The Whitebear steam yacht, owned and commanded by Captain Jacob Vane, had sailed from England, and was bound for the North Pole.
“I’ll find it—I’m bound to find it,” was the Captain’s usual mode of expressing himself to his intimates on the subject, “if there’s a North Pole in the world at all, and my nephews Leo and Alf will help me. Leo’s a doctor, almost, and Alf’s a scientific Jack-of-all-trades, so we can’t fail. I’ll take my boy Benjy for the benefit of his health, and see if we don’t bring home a chip o’ the Pole big enough to set up beside Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames embankment.”
There was tremendous energy in Captain Vane, and indomitable resolution; but energy and resolution cannot achieve all things. There are other factors in the life of man which help to mould his destiny.
Short and sad and terrible—ay, we might even say tremendous—was the Whitebear’s wild career.
Up to the time of her meeting with the Eskimos, all had gone well. Fair weather and favouring winds had blown her across the Atlantic. Sunshine and success had received her, as it were, in the Arctic regions. The sea was unusually free of ice. Upernavik, the last of the Greenland settlements touched at, was reached early in the season, and the native interpreter Anders secured. The dreaded “middle passage,” near the head of Baffin’s Bay, was made in the remarkably short space of fifty hours, and, passing Cape York into the North Water, they entered Smith’s Sound without having received more than a passing bump—an Arctic kiss as it were—from the Polar ice.
In Smith’s Sound fortune still favoured them. These resolute intending discoverers of the North Pole passed in succession the various “farthests” of previous explorers, and the stout brothers Vandervell, with their cousin Benjy Vane, gazed eagerly over the bulwarks at the swiftly-passing headlands, while the Captain pointed out the places of interest, and kept up a running commentary on the brave deeds and high aspirations of such well-known men as Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, Ross, Parry, Franklin, Kane, McClure, Rae, McClintock, Hayes, Hall, Nares, Markham, and all the other heroes of Arctic story.
It was an era in the career of those three youths that stood out bright and fresh—never to be forgotten—this first burst of the realities of the Arctic world on minds which had been previously well informed by books. The climax was reached on the day when the Eskimos of the far north were met with.
But from that time a change took place in their experience. Fortune seemed to frown from that memorable day. We say “seemed,” because knitted brows do not always or necessarily indicate what is meant by a frown.
After the first fears of the Eskimos had been allayed, a party of them were invited to go on board the ship. They accepted the invitation and went, headed by Chingatok.
That noble savage required no persuasion. From the first he had shown himself to be utterly devoid of fear. He felt that the grand craving of his nature—a thirst for knowledge—was about to be gratified, and that would have encouraged him to risk anything, even if he had been much less of a hero than he was.
But if fear had no influence over our giant, the same cannot be said of his companions. Oolichuk, indeed, was almost as bold, though he exhibited a considerable amount of caution in his looks and movements; but Eemerk, and one or two of his friends, betrayed their craven spirits in frequent startled looks and changing colour. Ivitchuk was a strange compound of nervousness and courage, while Akeetolik appeared to have lost the power of expressing every feeling but one—that of blank amazement. Indeed, surprise at what they saw on board the steam yacht was the predominant feeling amongst these children of nature. Their eyebrows seemed to have gone up and fixed themselves in the middle of their foreheads, and their eyes and mouths to have opened wide permanently. None of the women accepted the invitation to go aboard except Tekkona, and Oblooria followed her, not because she was courageous, but because she seemed to cling to the stronger nature as a protection from undefined and mysterious dangers.
“Tell them,” said Captain Vane to Anders, the Eskimo interpreter, “that these are the machines that drive the ship along when there is no wind.”
He pointed down the hatchway, where the complication of rods and cranks glistened in the hold.
“Huk!” exclaimed the Eskimos. They sometimes exclaimed Hi! ho! hoy! and hah! as things were pointed out to them, but did not venture on language more intelligible at first.
“Let ’em hear the steam-whistle,” suggested the mate.
Before the Captain could countermand the order, Benjy had touched the handle and let off a short, sharp skirl. The effect on the natives was powerful.
They leaped, with a simultaneous yell, at least a foot off the deck, with the exception of Chingatok, though even he was visibly startled, while Oblooria seized Tekkona round the waist, and buried her face in her friend’s jacket.
A brief explanation soon restored them to equanimity, and they were about to pass on to some other object of interest, when both the steam-whistle and the escape-valve were suddenly opened to their full extent, and there issued from the engine a hissing yell so prolonged and deafening that even the Captain’s angry shout was not heard.
A yard at least was the leap into the air made by the weakest of the Eskimos—except our giant, who seemed, however, to shrink into himself, while he grasped his knife and looked cautiously round, as if to guard himself from any foe that might appear. Eemerk fairly turned and fled to the stern of the yacht, over which he would certainly have plunged had he not been forcibly restrained by two stout seamen. The others, trembling violently, stood still, because they knew not what to do, and poor Oblooria fell flat on the deck, catching Tekkona by the tail, and pulling her down beside her.
“You scoundrel!” exclaimed the Captain, when the din ceased, “I—I—go down, sir, to—”
“Oh! father, don’t be hard on me,” pleaded Benjy, with a gleefully horrified look, “I really could not resist it. The—the temptation was too strong!”
“The temptation to give you a rope’s-ending is almost too strong for me, Benjamin,” returned the Captain sternly, but there was a twinkle in his eye notwithstanding, as he turned to explain to Chingatok that his son had, by way of jest, allowed part of the mighty Power imprisoned in the machinery to escape.
The Eskimo received the explanation with dignified gravity, and a faint smile played on his lips as he glanced approvingly at Benjy, for he loved a jest, and was keenly alive to a touch of humour.
“What power is imprisoned in the machinery?” asked our Eskimo through the interpreter.
“What power?” repeated the Captain with a puzzled look, “why, it’s boiling water—steam.” Here he tried to give a clear account of the nature and power and application of steam, but, not being gifted with capacity for lucid explanation, and the mind of Anders being unaccustomed to such matters, the result was that the brain of Chingatok was filled with ideas that were fitted rather to amaze than to instruct him.
After making the tour of the vessel, the party again passed the engine hatch. Chingatok touched the interpreter quietly, and said in a low, grave tone, “Tell Blackbeard,” (thus he styled the Captain), “to let the Power yell again!”
Anders glanced up in the giant’s grave countenance with a look of amused surprise. He understood him, and whispered to the Captain, who smiled intelligently, and, turning to his son, said—
“Do it again, Benjy. Give it ’em strong.”
Never before did that lad obey his father with such joyous alacrity. In another instant the whistle shrieked, and the escape-valve hissed ten times more furiously than before. Up went the Eskimo—three feet or more—as if in convulsions, and away went Eemerk to the stern, over which he dived, swam to the floe, leaped on his sledge, cracked his whip, and made for home on the wings of terror. Doubtless an evil conscience helped his cowardice.
Meanwhile Chingatok laughed, despite his struggles to be grave. This revealed the trick to some of his quick-witted and humour-loving companions, who at once burst into loud laughter. Even Oblooria dismissed her fears and smiled. In this restored condition they were taken down to the cabin and fed sumptuously.
That night, as Chingatok sat beside his mother, busy with a seal’s rib, he gradually revealed to her the wonders he had seen.
“The white men are very wise, mother.”
“So you have said four times, my son.”
“But you cannot understand it.”
“But my son can make me understand,” said Toolooha, helping the amiable giant to a second rib.
Chingatok gazed at his little mother with a look of solemnity that evidently perplexed her. She became restless under it, and wiped her forehead uneasily with the flap at the end of her tail. The youth seemed about to speak, but he only sighed and addressed himself to the second rib, over which he continued to gaze while he masticated.
“My thoughts are big, mother,” he said, laying down the bare bone.
“That may well be, for so is your head, my son,” she replied, gently.
“I know not how to begin, mother.”
“Another rib may open your lips, perhaps,” suggested the old woman, softly.
“True; give me one,” said Chingatok.
The third rib seemed to have the desired effect, for, while busy with it, he began to give his parent a graphic account of the yacht and its crew, and it was really interesting to note how correctly he described all that he understood of what he had seen. But some of the things he had partly failed to comprehend, and about these he was vague.
“And they have a—a Power, mother, shut up in a hard thing, so that it can’t get out unless they let it, and it drives the big canoe through the water. It is very strong—terrible!”
“Is it a devil?” asked Toolooha.
“No, it is not alive. It is dead. It is that,” he pointed with emphasis to a pot hanging over the lamp out of which a little steam was issuing, and looked at his mother with awful solemnity. She returned the look with something of incredulity.
“Yes, mother, the Power is not a beast. It lives not, yet it drives the white man’s canoe, which is as big as a little iceberg, and it whistles; it shrieks; it yells!”
A slightly sorrowful look rested for a moment on Toolooha’s benign countenance. It was evident that she suspected her son either of derangement, or having forsaken the paths of truth. But it passed like a summer cloud.
“Tell me more,” she said, laying her hand affectionately on the huge arm of Chingatok, who had fallen into a contemplative mood, and, with hands clasped over one knee, sat gazing upwards.
Before he could reply the heart of Toolooha was made to bound by a shriek more terrible than she had ever before heard or imagined.
Chingatok caught her by the wrist, held up a finger as if to impose silence, smiled brightly, and listened.
Again the shriek was repeated with prolonged power.
“Tell me, my son,” gasped Toolooha, “is Oblooria—are the people safe? Why came you to me alone?”
“The little sister and the people are safe. I came alone to prevent your being taken by surprise. Did I not say that it could shriek and yell? This is the white man’s big canoe.”
Dropping the old woman’s hand as he spoke, Chingatok darted into the open air with the agility of a Polar bear, and Toolooha followed with the speed of an Arctic hare.
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |