Soon after this, signs of approaching winter began to make their
appearance in the regions of the North Pole. The sun, which at first
had been as a familiar friend night and day, had begun to absent himself
not only all night, but during a large portion of each day, giving sure
though quiet hints of his intention to forsake the region altogether,
and leave it to the six months' reign of night. Frost began to render
the nights bitterly cold. The birds, having brought forth and brought
up their young, were betaking themselves to more temperate regions,
leaving only such creatures as bears, seals, walruses, foxes, wolves,
and men, to enjoy, or endure, the regions of the frigid zone.
Suddenly there came a day in October when all the elemental fiends and
furies of the Arctic circle seemed to be let loose in wildest revelry.
It was a turning-point in the Arctic seasons.
By that time Captain Vane and his party had transported all their
belongings to Great Isle, where they had taken up their abode beside old
Makitok. They had, with that wizard's permission, built to themselves a
temporary stone hut, as Benjy Vane facetiously said, "on the very top of
the North Pole itself;" that is, on the little mound or truncated cone
of rock, in the centre of the Great Isle, on which they had already set
up the observatory, and which cone was, in very truth, as nearly as
possible the exact position of that long-sought-for imaginary point of
earth as could be ascertained by repeated and careful observations, made
with the best of scientific instruments by thoroughly capable men.
Chingatok and his father, with a large band of their followers and some
of their women, had also encamped, by permission, round the Pole, where,
in the intervals of the chase, they watched, with solemn and unflagging
interest, the incomprehensible doings of the white men.
The storm referred to began with heavy snow--that slow, quiet,
down-floating of great flakes which is so pleasant, even restful, in its
effect on the senses. At first it seemed as if a golden haze were mixed
with the snowfall, suggesting the idea that the sun's rays were
penetrating it.
"Most beautiful!" said Leo, who sat beside the Captain and his friends
on the North Pole enjoying the view through the open doorway of the hut,
and sipping a cup of coffee.
"It reminds me," said Alf, "of Buzzby's lines:--
"`The snowflakes falling softly
In the morning's golden prime,
Suggestive of a gentle touch
And the silent flight of Time.'"
"Behold a more powerful reminder of the flight of Time!" said Benjy,
pointing to the aged Makitok, who, with white beard and snow-besprinkled
person, came slowly towards them like the living embodiment of "Old
Father Christmas."
"Come," said Leo, hastening to assist the old man, "let me help you up
the Pole."
Leo, and indeed all the party, had fallen in with Benjy's humour, and
habitually referred thus to their mound.
"Why comes the ancient one here through the snow?" said Captain Vane,
rising and offering Makitok his seat, which was an empty packing-case.
"Surely my friend does not think we would forget him? Does not Benjy
always carry him his morning cup of coffee when the weather is too bad
for him to come hither?"
"Truly," returned the old man, sitting down with a sigh, "the Kablunets
are kind. They never forget. Bunjee never fails to bring the cuffy,
though he does sometimes pretend to forget the shoogre, till I have
tasted it and made a bad face; then he laughs and remembers that the
shoogre is in his pouch. It is his little way. But I come not to-day
for cuffy; I come to warn. There is danger in the air. Blackbeard must
take his strange things," (thus he referred to the philosophical
instruments), "away from here--from--ha!--from Nort Pole, and put them
in my hut, where they will be safe."