dis heah country! Dat’s what I got to say! Heah we come off f’m a good
civilianized lan’ wheah de sun git up an’ go to bed same as people do,
an’ come off heah wheah de sun git up ha’f way, an’ cain’t git up no
furdah, and cain’t git back nohow, but jes’ stay dar week in an’ week
out, an’ keep hones’ folks awake, an’ den when it do git down cain’t git
up ag’in, an’ de whole worl’ freeze up a-waitin’ foh hit. An’ what we
come foh? Why, to fin’ a’ old pole what can be pick’ up in anybody’s
wood-pile, free foh ca’yin’ off! Come down heah aftah a _pole_! What
kin’ o’ pole you reck’n’ gwine grow in such place, anyhow? I sh’d _say_
pole! Why, you couldn’t grow a bean pole! You couldn’t grow a willer
squich like I use to keep foh a little girl what need hit now—bringin’
her ole mammy off down heah to freeze up in dis ice-jug! Come aftah a
pole an’ fine a hole, dat’s what we done! No won’er Mistah Macaroni know
what I thinkin’ ’bout, when hit all freeze up an’ stay heah, ’stid o’
gwine wheah hit b’long!” The old woman paused an instant for breath,
then in a deep voice of warning concluded her arraignment. “An’ what
kin’ o’ great black beas’ gwine come an’ get dis ship befo’ we all see
mo’nin’? What great black monstah comin’ outen dis long black night what
you-all mention? I know—hit Deff! Dat what comin’—Deff! Gwine out to say
good-by to de sun, is you? Well, you bettah, caise when dat sun git
roun’ dis way ag’in, if hit evah do, hit’s my ’pinion dat hit wait a
long time befo’ _we_-all come out to say ‘Howdy!’”
The old woman flung herself out of the saloon. We laughed, but her final
words had not been entirely without effect. It was by no means
impossible that during the long night the “black beast” would come, and
that the returning sun would find fewer to bid it welcome.
“I think she speaks not with the spirit of prophecy,” said Ferratoni,
but nevertheless we grew rather silent as we passed into the gloom
without. Edith Gale and I ascended to the bridge. The others did not
follow, but huddled forward to the bow. It lacked still ten minutes of
midday.
We now saw that the sky overhead was thick, but clear-streaked in the
north. Where the sun would appear there was a sorrowful semblance of
dawn. Far across the black, frozen wastes, chill bands of red and orange
glowed feebly amid heavier bands of dusk violet. Profound, overpowering,
the infinite dark and cold were upon us. Before it, philosophies
dwindled and the need of warm human touch and sympathy came powerfully
upon us all. Edith Gale did not speak, and instinctively we drew closer
together. Somewhere beneath the fur wrappings my hand found hers. She
did not withdraw it. The caution of Chauncey Gale seemed as far off as
the place where he had spoken it. I leaned nearer to her. The word
formed itself on my lips—I could not be blamed.
“Sweetheart!” I whispered.
She did not answer—the sun was coming. Above the far rim it showed a
thin rayless edge. Between, there seemed to lie a million miles of
frozen sea. We watched it creep slowly westward. It was not a real sun,
but a wraith—a vision such as Dante might have dreamed.
Again, leaning near, I whispered to her; and again, just at first, she
did not answer. Then, very softly:
“But it was not until you found the new world that you were to claim
your reward.”
My heart bounded. She had remembered, then.
“Yes—I wish only to _name_ it, now.”
The sun that had grown to a narrow distorted segment became once more a
wavering line.
“Wait,” she said—“not now—to-morrow, perhaps—in the morning——”
“Morning? It is months till then. It is the long night I am thinking
of——”
“Yes, I know. I didn’t mean—I meant——” and then somehow my arm had found
its way about her, and she was close, close, and did not draw away.
The sun went out. The black wall—the black sea—the great black Antarctic
Night and cold closed in, but within and about us lay the ineffable
glory that has lighted the world and warmed it since man first looked on
woman and found her fair.
XX.
THE LONG DARK.
I cannot attempt to picture the vast Antarctic Night. The words I have
learned were never intended to convey the supreme mightiness of the
Polar Dark. Chauncey Gale has referred to it as “Creation’s Cold
Storage.” I am willing to let it go at that.
In the electric blaze of the Billowcrest we made merry, and occupied
ourselves usefully. When the cold without was not too severe we went
snow-shoeing over Bottle Bay, where a crust of ice had eventually
formed, and where snow grew ever deeper until we half expected to be
overwhelmed. Sometimes we heard the roaring of the pack outside, but in
our snug harbor we felt little of its grinding discontent. How much we
were warmed by our current beneath the ice we could not know, but the
thermometer at no time showed more than 30° below zero. I have seen it
as cold in northern Nebraska.
Neither was it wholly dark in clear weather. We had the stars, and at
regular intervals, through our harbor gateway, the moon looked in. Often
it was a weird, distorted moon—flattened and wrinkled by radiations of
cold from the far-lying ice—but always welcome. More than once it was
doubly and even trebly welcome, for the atmosphere was responsible for
some curious effects. Once Gale came down hastily to where Edith and I
were deep in a game of cribbage.
“I want you and Johnnie to come on deck a minute,” he said with some
urgency, “I want you to look at the moon.”
We arrayed ourselves and obeyed. Gale led the way and pointed to the
harbor entrance.
“Nick,” he commanded, “I want you and Johnnie to tell me how many moons
you see there.”
My hand lay on Edith’s arm and I gave it a significant pressure.
“Why,” I said, “I see one moon, of course. How many do you want me to
see?”
“I hope, papa,” said his daughter gravely, “that you haven’t been taking
too much wine. You know that it doesn’t agree with you. It makes you too
stout, and now that it affects your eyes this way, I should think you
would at least moderate your appetite for strong waters.”
“Johnnie,” said Gale severely, “you’re a goose, as usual. But on the
dead, now, I want you and Nick to tell me how many moons you see there.
I see three. If you only see one, then this cold storage, or something
else, has got into my eyes, and it’s time I was doing something for it.”
We assured him, then, that we saw what he did, one real moon and two
false ones, the result of some strange condition of the air. When we
descended to the cabin, Gale followed singing,
“Three moons rose over the city where there shouldn’t have been but
one.”
Besides these things we had the Aurora Australis, though from our
position under the ice-wall we seldom got a direct view of this
phenomenon, and we sometimes made excursions into the desolation of the
pack to view it. On one of these we were separated from the ship by a
wide waterway that opened just outside the harbor. It seemed a serious
predicament for a time, but the little telephone, which we always
carried, promptly “vibrated” a message to the ship, and our
balloon-boat-and-sled combination was first put into actual service as a
ferry to bring us safely over. From without, our harbor entrance had
seemed a portal to the lower regions. Crossing to it in the boat was
like being ferried over the river Styx.
To me the days did not drag, though to others of the party they may have
passed less swiftly. Love did not speed the hours for them, unless in
the sense that all the ship loved the lovers, and in making our lives
interesting for us they found sufficient entertainment for themselves.
Gale’s acceptance of the new understanding between Edith and myself had
been characteristic and hearty.
“Well,” he said, “’tain’t my fault. Don’t come around now, you and
Johnnie, tryin’ to blame it onto me. I told you how it would be. Oh
Lord, what’s a circus without monkeys!” He took our hands then, and
squeezed them together in one big, splendid palm. “Nicholas Chase,” he
went on, “you’ve got the boat, and me, and now a mortgage on Johnnie. If
there’s any other outlying and unattached property you’d like to have,
just name it. And if you don’t see what you want ask for it. Johnnie’s
the only undivided interest I had left that I cared anything about, and
if you’re going to get that you might as well have all the rest.” But at
this point Edith had thrown her arms about his neck, laughing and crying
at once. Happy as I was, there was a moment or two just then in which I
did not feel entirely comfortable.
One day, perhaps a week later, when we came in from an hour’s
snow-shoeing, he suddenly greeted us with:
“Look here, Johnnie, how did it come you didn’t turn Nick down like the
others?”
My sweetheart’s cheeks were already aglow, and her eyes sparkling. But I
thought there came an added glow and sparkle at the unexpected question.
Her eyes sent a quick look into mine that warmed my soul.
“Why, you see, Daddy, we—we were away off down here, and—and we couldn’t
afford to have any unpleasantness on the ship, and——”
“Oh, yes, I see—I see! And you’re going to bounce him when we get back
to New York. Great girl! Takes after her Daddy.”
From the hand that rested on my arm she had been withdrawing the little
fur mitten. Now a small palm and some cold fingers came creeping up into
mine for warmth, and to bestow a reassuring pressure.
“But—but don’t you see, Daddy,—I—I—we can’t afford to have any
unpleasantness there, either,” she said.
We had a long series of whist rubbers in the cabin, and entertainments
in which the forecastle was frequently invited to join. In turn, we
sometimes looked in on the forecastle, or, for exercise, took a hand
with the sailors in clearing snow and ice from the vessel. Altogether we
were a well-fed, contented little world—a warm, bright spot in a wide
waste of dark and cold—and even Zar grew stout and comfortable, and more
considerate of my feelings.
“I can stay heah jes’ as long as de boat stays and de perwision hold
out,” was her frequent assertion. “Mistah Sturritt certney is a mighty
good perwider.” And Mr. Sturritt deserved this compliment, for whatever
may have been his eccentricities in the matter of tablets, as our
regular commissary, he appeared to be a complete and continuous success.
As spring approached and the return of the sun drew near, preparations
for scaling the ice-wall and for the journey inland were perfected. Our
balloon, the Cloudcrest, was carefully overhauled, and our boat-car
furnished with all the requirements of an extended voyage, should we
find, after making observations, such an undertaking to be advisable.
The boat was very light and had air-tight aluminum compartments, as well
as many water-tight compartments for our stores. Mr. Sturritt’s
condensed food lozenges, which we had all tested and voted a success,
were variously distributed.
“We don’t want to carry all our pills in one box,” explained Gale, “and
say, Bill, don’t you think we’d better leave one place for a few
old-fashioned sandwiches? Just to start on, you know; then we can kind
o’ taper off onto tablets, as it were. You’ve fed us too well through
the winter to jump right into pills at the drop of the hat.”
So a place for sandwiches was left; also places for field-glasses and
other instruments, as well as for furs and sleeping-bags, which were
likely to be needed, we thought, in the early stages of the journey. For
ballast, instead of sand, we filled bags with zinc filings, these to be
used later in making hydrogen for replenishing the balloon. It is true
we thought it more than likely that we should return in some new
fashion, to be provided by the Antarcticans, but we believed it well to
be prepared for emergencies. Our propeller for both wind and water was
now thoroughly tested, the retorts for making the gas were complete and
ready, and all grew impatient at last for the day when we were to make
our trial ascension.
Ferratoni, I think, was more eager than the others. He seemed convinced
now that not only were there human beings beyond the barrier, but that
they knew of us, and waited for our coming. In just what form this had
“vibrated” to him he could not quite explain, and in fact rarely
attempted to do so. He was quite willing, however, to experiment with us
in telepathy, or, as he termed it, in the chording of mental vibrations,
through which he could often follow a train of thought in another with a
success that was certainly interesting, and even startling.
It appeared in no sense to be a gift with Ferratoni, but a scientific
attainment, acquired by patient and gradual steps. He claimed that the
principle of it was quite as simple as that of the answering musical or
electric vibrations—in fact, the same. We grew to accept this theory in
time, though we made little progress in its application. Perhaps our
minds were too full of other things.
To Ferratoni all the problems of the ages resolved themselves into
Chorded Vibrations.
“There is no change in the individual at death,” he said to me one day.
“It is simply a moving out of the old house. The life vibration—the
intelligence—remains the same. I shall be able by and by to chord and
communicate with those no longer in the Physical House.”
Later, when I saw Edith, I said:
“The long night is telling on Ferratoni. He is becoming a spiritualist.”
Edith Gale looked thoughtful.
“If he does, he will be a scientific one,” she said, “and able to
demonstrate reasonably the how and why of his inter-spheric
communications. If all he says of his chorded vibrations be true, who
shall say how far, and through what dim spaces they may not answer?”
You see, we had had time to speculate on a good many things during the
long Antarctic Night. Even in an ordinary night, between the hours of
three and five in the morning, strange problems come drifting in and the
boundary lines between substance and shadow waver. Keep this up for a
period of months, without a break of sunlight, and one’s skepticism on
almost any point begins to totter. At the end of the third month, if
Ferratoni had announced that he could render himself invisible and
transport himself to any point of the compass at will, we would have
been less surprised than eager to learn the process; and had Mr.
Sturritt suddenly declared that he had perfected a lozenge which would
confer eternal youth, I feel certain that any of us would have been
willing to accept a trial package.
XXI.
AN ARRIVAL AND A DEPARTURE.
Curiously enough the sun made its first chill, brief reappearance on the
anniversary of our sailing. Chill and brief it was, but that thin edge
of light skirting the far northern horizon meant to all who saw it new
hope, and a new hold on the realities of life.
The sky there had for some time been growing redder each day, and more
than once we believed that the Captain’s calculation would be proved at
fault, and that the sun itself must appear. But the Captain’s
mathematics were sound, and the sun was on schedule time. In spite of
Zar’s prophecy we were all there to bid it “howdy,” and there was not a
soul on board, from the Admiral to the cook, that sent “regrets” to that
reception. Captain Biffer had “bent on” a stiff new shirt for the
occasion, and was smiling and triumphant.
“Wheah you reckon dat sun shinin’ _warm_, now?” Zar asked in an awed
voice.
“In New York City,” answered her mistress, “just as it was the day we
sailed.”
“Shall we be back there a year from now?” I asked.
She held my arm close. Chauncey Gale answered.
“I will. Too far away from the Bowery down here.”
But Ferratoni, who stood next me, said—speaking to himself, and so low
that only I heard it—
“Not all of us will return.”
I did not seem to hear, either, and I doubt if he knew that he had
spoken; but a thing said like that creates an impression, and it set me
to wondering. Then the brief exhibition was over, and we descended
hastily to the warmth and feast waiting for us below.
There would be still nearly two months before we were willing to attempt
our journey inland. We did not much care to face darkness in unknown
wastes, and our continuous day would not begin until late in October. We
were determined, however, to make much sooner the trial ascension for
the purposes of observation, and to test the carrying power of the
Cloudcrest. By the middle of September our days were of good length, and
on the twentieth the divisions of light and darkness would be equal. We
decided to make our preliminary ascension on that day.
It was only by chance that Edith Gale missed taking part in this
momentous event. She had begged to be allowed to do so, and while
neither Gale nor I approved of her going, we had more than half
consented when Ferratoni came to our rescue by suggesting that we ought
by all means to make the carrying test with just those who expected to
undertake the voyage later.
This, both Gale and I declared, was a weighty argument, and my fiancée
at length yielded, though I must confess with but a poor show of either
filial or spousal obedience. She had been quite prepared to undertake a
voyage, too, and even this wild notion had not been surrendered without
severe reasoning.
“One of this firm’s got to stay with the ship,” Gale had said, finally.
“Now, if you’re going with the balloon, Johnnie, who’s going to stay?
Nick or me?”
She gave it up, then, and perhaps she had never been really serious in
the matter. Only she couldn’t bear the thought of our going away into
the undiscovered lands without her. No one but Ferratoni and Mr.
Sturritt were to accompany Gale and myself on the voyage inland, and Mr.
Sturritt only on condition that the balloon in its trial ascension
proved amply buoyant. He had counted on it from the first, having been
with Gale in every undertaking for many years. Then, too, he wished to
attend personally to our experiments with the food lozenge.
We were astir early on the morning of the twentieth, and had the gas
going and the balloon inflated by ten o’clock. It was a clear winter
morning, but still, and to us it seemed warm. Our entire population was
gathered for the occasion.
“So you gwine to sail off into space, now, is yeh?” observed Zar, as we
prepared to start.
“Yes, and your Miss Edith is going along,” I answered, jestingly.
Zar whirled about.
“Look heah, honey! You don’t mean to say you gwine up in dat skiff to
pernavigate de skies, does yeh?”
“Of course, Zar. Why not?”
Miss Gale made a move as if to take her place in the boat, but the old
woman, with a nimbleness and strength not consistent with her years,
suddenly stepped forward and bore her off bodily, as she had so often
done in childhood.
“Put me down, Zar!” pleaded Miss Gale, “put me down! I won’t go—I
promise!”
The old woman set her mistress upright and regarded her sternly.
“Well, I dess reckon you won’t, honey,” she announced, “lessen you walk
ovah my old dead body! You wouldn’t come on dis trip ef I’d knowed wheah
we-all comin’ to. I mighty tiahd sech foolishness, an’ dey ain’ gwine be
no moah of it! Airskiff! Humph! I guess not!”
We were all ready now. By a short, stout rope, running from a stanchion
through a ring in the deck to another ring in the bottom of our boat-car
and thus back to the stanchion again, our balloon was held close
captive. Coiled on the deck beside us lay twenty-five hundred feet of
smaller rope, one end of it attached to the ring beneath the car, and
the other lashed firmly about an iron “bit”—thus constituting our
anchorage while aloft. The Cloudcrest was very large, certainly, and
pulled desperately in the clear, cold air, but it did not seem possible
that she would be able to lift all that great length of line. A little
more than a hundred yards away was the perpendicular blue barrier of
ice, beyond whose lofty summit we hoped soon to look. Our shorter
anchorage was all that detained us, and a man stood ready with a keen
knife, to sever at the word. When ready to descend we had only to open
the valve above and let out the gas. We expected to be back in an hour.
Chauncey Gale took his seat last. He kissed his daughter as if he were
starting on a journey. This inclination had seized me also, but not the
resolution so I had merely pressed her hand. All except the man with the
knife drew back.
“Ready! One, two, three, cut!”
There was a sharp hissing sound, a sudden upward jerk, and a white world
fell away beneath us. The cold air rushed by and took our breath. Then
presently it passed less swiftly. The weight of our anchor rope was
beginning to tell. Like Alice falling into Wonderland we were going
slowly enough at length to take in things as we went along. There were
no empty jam-pots, but the swift panorama of the stratified wall was
interesting. Ferratoni handed me the telephone.
“All right, below?” I called.
“All right!” came the voice of Edith Gale, “but how small you are
getting!”
“We feel bigger than we look!”
“Is Daddy all right?”
“Yes, he’s getting out a sleeping-bag, so if he feels cold he can get
into it.”
Gale seized the transmitter.
“Slander,” he called. “We’ve already found two hot bricks in Nick’s
pocket, and he’s been begging like a stray kitten to be taken home!”
Up, and up, and up! The Billowcrest below grew small, then smaller, and
became at last a toy boat tossed into a snowdrift. Nearer and nearer
came the verge of the barrier.
“Can’t you see over it yet?” called the voice in the phone. “It looks as
if you could.”
“Not yet! Soon, though. We’re half crazy with excitement!”
“Tell me the instant you _can_ see over, and just what you can see!”
“Yes, of course! In another second now—we——”
There was a sudden movement of the car. Looking up I saw that the
balloon bag, now lifting above the barrier, had been caught in an upper
current of air from the north, and was being carried inward, to the
wall. In another instant it struck the jagged edge of the precipice,
rebounded, was caught again by the air current and lifted, and with a
wild sweep went plunging over the barrier, dragging us almost
horizontally behind!
There came some startled cries through the telephone. Then, from behind,
a sudden jerk that nearly flung us from the car. We had reached the end
of our rope, so to speak, and had been pulled up, short. Too short, for
the taut line, drawn across the sharp edge of ice, could not stand the
strain. Well for us that it did not. We were already clawing tooth and
nail at everything in sight, and our angle was becoming momentarily more
precipitous. The car swung suddenly downward into an easier position,
and then once more a white world dropped away beneath. We did not need
to guess what had happened. We knew. The line had parted, and on the
wings of a thirty mile wind we were bound for the South Pole.
XXII.
ON THE AIR-LINE, SOUTH.
It is needless to say that in the few brief seconds required for these
things to happen I did not continue the conversation with my fiancée.
The reader will understand that I was busy—too busy even to listen to
the advice that was coming through the telephone. At least I suppose it
was advice—Miss Gale would naturally give advice on an occasion like
that, and besides there was nothing else that she could have given,
anyway. But as the instrument was at that moment swinging over the side
of the car, and would have been lost to us utterly, had not Ferratoni,
with great foresight, nailed it securely at the other end, and as we
were engaged in holding on to a half-overturned air-boat with everything
made by nature for that purpose, the connection was poor, and the
advice, or sympathy, or whatever it was, wasted on the snow-clad fields.
For that is what lay below us as far as we could see. The snow, the
endless snow, and still the snow. From our far, cold height it seemed a
level floor, though we know by what we found later that it must have
been heaved and drifted.
We were very high. The dropping away of the greater part of our anchor
rope had sent us up like a rocket. We were a bit confused, at first, but
presently we faced each other, and the situation. We were bound
southward—that much was certain—and at a rapid rate of speed. Gale was
first to express himself.
“I’ve boarded a train going twenty-five mile an hour,” he panted, “but I
never had to hold on with my teeth before. I haven’t had so much fun
since I had the measles.”
“It _was_ rather interesting for a second or two,” I assented.
Mr. Sturritt was examining the compartments where his tablets were
stored.
“I feared we might have spilled—that is—been unfortunate with our
supplies,” he explained. “They are all right, I see.”
“Oh, they’re all right, Bill. The tablets we have always with us. But
how about the sandwiches? You didn’t put any in for this trip, of
course!”
Mr. Sturritt looked mildly injured.