to get rid of the snow, they shaded their eyes and looked, and there,
right in front of them, was the wonder of wonders--the North
Pole--towering high and white and glistening, like an ice-lighthouse,
and it was quite, quite close, so that you had to put your head as far
back as it would go, and farther, before you could see the high top of
it. It was made entirely of ice. You will hear grown-up people talk a
great deal of nonsense about the North Pole, and when you are grown up,
it is even possible that you may talk nonsense about it yourself (the
most unlikely things do happen) but deep down in your heart you must
always remember that the North Pole is made of clear ice, and could not
possibly, if you come to think of it, be made of anything else.
All around the Pole, making a bright ring about it, were hundreds of
little fires, and the flames of them did not flicker and twist, but went
up blue and green and rosy and straight like the stalks of dream lilies.
Jane said so, but George said they were as straight as ramrods.
And these flames were the Aurora Borealis, which the children had seen
as far away as Forest Hill.
The ground was quite flat, and covered with smooth, hard snow, which
shone and sparkled like the top of a birthday cake that has been iced at
home. The ones done at the shops do not shine and sparkle, because they
mix flour with the icing sugar.
"It is like a dream," said Jane.
And George said, "It _is_ the North Pole. Just think of the fuss people
always make about getting here--and it was no trouble at all, really."
"I daresay lots of people have gotten here," said Jane, dismally. "It's
not the getting _here_--I see that--it's the getting back again.
Perhaps no one will ever know that _we_ have been here, and the robins
will cover us with leaves and--"
"Nonsense," said George. "There aren't any robins, and there aren't any
leaves. It's just the North Pole, that's all, and I've found it; and now
I shall try to climb up and plant the British flag on the top--my
handkerchief will do; and if it really _is_ the North Pole, my pocket
compass Uncle James gave me will spin around and around, and then I
shall know. Come on."
So Jane came on; and when they got close to the clear, tall, beautiful
flames they saw that there was a great, queer-shaped lump of ice all
around the bottom of the Pole--clear, smooth, shining ice, that was
deep, beautiful Prussian blue, like icebergs, in the thick parts, and
all sorts of wonderful, glimmery, shimmery, changing colors in the thin
parts, like the cut-glass chandelier in Grandmamma's house in London.
"It is a very curious shape," said Jane. "It's almost like"--she moved
back a step to get a better view of it--"it's almost like a dragon."
"It's much more like the lampposts on the Thames Embankment," said
George, who had noticed a curly thing like a tail that went twisting up
the North Pole.
"Oh, George," cried Jane, "it _is_ a dragon; I can see its wings.
Whatever shall we do?"
And, sure enough, it _was_ a dragon--a great, shining, winged, scaly,
clawy, big-mouthed dragon--made of pure ice. It must have gone to sleep
curled around the hole where the warm steam used to come up from the
middle of the earth, and then when the earth got colder, and the column
of steam froze and was turned into the North Pole, the dragon must have
got frozen in his sleep--frozen too hard to move--and there he stayed.
And though he was very terrible he was very beautiful too.
Jane said so, but George said, "Oh, don't bother; I'm thinking how to
get onto the Pole and try the compass without waking the brute."
[Illustration: "Sure enough, it was a dragon." _See page 68._]
The dragon certainly was beautiful, with his deep, clear Prussian
blueness, and his rainbow-colored glitter. And rising from within the
cold coil of the frozen dragon the North Pole shot up like a pillar made
of one great diamond, and every now and then it cracked a little, from
sheer cold. The sound of the cracking was the only thing that broke the
great white silence in the midst of which the dragon lay like an
enormous jewel, and the straight flames went up all around him like the
stalks of tall lilies.
And as the children stood there looking at the most wonderful sight
their eyes had ever seen, there was a soft padding of feet and a
hurry-scurry behind them, and from the outside darkness beyond the
flame-stalks came a crowd of little brown creatures running, jumping,
scrambling, tumbling head over heels and on all fours, and some even
walking on their heads. They joined hands as they came near the fires
and danced around in a ring.
"It's bears," said Jane. "I know it is. Oh, how I wish we hadn't come;
and my boots are so wet."
The dancing-ring broke up suddenly, and the next moment hundreds of
furry arms clutched at George and Jane, and they found themselves in the
middle of a great, soft, heaving crowd of little fat people in brown fur
dresses, and the white silence was quite gone.
"Bears, indeed," cried a shrill voice. "You'll wish we were bears before
you've done with us."
This sounded so dreadful that Jane began to cry. Up to now the children
had only seen the most beautiful and wondrous things, but now they began
to be sorry they had done what they were told not to, and the difference
between "lawn" and "grass" did not seem so great as it had at Forest
Hill.
Directly Jane began to cry, all the brown people started back. No one
cries in the Arctic regions for fear of being struck by the frost. So
that these people had never seen anyone cry before.
"Don't cry for real," whispered George, "or you'll get chilblains in
your eyes. But pretend to howl--it frightens them."
So Jane went on pretending to howl, and the real crying stopped: It
always does when you begin to pretend. You try it.
Then, speaking very loud so as to be heard over the howls of Jane,
George said: "Yah--who's afraid? We are George and Jane--who are you?"
"We are the sealskin dwarfs," said the brown people, twisting their
furry bodies in and out of the crowd like the changing glass in
kaleidoscopes. "We are very precious and expensive, for we are made,
throughout, of the very best sealskin."
"And what are those fires for?" bellowed George--for Jane was crying
louder and louder.
"Those," shouted the dwarfs, coming a step nearer, "are the fires we
make to thaw the dragon. He is frozen now--so he sleeps curled up around
the Pole--but when we have thawed him with our fires he will wake up and
go and eat everybody in the world except us."
"WHATEVER--DO--YOU--WANT--HIM--TO--DO--THAT--FOR?" yelled George.
"Oh--just for spite," bawled the dwarfs carelessly--as if they were
saying, "Just for fun."
Jane stopped crying to say: "You are heartless."
"No, we aren't," they said. "Our hearts are made of the finest sealskin,
just like little fat sealskin purses--"
And they all came a step nearer. They were very fat and round. Their
bodies were like sealskin jackets on a very stout person; their heads
were like sealskin muffs; their legs were like sealskin boas; and their
hands and feet were like sealskin tobacco pouches. And their faces were
like seals' faces, inasmuch as they, too, were covered with sealskin.
"Thank you so much for telling us," said George. "Good evening. (Keep on
howling, Jane!)"
But the dwarfs came a step nearer, muttering and whispering. Then the
muttering stopped--and there was a silence so deep that Jane was afraid
to howl in it. But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white
silence better.
Then the chief dwarf came quite close and said: "What's that on your
head?"
And George felt it was all up--for he knew it was his father's sealskin
cap.
The dwarf did not wait for an answer. "It's made of one of us," he
screamed, "or else one of the seals, our poor relations. Boy, now your
fate is sealed!"
Looking at the wicked seal-faces all around them, George and Jane felt
that their fate was sealed indeed.
The dwarfs seized the children in their furry arms. George kicked, but
it is no use kicking sealskin, and Jane howled, but the dwarfs were
getting used to that. They climbed up the dragon's side and dumped the
children down on his icy spine, with their backs against the North Pole.
You have no idea how cold it was--the kind of cold that makes you feel
small and prickly inside your clothes, and makes you wish you had twenty
times as many clothes to feel small and prickly inside of.
The sealskin dwarfs tied George and Jane to the North Pole, and, as they
had no ropes, they bound them with snow-wreaths, which are very strong
when they are made in the proper way, and they heaped up the fires very
close and said: "Now the dragon will get warm, and when he gets warm he
will wake, and when he wakes he will be hungry, and when he is hungry he
will begin to eat, and the first thing he will eat will be you."
The little, sharp, many-colored flames sprang up like the stalks of
dream lilies, but no heat came to the children, and they grew colder and
colder.
"We shan't be very nice when the dragon does eat us, that's one
comfort," said George. "We shall be turned into ice long before that."
Suddenly there was a flapping of wings, and the white grouse perched on
the dragon's head and said: "Can I be of any assistance?"
[Illustration: "The dwarfs seized the children." _See page 72._]
Now, by this time the children were so cold, so cold, so very, very
cold, that they had forgotten everything but that, and they could say
nothing else. So the white grouse said: "One moment. I am only too
grateful for this opportunity of showing my sense of your manly conduct
about the firework!"
And the next moment there was a soft whispering rustle of wings
overhead, and then, fluttering slowly, softly down, came hundreds and
thousands of little white fluffy feathers. They fell on George and Jane
like snowflakes, and, like flakes of fallen snow lying one above
another, they grew into a thicker and thicker covering, so that
presently the children were buried under a heap of white feathers, and
only their faces peeped out.
"Oh, you dear, good, kind white grouse," said Jane, "but you'll be cold
yourself, won't you, now you have given us all your pretty dear
feathers?"
The white grouse laughed, and his laugh was echoed by thousands of kind,
soft bird voices.
"Did you think all those feathers came out of one breast? There are
hundreds and hundreds of us here, and every one of us can spare a little
tuft of soft breast feathers to help to keep two kind little hearts
warm!"
Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners.
So now the children snuggled under the feathers and were warm, and when
the sealskin dwarfs tried to take the feathers away, the grouse and his
friends flew in their faces with flappings and screams, and drove the
dwarfs back. They are a cowardly folk.
The dragon had not moved yet--but then he might at any moment get warm
enough to move, and though George and Jane were now warm they were not
comfortable nor easy in their minds. They tried to explain to the
grouse; but though he is polite, he is not clever, and he only said:
"You've got a warm nest, and we'll see that no one takes it from you.
What more can you possibly want?"
Just then came a new, strange, jerky fluttering of wings far softer
than the grouse's, and George and Jane cried out together: "Oh, _do_
mind your wings in the fires!"
For they saw at once that it was the great white Arctic moth.
"What's the matter?" he asked, settling on the dragon's tail.
So they told him.
"Sealskin, are they?" said the moth. "Just you wait a minute!"
He flew off very crookedly, dodging the flames, and presently he came
back, and there were so many moths with him that it was as if a live
sheet of white wingedness were suddenly drawn between the children and
the stars.
And then the doom of the bad sealskin dwarfs fell suddenly on them.
For the great sheet of winged whiteness broke up and fell as snow falls,
and it fell upon the sealskin dwarfs; and every snowflake of it was a
live, fluttering, hungry moth that buried its greedy nose deep in the
sealskin fur.
Grown-up people will tell you that it is not moths but moths' children
who eat fur--but this is only when they are trying to deceive you. When
they are not thinking about you they say, "I fear the moths have got at
my ermine tippet," or, "Your poor Aunt Emma had a lovely sable cloak,
but it was eaten by moths." And now there were more moths than have ever
been together in this world before, all settling on the sealskin dwarfs.
The dwarfs did not see their danger till it was too late. Then they
called for camphor and bitter apple and oil of lavender and yellow soap
and borax; and some of the dwarfs even started to get these things, but
long before any of them could get to the chemist's, all was over. The
moths ate and ate and ate till the sealskin dwarfs, being sealskin
throughout, even to the empty hearts of them, were eaten down to the
very life--and they fell one by one on the snow and so came to their
end. And all around the North Pole the snow was brown with their flat
bare pelts.
"Oh, thank you--thank you, darling Arctic moth," cried Jane. "You are
good--I do hope you haven't eaten enough to disagree with you
afterward!"
Millions of moth voices answered, with laughter as soft as moth wings,
"We should be a poor set of fellows if we couldn't over eat ourselves
once in a while--to oblige a friend."
And off they all fluttered, and the white grouse flew off, and the
sealskin dwarfs were all dead, and the fires went out, and George and
Jane were left alone in the dark with the dragon!
"Oh, dear," said Jane, "this is the worst of all!"
"We've no friends left to help us," said George. He never thought that
the dragon himself might help them--but then that was an idea that would
never have occurred to any boy.
It grew colder and colder and colder, and even under the grouse feathers
the children shivered.
Then, when it was so cold that it could not manage to be any colder
without breaking the thermometer, it stopped. And then the dragon
uncurled himself from around the North Pole, and stretched his long, icy
length over the snow, and said: "This is something like! How faint those
fires did make me feel!"
The fact was, the sealskin dwarfs had gone the wrong way to work: The
dragon had been frozen so long that now he was nothing but solid ice all
through, and the fires only made him feel as if he were going to die.
But when the fires were out he felt quite well, and very hungry. He
looked around for something to eat. But he never noticed George and
Jane, because they were frozen to his back.
He moved slowly off, and the snow-wreaths that bound the children to the
Pole gave way with a snap, and there was the dragon, crawling
south--with Jane and George on his great, scaly, icy shining back. Of
course the dragon had to go south if he went anywhere, because when you
get to the North Pole there is no other way to go. The dragon rattled
and tinkled as he went, exactly like the cut-glass chandelier when you
touch it, as you are strictly forbidden to do. Of course there are a
million ways of going south from the North Pole--so you will own that it
was lucky for George and Jane when the dragon took the right way and
suddenly got his heavy feet on the great slide. Off he went, full speed,
between the starry lamps, toward Forest Hill and the Crystal Palace.
"He's going to take us home," said Jane. "Oh, he is a good dragon. I
_am_ glad!"
George was rather glad too, though neither of the children felt at all
sure of their welcome, especially as their feet were wet, and they were
bringing a strange dragon home with them.
They went very fast, because dragons can go uphill as easily as down.
You would not understand why if I told you--because you are only in long
division at present; yet if you want me to tell you, so that you can
show off to other children, I will. It is because dragons can get their
tails into the fourth dimension and hold on there, and when you can do
that everything else is easy.
The dragon went very fast, only stopping to eat the collector and the
sportsman, who were still struggling to go up the slide--vainly, because
they had no tails, and had never even heard of the fourth dimension.
When the dragon got to the end of the slide he crawled very slowly
across the dark field beyond the field where there was a bonfire, next
to the next-door garden at Forest Hill.
* * * * *
He went slower and slower, and in the bonfire field he stopped
altogether, and because the Arctic regions had not got down so far as
that, and because the bonfire was very hot, the dragon began to melt and
melt and melt--and before the children knew what he was doing they found
themselves sitting in a large pool of water, and their boots were as wet
as wet, and there was not a bit of dragon left!
So they went indoors.
Of course some grown-up or other noticed at once that the boots of
George and Jane were wet and muddy, and that they had both been sitting
down in a very damp place, so they were sent to bed immediately.
It was long past their time, anyhow.
Now, if you are of an inquiring mind--not at all a nice thing in a
little child who reads fairy tales--you will want to know how it is that
since the sealskin dwarfs have all been killed, and the fires all been
let out, the Aurora Borealis shines, on cold nights, as brightly as
ever.
My dear, I do not know! I am not too proud to own that there are some
things I know nothing about--and this is one of them. But I do know that
whoever has lighted those fires again, it is certainly not the sealskin
dwarfs. They were all eaten by moths--and motheaten things are of no
use, even to light fires!
[Illustration: THE ISLAND OF THE NINE WHIRLPOOLS]
V. The Island of the Nine Whirlpools
The dark arch that led to the witch's cave was hung with a
black-and-yellow fringe of live snakes. As the Queen went in, keeping
carefully in the middle of the arch, all the snakes lifted their wicked,
flat heads and stared at her with their wicked, yellow eyes. You know it
is not good manners to stare, even at Royalty, except of course for
cats. And the snakes had been so badly brought up that they even put
their tongues out at the poor lady. Nasty, thin, sharp tongues they were
too.
Now, the Queen's husband was, of course, the King. And besides being a
King he was an enchanter, and considered to be quite at the top of his
profession, so he was very wise, and he knew that when Kings and Queens
want children, the Queen always goes to see a witch. So he gave the
Queen the witch's address, and the Queen called on her, though she was
very frightened and did not like it at all. The witch was sitting by a
fire of sticks, stirring something bubbly in a shiny copper cauldron.
"What do you want, my dear?" she said to the Queen.
"Oh, if you please," said the Queen, "I want a baby--a very nice one. We
don't want any expense spared. My husband said--"
"Oh, yes," said the witch. "I know all about him. And so you want a
child? Do you know it will bring you sorrow?"
"It will bring me joy first," said the Queen.
"Great sorrow," said the witch.
"Greater joy," said the Queen.
Then the witch said, "Well, have your own way. I suppose it's as much as
your place is worth to go back without it?"
"The King would be very much annoyed," said the poor Queen.
"Well, well," said the witch. "What will you give me for the child?"
"Anything you ask for, and all I have," said the Queen.
"Then give me your gold crown."
The Queen took it off quickly.
"And your necklace of blue sapphires."
The Queen unfastened it.
"And your pearl bracelets."
The Queen unclasped them.
"And your ruby clasps."
And the Queen undid the clasps.
"Now the lilies from your breast."
The Queen gathered together the lilies.
"And the diamonds of your little bright shoe buckles."
The Queen pulled off her shoes.
Then the witch stirred the stuff that was in the cauldron, and, one by
one, she threw in the gold crown and the sapphire necklace and the pearl
bracelets and the ruby clasps and the diamonds of the little bright shoe
buckles, and last of all she threw in the lilies.
The stuff in the cauldron boiled up in foaming flashes of yellow and
blue and red and white and silver, and sent out a sweet scent, and
presently the witch poured it out into a pot and set it to cool in the
doorway among the snakes.
Then she said to the Queen: "Your child will have hair as golden as your
crown, eyes as blue as your sapphires. The red of your rubies will lie
on its lips, and its skin will be clear and pale as your pearls. Its
soul will be white and sweet as your lilies, and your diamonds will be
no clearer than its wits."
"Oh, thank you, thank you," said the Queen, "and when will it come?"
"You will find it when you get home."
"And won't you have something for yourself?" asked the Queen. "Any
little thing you fancy--would you like a country, or a sack of jewels?"
"Nothing, thank you," said the witch. "I could make more diamonds in a
day than I should wear in a year."
"Well, but do let me do some little thing for you," the Queen went on.
"Aren't you tired of being a witch? Wouldn't you like to be a Duchess or
a Princess, or something like that?"
"There is one thing I should rather like," said the witch, "but it's
hard to get in my trade."
"Oh, tell me what," said the Queen.
"I should like some one to love me," said the witch.
Then the Queen threw her arms around the witch's neck and kissed her
half a hundred times. "Why," she said, "I love you better than my life!
You've given me the baby--and the baby shall love you too."
"Perhaps it will," said the witch, "and when the sorrow comes, send for
me. Each of your fifty kisses will be a spell to bring me to you. Now,
drink up your medicine, there's a dear, and run along home."
So the Queen drank the stuff in the pot, which was quite cool by this
time, and she went out under the fringe of snakes, and they all behaved
like good Sunday-school children. Some of them even tried to drop a
curtsy to her as she went by, though that is not easy when you are
hanging wrong way up by your tail. But the snakes knew the Queen was
friends with their mistress; so, of course, they had to do their best to
be civil.
When the Queen got home, sure enough there was the baby lying in the
cradle with the Royal arms blazoned on it, crying as naturally as
possible. It had pink ribbons to tie up its sleeves, so the Queen saw at
once it was a girl. When the King knew this he tore his black hair with
fury.
"Oh, you silly, silly Queen!" he said. "Why didn't I marry a clever
lady? Did you think I went to all the trouble and expense of sending you
to a witch to get a girl? You knew well enough it was a boy I wanted--a
boy, an heir, a Prince--to learn all my magic and my enchantments, and
to rule the kingdom after me. I'll bet a crown--my crown," he said, "you
never even thought to tell the witch what kind you wanted! Did you now?"
And the Queen hung her head and had to confess that she had only asked
for a child.
"Very well, madam," said the King, "very well--have your own way. And
make the most of your daughter, while she is a child."
The Queen did. All the years of her life had never held half so much
happiness as now lived in each of the moments when she held her little
baby in her arms. And the years went on, and the King grew more and more
clever at magic, and more and more disagreeable at home, and the
Princess grew more beautiful and more dear every day she lived.
The Queen and the Princess were feeding the goldfish in the courtyard
fountains with crumbs of the Princess's eighteenth birthday cake, when
the King came into the courtyard, looking as black as thunder, with his
black raven hopping after him. He shook his fist at his family, as
indeed he generally did whenever he met them, for he was not a King with
pretty home manners. The raven sat down on the edge of the marble basin
and tried to peck the goldfish. It was all he could do to show that he
was in the same temper as his master.
"A girl indeed!" said the King angrily. "I wonder you can dare to look
me in the face, when you remember how your silliness has spoiled
everything."
"You oughtn't to speak to my mother like that," said the Princess. She
was eighteen, and it came to her suddenly and all in a moment that she
was a grown-up, so she spoke out.
The King could not utter a word for several minutes. He was too angry.
But the Queen said, "My dear child, don't interfere," quite crossly, for
she was frightened.