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_To_
My Parents.
[Illustration:
“The South Pole for us all!”—Frontispiece, Page 58.
]
_The_
Great White Way
A Record of an Unusual Voyage of Discovery, and some
Romantic Love Affairs amid Strange Surroundings.
The Whole Recounted by one Nicholas Chase,
Promoter of the Expedition, whose
Reports have been Arranged
for Publication by
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
_Author of “The Van Dwellers,” “The Bread Line,” etc._
WITH DRAWINGS BY BERNARD J. ROSENMEYER,
SKETCHES BY CHAUNCEY GALE, AND MAPS,
ETC. FROM MR. CHASE’S NOTE BOOK
[Illustration]
New York
J. F. TAYLOR & COMPANY
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY J. F. TAYLOR & CO.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Answer to an Old Summons 5
II. I Renew an Old Dream 7
III. Even Seeking to Realize It 11
IV. Turning to the Sea, at Last, for Solace 15
V. I Overhaul the Steam Yacht, Billowcrest 20
VI. Where All Things Become Possible 49
VII. I Learn the Way of the Sea, and Enter More Fully Into My
Heritage 59
VIII. The Halcyon Way to the South 70
IX. Admonition and Counsel 76
X. Captain Biffer is Assisted by the Pampeiro 86
XI. In Gloomy Seas 95
XII. Where Captain Biffer Revises Some Opinions 99
XIII. In the “Fighting-Top” 106
XIV. An Excursion and an Experiment 115
XV. As Reported by My Note-Book 121
XVI. Following the Pacemaker 134
XVII. Investigation and Discovery 146
XVIII. A “Borning” and a Mystery 150
XIX. A Long Farewell 154
XX. The Long Dark 174
XXI. An Arrival and a Departure 183
XXII. On the Air-Line, South 190
XXIII. The Cloudcrest Makes a Landing 199
XXIV. The Great White Way 209
XXV. Where the Way Ends 215
XXVI. The Welcome to the Unknown 223
XXVII. The Prince of the Purple Fields 228
XXVIII. A Harbor of Forgotten Dreams 235
XXIX. A Land of the Heart’s Desire 243
XXX. The Lady of the Lilies 249
XXXI. The Pole at Last 253
XXXII. An Offering to the Sun 264
XXXIII. The Touch of Life 269
XXXIV. The Pardon of Love 279
XXXV. Down the River of Coming Dark 290
XXXVI. The “Passage of the Dead” 293
XXXVII. The Rising Tide 301
XXXVIII. Storm and Stress 305
XXXIX. Where Dreams Become Real 315
XL. Claiming the Reward 322
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“The South Pole for us all!” (page 58) _Frontispiece_
“Then, somebody was clinging to me” Page 93
“From our high vantage we could command a vast circle of
sunless, melancholy cold” Page 117
“Cut her, Nick, cut her! I can’t stick on any longer!” Page 202
THE PALACE OF THE PRINCE
“A harbor for vanished argosies and forgotten dreams” Page 242
THE PARDON OF LOVE
“There fell upon them a long golden bar of the returning
sunlight” Page 288
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
_OF_
_THE_ GREAT WHITE WAY.
NICHOLAS CHASE, a young man with a dream of discovery, and an
inherited love of the sea.
CHAUNCEY GALE, a merry millionaire, with a willingness to back his
judgment.
EDITH GALE, his daughter, a girl with accomplishments and ideas.
ZAR, colored maid and former nurse of Edith Gale. A woman with no
“fool notions” about the South Pole.
FERRATONI, an Italian electrician with wireless communication, and
subtle psychic theories.
CAPTAIN JOSEPH BIFFER, Master of the Billowcrest. An old salt, with
little respect for wild expeditions.
TERENCE LARKINS, First Officer of the Billowcrest, with a disregard
of facts.
MR. EMORY, Second Officer of the Billowcrest.
WILLIAM STURRITT, Steward of the Billowcrest, and inventor of
condensed food tablets.
FRENCHY, a bosun who stirs up trouble.
PRINCE OF THE PURPLE FIELDS, a gentle despot of the _Port of
Dreams_.
PRINCESS OF THE LILIED HILLS, _His Serene Sister_, whose domain is
the deepest South.
Three maidens of the _Land of Dreams and Lotus_.
A shipwrecked sailor, whose rescue is important to all concerned.
Cabin boy, stewardess, and crew of the Billowcrest.
Courtiers, populace, etc., of the _Land of the Sloping Sun_.
THE GREAT WHITE WAY.
I.
ANSWER TO AN OLD SUMMONS.
For more than ten generations my maternal ancestors have been farers of
the sea, and I was born within call of high tide. At the distance of a
thousand miles inland it still called me, and often in childhood I woke
at night from dreams of a blue harbor with white sails.
It is not strange, therefore, that I should return to the coast. When,
at the age of thirty, I found myself happily rid of a commercial
venture—conducted for ten years half-heartedly and with insignificant
results—it was only natural that I should set my face seaward. My
custom, of which there was never any great amount, and my goodwill, of
which there was ever an abundance, I had disposed of to one who was
likely to reverse these conditions—his methods in the matter of trade
being rather less eccentric than my own. He had been able to pay me in
cash the modest sum agreed upon, and this amount I now hoped to increase
through some marine investment or adventure—something that would bring
me at once into active sea life—though I do not now see what this could
have been, and I confess that my ideas at the time were somewhat vague.
II.
I RENEW AN OLD DREAM.
Perhaps first of all I wished to visit the South Pole—not an
unreasonable ambition it would seem for one backed by ten generations of
sea captains and ocean faring—but one that I found not altogether easy
to gratify. For one thing, there was no Antarctic expedition forming at
the time; and then, my notions in the matter were not popular.
From boyhood it had been my dream that about the earth’s southern axis,
shut in by a precipitous wall of ice, there lay a great undiscovered
world. Not a bleak desolation of storm-swept peaks and glaciers, but a
fair, fruitful land, warmed and nourished from beneath by the great
central heat brought nearer to the surface there through terrestrial
oblation, or, as my geography had put it, the “flattening of the poles.”
I had held to this fancy for a long time on the basis of theory only,
and, perhaps, the added premise that nature would not allow so vast a
tract as the Antarctic Continent to lie desolate. But, curiously enough,
about the time I arrived in New York I met with what seemed to me
undoubted bits of evidence in the reports of some recent polar
observations.
Borchgrevink, a Norwegian explorer, returning with a poorly fitted
Antarctic expedition, reported, among other things, a warm current off
Victoria Land, at a point below the 71st parallel, and flowing
approximately from the _direction of the pole!_[1]
Footnote 1:
“It seems to me,” he says, in an article printed in the Century
Magazine (January, 1896), “that an investigation of the origin and
consequences of the warm current running northeast, which we
experienced in Victoria Bay, is of the greatest importance.”
True, Borchgrevink believed the Antarctic Continent to be an
exceptionally cold one, but for this he was not to blame. No man can
help what he does or does not believe in these matters regardless of
sound logic and able reasoning to the contrary.—N. C.
Nansen, another Norwegian, in the Arctic Polar Sea, had been astonished
to find that the water at a great depth, instead of being colder than at
the surface as he had expected, was _warmer_! He had also found that as
he progressed northward from 80° the thermometer had been inclined to
_rise_ rather than to fall. To be sure, when he arrived at a point
within a little more than two hundred miles of the earth’s axis, he had
found only a continuance of ice—a frozen sea which undoubtedly extended
to the pole itself; but this frigidity I attributed to the fact that it
_was_ a sea into which, from the zone of fierce cold below, were
constantly forced huge ice-floes. These, as I conceived, would maintain
the condition of cold in the Arctics by shutting out the under warmth,
through which, however, they would be gradually melted—to be discharged
in those great Arctic currents which Nansen and other explorers had
observed. The lack of thickness in the ice _forming_ about the pole had
also been noted with some surprise. This too, I claimed, was due to the
warm earth beneath it which, while it could not much affect the general
climate, when some three miles of very chilly water and several feet of
substantial ice lay between, did serve as a provision of nature to
prevent the northern sea from becoming one mighty solidified mass.
Now, ice-floes could not be forced inland, as would have to be the case
in the Antarctics where there was admittedly a continent instead of a
sea. Around this continent, it was said, there lay a precipitous frozen
wall which no man had ever scaled. What lay beyond, no man of our world
had ever seen. But in my fancy I saw those ramparts of eternal ice
receding inward to a pleasant land, as the snow-capped Sierras slope to
the verdant plains of California. A pleasant land—a fair circular
world—temperate in its outer zone, becoming even tropic at the center,
and extending no less than a thousand miles from rim to rim. There, I
believed, unknown to the world without, a great and perhaps enlightened
race lived and toiled—loved and died.
III.
EVEN SEEKING TO REALIZE IT.
But scientists, I was grieved to find, took very little stock in these
views. Even such as were willing to listen declared that the earth’s
oblation counted for nothing. Most of them questioned the existence of
a great central heat—some disputed it altogether. The currents and
temperatures reported by Nansen, Borchgrevink and others, they
ascribed, as nearly as I can remember, to centrifugal deflections, to
gravitatory adjustments—to anything, in fact, rather than what seemed
to me the simple and obvious causes. As a rule, they ridiculed the
idea of a habitable world, or even the possibility of penetrating the
continent at all. When I timidly referred to a plan I had partially
conceived—something with balloons in it—they despised me so openly
that I was grateful not to be dismissed with violence. I cannot forego
one brief example.
He was a stout, shiny-coated man, with the round eyes and human
expression of a seal. He took me quite seriously, however, which some of
them had not. Also himself, and the world in general. When I had briefly
stated my convictions he put his fingers together in front of his
comfortable roundness and regarded me solemnly. Then he said:
“My dear young man, you are pursuing what science terms an _ignis
fatuus_, commonly and vulgarly known as a will-o’-the-wisp. You are
wasting your time, and I assure you that neither I nor my associates in
science could, or would, indorse your sophistries, or even stand idly by
and see you induce the unthinking man of means to invest in an
undertaking which we, as men of profound research and calm
understanding, could not, and therefore would not approve.” He cleared
his throat with a phocine bark at the end of this period and settled
himself for the next. “Men in all ages,” he proceeded, “have undertaken,
in the cause of science, difficult tasks, and at vast expenditure, when
there was a proper scientific basis for the effort.”
He paused again. My case was hopeless so far as he was concerned—that
was clear. I would close the interview with a bit of pleasantry.
“Ah, yes,” I suggested, “such as the ‘hunting of the snark,’ for
instance. Well, perhaps I shall find the snark at the South Pole, when I
get there, who knows?”
The human seal lifted one flipper and scratched his head for a moment
gravely. Then he said with great severity:
“Young man, I do not recall the _genus_ snark. I do not believe that
science recognizes the existence of such a creature. Yet, even so, it is
most unlikely that its habitat should be the South Pole.”
I retired then, strong in the conclusion that the imagination of the
average scientist is a fixed equation, and his humor an unknown
quantity. Also that his chief sphere of usefulness lies in being able to
establish mathematically a fact already discovered by accident. The
accident had not yet occurred, hence the time for the scientist and his
arithmetic was not at hand.
I now sought capital without science, but the results though interesting
were not gratifying.
A millionaire editor, a very Crœsus of journalism, was my final
experience in this field. He didn’t have any time to throw away, but I
seemed reasonably well-fed, and he saw I was in earnest, so he was
willing to listen. He put his feet upon a table near me while he did it.
When I got the bald facts out and was getting ready to amplify a little
he broke in:
“How long would it take you to go there and get back?” he asked.
“I hardly know—five years, perhaps—possibly longer.”
The millionaire editor took his feet down.
“Humph! Hundred thousand dollars for a Sunday beat and five years to get
it! No, I don’t think we want any South Poles in this paper——”
“But in the cause of human knowledge and science,” I argued.
“My friend,” he said, “the only human knowledge and science that I am
interested in is the knowledge and science of getting out, next Sunday
and the Sunday after, a better paper than that lantern-faced pirate down
the street yonder. When you’ve found your South Pole and brought back a
piece of it, come in, and I’ll pay you more for the first slice than
anybody else, no matter what they offer. But you’re too long range for
us just at present. Good day!”
IV.
TURNING TO THE SEA, AT LAST, FOR SOLACE.
Having thus met only with rebuff and disaster in the places where it
seemed to me I had most reason to expect welcome and encouragement, I
turned for comfort to those who, like my forbears, went down to the sea
in ships. Along South Street, where the sky shows through a tangle of
rigging, and long bowsprits threaten to poke out windows across the way,
I forgot my defeats and even, for a time, my purpose, as I revelled in
my long-delayed heritage of the sea.
It was the ships from distant ports that fascinated me most. My Uncle
Nicholas—a sailor who was more than half a poet—had been in the foreign
trade. I remembered him dimly as a big brown-faced man who had told me
of far lands and shipwrecks, and rocked me to sleep to the words and
tune of an old hymn, of which I could still repeat the stanza beginning,
“The storm that wrecks the winter sky.”
His vessel with all on board had disappeared somewhere in the dark
waters below Cape Horn more than twenty years before. I had inherited
half of his name and a number of precious trinkets brought home during
his early days of seafaring—also, it was supposed, something of his
tastes and disposition. In a manner I was his heir, and the tall-masted,
black-hulled barks that came in from the Orient—to be pushed as quietly
into place at the dock as if they had but just been towed across the
East River from Brooklyn—these, it seemed to me, were his ships, hence,
_my_ ships that were coming in, at last.
I found in them treasures of joy unspeakable. Those from around the Horn
seemed to bring me direct messages from the lost sailor. I felt that had
he lived he would have believed in my dreams and helped me to make them
reality. At times I even went so far as to imagine that his ship had not
gone down at all, but had sailed away to some fair harbor of the South,
whence he had not cared to return.
It thrilled me even to touch one of those weather-beaten hulls. The
humblest and most unwashed seaman wrought a spell upon me as he made a
pretense of polishing a bit of brass or of mopping up the afterdeck. He
had braved fierce storms. He had spent long nights spinning yarns in the
forecastle. Perhaps he had been wrecked and had drifted for weeks in an
open boat. It might be that he had been driven by storms into those
gloomy seas of the South—even to the very edge of my Antarctic world!
When they would let me I went on board, to fall over things and ask
questions. My knowledge of shipping was about what could be expected of
one whose life had been spent on the prairies of the West, with now and
then a fleeting glimpse of a Mississippi River steamer. I suppose they
wondered how I could be so interested in a subject, concerning which I
displayed such a distressing lack of knowledge. They were willing to
enlighten me, however, for considerations of tobacco or money, and daily
I made new bosom friends—some of them, I suspect, as unholy a lot of
sea-rovers as ever found reward at the end of a yard-arm.
I did not seek technical instruction. What I yearned for was their
personal experiences, and these they painted for me in colorings of the
sea and sky, and in such measure as the supplies were forthcoming.
Almost to a man they readily remembered my Uncle Nicholas, but as they
differed widely concerning his stature, complexion and general
attributes, I was prone to believe at last that they would have recalled
him quite as willingly under any other name; and indeed I found this to
be true when I made the experiment, finally, of giving his name as
Hopkins, or Pierce, or Samelson, instead of the real one, which had been
Lovejoy.
I gathered courage presently to interview the officers, but these I
found rather less entertaining, perhaps because they were more truthful.
Only one of them recalled my Uncle Nicholas, a kindly first mate, and I
suspect that even this effort resulted from a desire to please rather
than from any real mental process or strict regard for verities.
I suppose I annoyed them, too, for I threw out a hint now and then which
suggested my becoming a part of their ship’s company, though in what
capacity or for what purpose neither I nor they could possibly imagine.
As for my Antarctic scheme, I presently avoided mentioning it, or, at
most, referred to it but timidly. Indeed, I demeaned myself so far at
times as to recall it in jest as the wild fancy of some mythical third
party whose reasoning and mentality were properly matters of ridicule
and contempt.
For I had discovered early in the game that the conception of a warm
country at the South Pole appealed as little to the seaman as to the
scientist. The sailors whom I had subsidized most liberally regarded me
with suspicion and unconsciously touched their foreheads at the
suggestion, while the kindly first officer, who had been willing to
remember my uncle, promptly forgot him again and walked away.
I passed my days at length in wandering rather silently about the docks
and shipping offices, seeking to invest my slender means in some venture
or adventure of the sea that would take me into many ports and perhaps
yield me a modest income besides. I consulted a clairvoyant among other
things, a greasy person on Twenty-third Street, who took me into a dim,
dingy room and told me that I was contemplating something-or-other and
that somebody-or-other would have something-or-other to do with it. This
was good as far as it went. I was, in fact, contemplating most of the
time. I was ready for anything—to explore, to filibuster, to seek for
hidden treasure—to go anywhere and to do anything that would make me
fairly and legitimately a part and parcel with the sea. I read one
morning of a daring voyager who in a small boat had set out to sail
around the world alone. I would have given all that I possessed to have
gone with him, and for a few moments I think I even contemplated a
similar undertaking. But as I did not then know a gaff from a
flying-jib, and realizing that my voyage would probably be completed
with suddenness and violence somewhere in the neighborhood of Sandy
Hook, I resisted the impulse. As for my Antarctic dream, its realization
seemed even farther away than when as a boy I had first conceived it,
some fifteen years before.
V.
I OVERHAUL THE STEAM YACHT, BILLOWCREST.
It was early spring when I had arrived in New York, and the summer heat
had begun to wane when I first set eyes on the Billowcrest, and its
owner, Chauncey Gale.
On one of those cool mornings that usually come during the first days of
August I was taking a stroll up Riverside Drive. Below me lay the blue
Hudson, and at a little dock just beyond Grant’s Tomb a vessel was
anchored. Looking down on her from above it was evident, even to my
unprofessional eye, that she was an unusual craft. Her hull was painted
white like that of a pleasure yacht and its model appeared to have been
constructed on some such lines. Also, an awning sheltered her decks,
suggesting the sumptuous pleasures of the truly rich. But she was much
larger than any yacht I had ever seen, and fully bark-rigged—carrying
both steam and sail. She was wider, too, in proportion to her length,
and her cabins seemed rather curiously disposed. A man laboring up the
slope took occasion to enlighten me. He had just investigated on his own
account.
“Great boat, that,” he panted. “Cost a million, and belongs to a man
named Gale. Made his money in real estate and built her himself, after
his own ideas. He wasn’t a sailor at all, but he’d planned lots of
houses and knew what he wanted, and had the money to pay for it. No
other boat like her in the world and not apt to be; but she suits him
and she goes all right, and that’s all that’s necessary, ain’t it?”
I said that it was, and I presently went down to look at her. I do not
now remember that I was prompted by any other motive than to see, if
possible, what a man looked like who could afford to disregard the laws
and traditions of ship architecture, and build and own a million dollar
steamer after his own model, and for his own pleasure. Also, I had a
natural curiosity to learn something of what sort of vessel would result
from these conditions.
As I drew nearer I was still further impressed with her remarkable
breadth of beam, suggesting comfort rather than speed, and by the
unusual flare and flatness of her hull, reminding me of the model of
Western steamers built for log jams and shallow water. Connecting with
the dock was a small gangway, at the top of which stood a
foreign-looking sailor in uniform. Across his cap, in white letters, was
the word, “BILLOWCREST.” He regarded me distrustfully as I walked up and
down, and one or two suggestions I made, with a view of conveying to him
my good opinion of his boat, as well as the impression that I knew a lot
about yachts in general, he acknowledged grudgingly and in mixed
tongues. I disapproved of him from the start, and as later events
showed, with sufficient reason. Having looked over the vessel casually I
halted at last in front of the gangway.
“I should like to come on board,” I said.
The polyglot dissented.
“No admit. Mis’r Gale command.”
“Is Mr. Gale himself on board?”
I assumed a manner of severity with a view of convincing him that I was
of some importance, and at the same instant ascended the gang-plank,
extending my card before me. Of course the card meant nothing to him
except that I was able to have a card, but I could see that he hesitated
and was lost. Evidently he had little knowledge of the great American
game when I could intimidate him with one card.
He returned presently, and scowlingly led me into a little saloon
forward. Then he disappeared again and I was left to look at my
surroundings. A desk, a fireplace with a gas-log, some chairs suggestive
of comfort, a stairway, probably leading to the bridge above. The
evidences of the real estate man’s genius were becoming apparent. I
might have been in the reception hall of any one of a thousand country
cottages in the better class suburbs of New York. I had barely made
these observations when a door to the right of the stairway opened. In a
cottage it would have led to the dining-room, and did so, as I
discovered later, on the Billowcrest. A tall, solemn-looking man
entered, and I rose, half extending my hand, after the manner of the
West.
“Mr. Gale,” I said.
The solemn man waved me aside—somewhat nervously it seemed.
“No—I’m—that is, I’m not Mr. Gale. I’m only the—his steward,” he
explained. “Mr. Gale is—er—somewhat busy just now and would like to know
if your errand is im—that is, I should say, a personal matter. Perhaps
I—I might answer, you know.”
My heart warmed instantly toward this sober-faced man with thin
whitening hair and nervous hesitation of manner. I was about to tell him
that I only wanted to go over the yacht, and that he would do admirably
when I thrilled with a sudden impulse, or it may have been an
inspiration.
“Please tell Mr. Gale,” I said, “that I am sorry to disturb him, but
that I would really like to see him personally. I will not detain him.”
The solemn man retired hastily, leaving the door slightly ajar behind
him. I heard him murmur something within, which was followed by a rather
quick, hearty response.
“All right, Bill. Newspaper man, I guess,—tell him I’m coming!”
The tall man whose name, it seemed, and inappropriately enough, was
Bill, returned with this announcement. Close behind him followed a
stout, clear-eyed man of perhaps fifty. A man evidently overflowing with
nerve force and energy, appreciative of humor, prompt and keen in his
estimate of human nature, and willing to back his judgments with his
money. Undismayed and merry in misfortune, joyous and magnanimous in
prosperity, scrupulously careful of his credit, and picturesquely
careless of his speech—in a word, Chauncey Gale, real estate speculator,
self-made capitalist and American Citizen.
I did not, of course, realize all of these things on the instant of our
meeting, yet I cannot refrain from setting them down now, lest in the
reader’s mind there should exist for a moment a misconception of this
man to whom I owe all the best that I can ever give.
He came forward and took my hand heartily.
“Set down,” he commanded, “and tell us all about it.”
“Mr. Gale,” I began, “I have been admiring your yacht from the outside,
and I came on board to learn more about her purpose—how you came to
build her, what you intend to do with her, her dimensions, and so on.”
I was sparring for an opening, you see, and then he had taken me for a
reporter.
“What paper you on?”
I was unprepared for this and it came near being a knockout. I rallied,
however, to the truth.
“I’m on no paper, Mr. Gale; I’m a man with a scheme.”
“Good enough! What is it?”
“To go to the South Pole.”
We both laughed. There had been no suggestion of annoyance or even
brusqueness in Mr. Gale’s manner, which was as encouraging as possible,
and as buoyant. But half unconsciously I had adopted its directness, and
perhaps this pleased him.
“Say, but that’s a cool proposition,” he commented. “We might get snowed
up on that speculation, don’t you think so?”
“Well, of course it _might_ be a cold day before we got there, but when
we did——”
Mr. Gale interrupted.
“Look here,” he broke in, “I’m glad you ain’t on a paper, anyway. I’ve
not much use for them, to tell the truth. I’ve paid ’em more’n a million
dollars for advertising, and when I built this yacht they all turned in
and abused me. They got what they thought was a tip from some
sea-captain, who said she wouldn’t steer, or float, or anything else,
and that I’d never get out of the harbor. Well, she floats all right,
doesn’t she?”
I looked properly indignant and said that she did.
“I’ve been around the world twice in her,” he continued, “me and my
daughter. She isn’t fast, that’s a fact, but she’s fast enough for us,
and she suits us first-rate. I don’t know whether she’d do to go to the
South Pole in or not. I’ll tell you how she’s built, and what I built
her for, and you can see for yourself.”
I did not allow myself to consider Mr. Gale’s manner or remarks as in
the slightest degree encouraging to my plans. The fact that he had cut
short my attempted explanation rather indicated, I thought, that this
part of our interview was closed.
“I built her myself,” he proceeded, “after my own ideas. She’s a good
deal on the plan of a house we used to live in and liked, at Hillcrest.
My daughter grew up in it. Hillcrest was my first addition, and the
Billowcrest is my last. I’m a real-estate man, and all the money I ever
made, or lost, came and went in laying out additions. I’ve laid out and
sold fifty-three, altogether. Hillcrest, Stonycrest, Mudcrest,
Dingleside, Tangleside, Jungleside, Edgewater, Bilgewater, Jerkwater and
all the other Crests and Sides and Hursts and Waters and Manors you’ve
heard of for the past twenty years. I was the first man that ever used
the line, ‘Quit Paying Rent and Buy a Home,’ and more people have quit
paying rent and bought homes from me than from any man that ever took
space in a Sunday paper. My daughter is a sort of missionary. She makes
people good and I sell ’em homes and firesides. Or maybe I sell ’em
homes first and she makes ’em good afterwards, so they’ll keep up their
payments. Whichever way it is, we’ve been pretty good partners for about
twenty-five years, and when the land and spiritual improvement business
got overdone around here I built this boat so we could take comfort in
her together, and maybe find some place in the world where people still
needed homes and firesides, and missionary work. She’s two hundred and
sixty feet long and fifty feet in the beam, twin screw and carries
sixteen thousand square feet of calico besides. She’s wide, so she’ll be
safe and comfortable, and I built her flat so’s we could take her into
shallow water if we wanted to. She’s as stout as a battle-ship and she’s
took us around the world twice, as I said. We’ve had a bully time in
her, too, but so far we’ve found no place in _this_ old world where
they’re suffering for homes and firesides or where they ain’t
missionaried to death. Now, what’s your scheme?”
It seemed the opportune moment. My pulse quickened and stopped as I
leaned forward and said:
“It’s to _find a new world_!”
“At the South Pole?”
“At the South Pole.”
“What’s the matter with the North?”
“The North Pole is a frozen sea—a desolation of ice. At the South Pole
there is a continent—I believe a warm one.”
“What warmed it?”
“The oblation of the earth, which brings the surface there sufficiently
near the great central heat to counteract the otherwise low temperature
resulting from the oblique angle of the direct solar rays.”
I had gone over this so often that in my eagerness I suppose I parroted
it off like a phonograph. Gale was regarding me keenly—mystified but
interested.
“Look here,” he said. “I believe you’re in earnest. Just say that again,
please; slow, and without any frills, this time.”
I was ready enough to simplify.
“Mr. Gale,” I began, “you are aware, perhaps, that when we dig down into
the earth we find that it becomes rapidly warmer as we descend, so that
a heat is presently reached at which life could not exist, and from this
it has been argued that the inner earth is a mass of fire surrounded
only by an outer crust of some fifty miles in thickness. We also know by
observation and experiment that the diameter of the earth between the
poles is some twenty-six miles less than it is at any point on the
equator. This is known as the earth’s oblation, or, as the school-books
have it, the flattening of the poles.”
I paused and Gale nodded; apparently these things were not entirely
unfamiliar to him. I proceeded with my discourse.
“You will see, therefore, that at each polar axis the earth’s surface is
some thirteen miles nearer to this great central heat than at the
equator, and this I believe to be sufficient to produce a warmth which
prevents the great ice-floes of the Arctic Sea from solidifying about
the North Pole; while at the South, where there is a continent into
which ice-floes cannot be forced, I am convinced that there will some
day be found a warm habitable country about the earth’s axis. Whoever
finds it will gain immortality, and perhaps wealth beyond his wildest
dreams.”
I had warmed to this explanation with something of the old-time
enthusiasm, and I could see that Gale was listening closely. It may have
appealed to his sense of humor, or perhaps the very wildness of the
speculation attracted him.
“Say,” he laughed, as I finished, “the world turning on its axle would
help to keep it warm there, too, wouldn’t it?”
I joined in his merriment. The humors of the enterprise were not the
least of its attractions.
“But that _would_ be a bully place for a real-estate man,” he reflected.
“First on the ground could have it all his own way, couldn’t he? Build
and own railroads and trolley lines, and lay out the whole country in
additions. Sunnybank, Snowbank, Axis Hill—look here, why ain’t anybody
ever been there before?”
“Because nobody has ever been prepared to surmount the almost
perpendicular wall that surrounds it, or to cross the frozen zone
beyond. The ice-wall is anywhere from one to two thousand feet high. I
have a plan for scaling it and for drifting over the frozen belt in a
balloon to which, instead of a car, there will be attached a sort of
large light boat with runners on it, so that it may also be sailed or
drawn on the surface, if necessary. The balloon idea is not, of course,
altogether new, except——”
But Gale had gone off into another roar of merriment.
“Well, if this ain’t the coldest, windiest bluff I ever got up against,”
he howled. “Think of going up in a balloon and falling off of an
ice-wall two thousand feet high! Oh, Lord! What is home without a
door-knob!”
“There does appear to be an element of humor in some phases of my
proposition,” I admitted, “but I have faith in it, nevertheless, and am
quite sincere in my belief of a warm Antarctic world.”
“Of course you are. If you hadn’t been I wouldn’t ‘a’ let you talk to me
for a minute. Let’s hear some more about it. Do you think this ship
would do? When do you want to start?”
“As for the ship,” I hastened to say, “it would almost seem that she had
been built for the purpose. With her splendid sailing rig, her coal
could be economized, and used only when absolutely necessary. Her light
draught makes it possible to take her into almost any waters. The shape
of her hull and her strength are calculated to withstand an ice-squeeze,
and her capacity is such that enough provisions in condensed forms could
be stored away in her hold to last for an almost indefinite length of
time. As for starting——”
A cloud had passed over Gale’s face at the mention of an ice-squeeze,
but now he was laughing again.
“Condensed food! Oh, by the great Diamond Back, but that will hit Bill!
That’s his hobby. He’s invented tablets condensed from every kind of
food under the sun. You saw Bill awhile ago. Used to be my right-hand
man in real estate, and is now my steward, from choice. Never had a
profitable idea of his own, but honest and faithful as a town clock.
What he calls dietetics is his long suit. He don’t try many of his
experiments on us, but he does on himself; that’s why he looks like a
funeral. Oh, but we must have Bill along—it’ll suit him to the ground!”
He touched a button at his elbow.
“Food tablets might prove a great advantage,” I admitted, “especially if
we made an extended trip in the balloon.”
“Bill can make ’em for us all right. Soup tablets, meat tablets, bread
tablets—why, you can put a meat tablet between two bread tablets and
have a sandwich, and carry a whole _table d’hôte_ dinner in a pill-box.
Here, boy, tell Mr. Sturritt to step up here, if he’s not busy. Tell him
I’ve got important news for him.”
Clearly it was but a huge joke to Mr. Gale. I was willing to enter into
the spirit of it, however. He turned to me as the boy disappeared.
“Of course, we can’t expect to find anybody living there.”
“Why not? Nature never yet left a habitable country unoccupied. We shall
undoubtedly find a race of people there—perhaps a very fine one.”
He regarded me incredulously a moment, and then thumped the desk at his
side vigorously.
“That settles it! Johnnie’s missionary work’s cut out for her. It’s a
great combination, and we can’t lose! Balloons, tablets, missionary
work, and homes and firesides! A regular four-time winner!”
He was about to touch the bell again when there came a light tap at the
door near me, and a woman’s voice said:
“Mayn’t I have some of the fun, too, Daddy?”
My spirits sank the least bit. The mental image I had formed of Miss
Gale, the missionary, was not altogether pleasing, while her advent was
likely to put a speedy end to any thread of hope I may have picked up
during my rather hilarious interview with her father. Gale, meanwhile,
had risen hastily to admit her, and I had involuntarily turned. It is
true the voice had been not unmusical, but certainly I was wholly
unprepared for the picture in the doorway. Tall, lithe and splendid she
stood there—the perfect type of America’s ideal womanhood.
Gale greeted her eagerly.
“Of _course_ you can hear it—I was just going to send for you. Johnnie,
here’s a young man that’s going to take us to the South Pole to convert
the heathen there, and provide ’em with homes and firesides. Mr. ——,” he
glanced at my card, which he had kept in his hand all this time—“Mr.
Nicholas Chase, my daughter, Miss Edith Gale, sometimes, by her daddy,
called Johnnie, for short.”
Miss Gale held out her hand cordially. I took it with no feeling of
hesitation that I can now recall. And it seemed to me that I would be
willing to go right on holding a hand like that and let the South Pole
discover itself, or remain lost through all eternity.
“I have been telling Mr. Chase,” Chauncey Gale began, when we were
seated, “of our missionary-real-estate combine; how I provide outcast
humanity with homes and firesides in this world, and how you look out
for a home without too much fireside in it in the next; and how all the
territory in this world seems to be pretty well covered in our line. Now
he’s found for us, or is going to find, he says, a new world where we
can do business on a big scale. Is that correct, Mr. Chase?”
I looked at Miss Gale, upon whose face there was an expression,
half-aggrieved, half-mystified. For one thing, it was evident that, like
myself, she could not be quite certain whether her father was
altogether, or only partly, in jest. She beamed graciously on me,
however, which was enough.
“Why, how fine that is,” she assented. “We have been wishing for some
new thing to do, and some new where to go, but we never dreamed of a new
world. If you can take us to one we will reward you—even to the half of
our kingdom.”
“Poor trade,” said Gale. “Whole world for half a kingdom. Try again.”
“Oh, well, he shall have”—she hesitated, seeking a way out, then in
frank confusion—“he shall name his reward, as they do in the
story-books.”
I joined in the laugh. But my heart had grown strangely warm, and my
pulses were set to a new measure. I had never fully believed in love at
first sight till that moment.
“Tell us your scheme again, Chase,” commanded Gale.
The familiar form of his address stimulated me. I felt that I had known
this robust man since the beginning of all things.
“Wait,” he interrupted, “here comes Bill—he must hear it, too. Mr.
Chase, I present you to His Royal Tablets, Mr. William Sturritt, caterer
extraordinary to the Great Billowcrest Expedition for the discovery and
development of the warm Antarctic World. Bill, old man, your tablets are
going to have their innings at last. Mr. Chase is just going to tell us
how to climb a two thousand foot ice-wall in a balloon.”
I shook hands heartily with the thin, solemn man, who made an anxious
attempt to smile and seated himself rather insecurely on the edge of a
chair. Then I began as gravely as possible, and reviewed once more my
theories and purpose, adding now the brief but important bits of
evidence concerning temperatures and currents, supplied by recent
explorers. The warm northerly current reported by Borchgrevink I dwelt
upon, and suggested that by following it a vessel might meet with less
formidable obstructions in the way of field ice, and perhaps reach the
ice barrier at no great distance from the habitable circle beyond. It
even might be possible, I said, to follow this current directly to the
interior continent, though this I considered doubtful, believing rather
that it would flow out from amid fierce and shifting obstructions that
would make navigation impracticable.
I then reviewed my plan for scaling the ice barrier and crossing the
frozen strip by the aid of a balloon, to which would be attached the
light boat-shaped car before mentioned. This car, I said, might be
constructed to hold four, possibly six, men. In it could be stored light
instruments for photography, observation, etc. Also such furs and
clothing as would be needed, and a considerable supply of food in
condensed forms.
During this recital I had been interrupted by scarcely a word. Once,
when I mentioned the ice-wall, Gale had put his hands together and
murmured to himself, “Oh, Lord, two thousand feet high—now I lay me!”
But for the rest of the time he was quite silent and attentive, as were
both of the others. Miss Gale (and it was to her that I talked), Edith
Gale listened without speaking, moveless, her eyes looking straight into
mine, but far beyond me, to the land of which I spoke—a land of
fancy—the country of my dreams, now becoming hers. Gale turned to Mr.
Sturritt as I finished. The meager face of the latter was flushed and
animated. Credulous, visionary and eager, the dream had become his, too.
It seemed to me that there was a quality of tenderness in Gale’s voice
as he addressed him.
“Well, Bill,” he said, “what do you think of it? Chance of your life,
ain’t it? Think of provisioning a voyage to the South Pole. Why, you can
fairly wallow in tablets!”
Mr. Sturritt shifted a bit in his chair.
“I think it the most wond—the most marvelous undertaking of the
century,” he said eagerly, “and the most plaus—er—that is, the most
logical. For my own part in it, I may say to Mr. Race—that is, Chase,
that I have perfected a sort of system of food tab—I should say
lozenges, that might, I believe, be found advantageous in supplying the
balloon with food—that is—er—I mean the people _in_ the balloon, where
space and lightness would be considerations. They are, I think I may say
without claiming—taking credit, that is, for the entire originality of
the idea—more nutritious and—er—more wholesome than any other food
lozenge I have seen, besides being less bulk—er—I should say—more
compact in form, and not so hard to—to—I mean, in fact quite easy——”
“Not so hard to take,” put in Gale. “That’s right, Bill, they’re not bad
at all—I’ve tried ’em. I threw a fit afterwards, but that wasn’t your
fault—I didn’t take ’em right.”
“Papa insisted on eating all the dessert tablets, because they were pink
and flavored with wintergreen, and they made him ill,” commented Miss
Gale, who seemed to waken from her reverie.
“They should be taken—er—used, I mean, according to direc—that is—in
proper sequence,” explained Mr. Sturritt. “White, followed by blue and
red, in order to work well—to secure hygienic results, I should say. The
white contains the gently stimulating nutriment of meat and bivalve
juices, and is—er—the soup course, so to speak. The blue contains the
solids required to supply strength, while the pink or rose wafer
combines the essence of creams, fruits and nuts—the delicacies, as it
were, of food diet. White, blue and red is the proper combi—er—that
is—sequence, and I shall soon have other varieties.”
“I thought they ought to go red, white and blue,” said Gale, “like the
colors in the flag. But, see here, Johnnie, what do you think of Mr.
Chase’s scheme, anyway? Ain’t it a bully chance for opening our business
on a big scale?”
“_Please_ don’t, Daddy,” protested Miss Gale. “Mr. Chase must have a
very unfair opinion of us from what you have told him. He must stay to
luncheon, and learn to know us better.”
At this point Mr. Sturritt rose and excused himself.
“I am not really a missionary, you know,” Edith Gale continued. “In fact
not at all. I have just a little hobby—a very little one—of helping
people to better ideals through a truer appreciation of the beautiful in
nature.” She said this quite unaffectedly—much as a child would explain
a little game of its own. I nodded eagerly and she proceeded.
“It has always seemed to me that the people who see only firewood in
trees, weather-signs in skies, and water-supply in rivers, miss a good
deal of what is best in this world, and are perhaps not so well prepared
for what they find in the next. And sometimes even those who care in a
way for the beauties of the earth and sky miss a good deal of them, or
care not in the best way. Sometimes they cut their trees into queer
shapes, or chop away all the pretty tangle of foliage from a river bank,
or lay out their gardens with a square and compass. I sketch and paint a
little, and now and then I try to make people realize the beauty as well
as the usefulness of nature, and that it’s a waste of time to do all
those artificial things to it. It is quite simple to explain with
pictures, you know, like an object lesson, and I show them that
star-shaped flower-beds, and bare river banks, and ornamentally trimmed
trees do not make as pretty pictures as they would the other way, and
then sometimes I go further and say that maybe children, and grown
folks, too, would be better and less artificial themselves if they were
taught to care less for nature in its unnatural forms, and more as God
made it. Your dream of an Antarctic world and an undiscovered race is
very fascinating to me. I, also, have long had a dream of finding such a
people, though it is far more likely that I should go to them to learn
than to teach.”
Chauncey Gale had been watching her admiringly while she spoke. As for
myself, if there had been one thing needed to complete my conversion, it
was this revelation of her gentle doctrines. Gale, however, could not be
long repressed.
“You’ve no idea how that sort of thing takes with commuters,” he said
reverentially. “It’s sold more additions for me than all my advertising
put together.”
“Oh, Daddy, how can you!”
“Look at that air of innocence,” said Gale, “it would deceive the oldest
man living. You know very well, Johnnie, that the Bilgewater lots would
never have moved in the world if you hadn’t gone out there and got those
people all crazy on art values. Why, the art value of every lot in
Bilgewater doubled in ten days, and they went off like chromos at a
picture auction.”
“Papa!” said Miss Gale severely, “I went to Bridgewater, or Bilgewater,
as you persist in calling it, and showed the people my pictures out
there, because I was invited to do so, and because I saw by their lawns
and gardens that they needed me. I had no thought of the material value
and sale of your old lots, I can assure you, and I don’t believe my
going made a particle of difference. If I had thought it possible, I
shouldn’t have gone.”
It was evident that Gale’s fond pride in his daughter grew with every
sentence.
“She’d deceive anybody in the world, except her old Daddy,” he
persisted. “Get your pictures, Johnnie, and let Mr. Chase see them.”
I hastened to assure Miss Gale that I should consider it a privilege to
look at her work, and she rose, leaving me with her father, whose eyes
followed her proudly. For myself, I was in a decidedly miscellaneous
condition, mentally. I could not permit myself even to hope that Gale
really intended to undertake the expedition I had proposed. Yet there
had been something about it all that suggested a sincere interest in my
plans, in spite of the fact of his rather boisterous and perhaps undue
tendency to levity. It seemed to me that his daughter, and his old-time
associate, Sturritt, had taken him seriously, and they must know his
moods better than I. At most I would not allow myself to do _more_ than
hope. I had waited so long—I could restrain the frenzy of joy in me a
little longer. One thing was assured. I was to sit at luncheon with
Edith Gale, and even should there be no voyage to the South, I might
hope to see her again, when from time to time I could make the excuse of
coming to her father with new sources of amusement. I reflected that I
would invent the most absurd propositions that human ingenuity could
devise, for Chauncey Gale to play with, if he only would let his
daughter take part in the merry pastime.
Gale, meantime, had turned to me, and was about to speak when Miss Gale
entered. She was accompanied by a stout, resolute-looking colored woman,
bearing a large portfolio.
“Put it right down on the rug, Zar, against the chair, so.”
Miss Gale herself adjusted the heavy book, then seated herself
comfortably on the floor beside it. The servant withdrew. Gale slid over
to a low stool, and, half unconsciously, I slipped from my chair to a
position on the floor between them. We were like a group of children
around a toy book.