and beasts, was now to be left to the charge of our heroes,
Charlie, Walter, Wright, and MacDonald; for Ingomar, with Curtis and
Slap-dash, were to push on now in the lightest and fastest dog-sledges
as near to the actual South Pole as it was prudent to get.
The summer is all too brief at the best, and there was not a single day
to lose.
They had a good man in Dr. Wright. His Arctic experiences had taught him
many a lesson, and he was little likely to make a mistake in anything
that concerned the health or feeding of the men and animals under him.
A word about the food supplies. The feeding of the bears and ponies had,
before starting, been Wright’s greatest concern, and many an experiment
he had made.
All food was to be in the condensed and preserved form, and the
biscuits, which had been prepared especially before leaving Britain,
contained the best essence of beef. These for dogs, bears, and men.
Those for the ponies were simple.
Being so far from their base, the ships near the sea of Ross, they could
expect no succour or assistance of any kind; but with the immense
dragging power at his command, Dr. Wright had carefully computed that a
six months’ supply could be taken at least. In addition to this, they
had frozen seal beef for the bears, when doing the heaviest work, and on
this, with a biscuit or two a day, they had been hitherto fed. We very
naturally believe that bears, being so very large, require a large
amount to eat. This is a great mistake. There is no animal I know of
who, in proportion to his size, eats less, unless it be the Eskimo dog.
Both dogs and bears, in winter, can subsist on hardly anything, provided
they have a large amount of sleep.
And now that they had safely reached this far south, and the really
heavy work was over, Dr. Wright had a comparatively easy mind. Yet he
himself would always superintend the serving-out of the stores, and the
feeding of his camp, in the most economical way, and on a scientific
basis.
It is this very food difficulty, I believe, and this alone, which
prevents the brave hearts of Britain and America from hoisting their
flags at the North Pole.
That _is_ going to be reached, and don’t forget what I say, reader. And
I think--I will not say I fear--that the Stars and Stripes will float
there in the Northless Land before the British.
I call the Arctic Pole the Northless Land, boys, because there the
meridians or parallels of longitude all meet at point, and parallels of
latitude all begin. There is no longer any east, west, nor north, to the
man at the Pole, whose name, I am told, is Cameron. I suppose Cameron’s
house is like John o’ Groat’s--a round one. Figuratively speaking,
everything is beneath him, and from whichever window he looks he is
looking due south. If Cameron has a bit of a garden encircling his
house, which, being a Scotsman, he is bound to have, to grow a few
potatoes and a bit of kail in, then every time he walks round this
garden he walks round the earth, and it would be the same at the South
Pole, only _vice versâ_, as a glance at the map will show you. All
meridians point due north, as I said before.
It was in the first week of January that Ingomar and Curtis started to
make their last record.
Its success would depend in a great measure on how provisions held out.
But they had good hopes, good spirits and health; and the dogs, even
honest Wallace, had never been in better form, nor fitter.
The instruments which Curtis loaded up were few enough, however, to make
observations. But the most important one was the camera, for by turning
this twice or thrice daily back upon the scenery they had passed
through, they would be enabled to have a pictorial guide back again. The
light is not very good in these regions, but it would serve anyhow to
give them the outlines, and these would be enough.
“Good-bye, boys. Good-bye. It won’t be for long.”
That was all.
They went away seemingly with light hearts. Yet Charlie and Walter gazed
sadly after them, as long as they could be seen.
Then slowly, and in silence, with Nick and Nora by their sides, they
returned to camp.