Away to the northward of the spot where the Whitebear had been wrecked there stretched a point of land far out into the Arctic Ocean. It was about thirty miles distant, and loomed hugely bluff and grand against the brilliant sky, as if it were the forefront of the northern world. No civilised eyes had ever beheld that land before. Captain Vane knew that, because it lay in latitude 83 north, which was a little beyond the furthest point yet reached by Arctic navigators. He therefore named it Cape Newhope. Benjy thought that it should have been named Butterface-beak, because the steward had been the first to observe it, but his father thought otherwise.
About three miles to the northward of this point of land the Eskimos were encamped. According to arrangement with the white men they had gone there, as we have said, in charge of the dogs brought by Captain Vane from Upernavik, as these animals, it was thought, stood much in need of exercise.
Here the natives had found and taken possession of a number of deserted Eskimo huts.
These rude buildings were the abodes to which the good people migrated when summer heat became so great as to render their snow-huts sloppily disagreeable.
In one of the huts sat Chingatok, his arms resting on his knees, his huge hands clasped, and his intelligent eyes fixed dreamily on the lamp-flame, over which his culinary mother was bending in busy sincerity. There were many points of character in which this remarkable mother and son resembled each other. Both were earnest—intensely so—and each was enthusiastically eager about small matters as well as great. In short, they both possessed great though uncultivated minds.
The hut they occupied was in some respects as remarkable as themselves. It measured about six feet in height and ten in diameter. The walls were made of flattish stones, moss, and the bones of seals, whales, narwhals, and other Arctic creatures. The stones were laid so that each overlapped the one below it, a very little inwards, and thus the walls approached each other gradually as they rose from the foundation; the top being finally closed by slabs of slate-stone. Similar stones covered the floor—one half of which floor was raised a foot or so above the other, and this raised half served for a seat by day as well as a couch by night. On it were spread a thick layer of dried moss, and several seal, dog, and bear skins. Smaller elevations in the corners near the entrance served for seats. The door was a curtain of sealskin. Above it was a small window, glazed, so to speak, with strips of semi-transparent dried intestines sewed together.
Toolooha’s cooking-lamp was made of soapstone, formed like a clam-shell, and about eight inches in diameter; the fuel was seal-oil, and the wick was of moss. It smoked considerably, but Eskimos are smoke-proof. The pot above it, suspended from the roof, was also made of soapstone. Sealskins hung about the walls drying; oily mittens, socks and boots were suspended about on pegs and racks of rib-bones. Lumps of blubber hung and lay about miscellaneously. Odours, not savoury, were therefore prevalent—but Eskimos are smell-proof.
“Mother,” said the giant, raising his eyes from the flame to his parent’s smoke-encircled visage, “they are a most wonderful people, these Kablunets. Blackbeard is a great man—a grand man—but I think he is—”
Chingatok paused, shook his head, and touched his forehead with a look of significance worthy of a white man.
“Why think you so, my son?” asked the old woman, sneezing, as a denser cloud than usual went up her nose.
“Because he has come here to search for nothing.”
“Nothing, my son?”
“Yes—at least that is what he tried to explain to me. Perhaps the interpreter could not explain. He is not a smart man, that interpreter. He resembles a walrus with his brain scooped out. He spoke much, but I could not understand.”
“Could not understand?” repeated Toolooha, with an incredulous look, “let not Chingatok say so. Is there anything that passes the lips of man which he cannot understand?”
“Truly, mother, I once thought there was not,” replied the giant, with a modest look, “but I am mistaken. The Kablunets make me stare and feel foolish.”
“But it is not possible to search for nothing,” urged Toolooha.
“So I said,” replied her son, “but Blackbeard only laughed at me.”
“Did he?” cried the mother, with a much relieved expression, “then let your mind rest, my son, for Blackbeard must be a fool if he laughed at you.”
“Blackbeard is no fool,” replied Chingatok.
“Has he not come to search for new lands here, as you went to search for them there?” asked Toolooha, pointing alternately north and south.
“No—if I have understood him. Perhaps the brainless walrus translated his words wrongly.”
“Is the thing he searches for something to eat?”
“Something to drink or wear?”
“No, I tell you. It is nothing! Yet he gives it a name. He calls it Nort Pole!”
Perhaps it is needless to remind the reader that Chingatok and his mother conversed in their native tongue, which we have rendered as literally as possible, and that the last two words were his broken English for “North Pole!”
“Nort Pole!” repeated Toolooha once or twice contemplatively. “Well, he may search for nothing if he will, but that he cannot find.”
“Nay, mother,” returned the giant with a soft smile, “if he will search for nothing he is sure to find it!”
Chingatok sighed, for his mother did not see the joke.
“Blackbeard,” he continued with a grave, puzzled manner, “said that this world on which we stand floats in the air like a bird, and spins round!”
“Then Blackbeard is a liar,” said Toolooha quietly, though without a thought of being rude. She merely meant what she said, and said what she meant, being a naturally candid woman.
“That may be so, mother, but I think not.”
“How can the world float without wings?” demanded the old woman indignantly. “If it spinned should we not feel the spinning, and grow giddy?”
“And Blackbeard says,” continued the giant, regardless of the questions propounded, “that it spins round upon this Nort Pole, which he says is not a real thing, but only nothing. I asked Blackbeard—How can a world spin upon nothing?”
“And what said he to that?” demanded Toolooha quickly.
“He only laughed. They all laughed when the brainless walrus put my question. There is one little boy—the son I think of Blackbeard—who laughed more than all the rest. He lay down on the ice to laugh, and rolled about as if he had the bowel-twist.”
“That son of Blackbeard must be a fool more than his father,” said Toolooha, casting a look of indignation at her innocent kettle.
“Perhaps; but he is not like his father,” returned Chingatok meekly. “There are two other chiefs among the Kablunets who seem to me fine men. They are very young and wise. They have learned a little of our tongue from the Brainless One, and asked me some questions about the rocks, and the moss, and the flowers. They are tall and strong. One of them is very grave and seems to think much, like myself. He also spoke of this Nothing—this Nort Pole. They are all mad, I think, about that thing—that Nothing!”
The conversation was interrupted at this point by the sudden entrance of the giant’s little sister with the news that the Kablunets were observed coming round the great cape, dragging a sledge.
“Is not the big oomiak with them?” asked her brother, rising quickly.
“No, we see no oomiak—no wings—no fire,” answered Oblooria, “only six men dragging a sledge.”
Chingatok went out immediately, and Oblooria was about to follow when her mother recalled her.
“Come here, little one. There is a bit of blubber for you to suck. Tell me, saw you any sign of madness in these white men when they were talking with your brother about this—this—Nort Pole.”
“No, mother, no,” answered Oblooria thoughtfully, “I saw not madness. They laughed much, it is true—but not more than Oolichuk laughs sometimes. Yes—I think again! There was one who seems mad—the small boy, whom brother thinks to be the son of Blackbeard—Benjay, they call him.”
“Hah! I thought so,” exclaimed Toolooha, evidently pleased at her penetration on this point. “Go, child, I cannot quit the lamp. Bring me news of what they say and do.”
Oblooria obeyed with alacrity, bolting her strip of half-cooked blubber as she ran; her mother meanwhile gave her undivided attention to the duties of the lamp.
The white men and all the members of the Eskimo band were standing by the sledge engaged in earnest conversation when the little girl came forward. Captain Vane was speaking.
“Yes, Chingatok,” he said, looking up at the tall savage, who stood erect in frame but with bent head and his hands clasped before him, like a modest chief, which in truth he was. “Yes, if you will guide me to your home in the northern lands, I will pay you well—for I have much iron and wood and such things as I think you wish for and value, and you shall also have my best thanks and gratitude. The latter may not indeed be worth much, but, nevertheless, you could not purchase it with all the wealth of the Polar regions.”
Chingatok looked with penetrating gaze at Anders while he translated, and, considering the nature of the communication, the so-called Brainless One proved himself a better man than the giant gave him credit for.
“Does Blackbeard,” asked Chingatok, after a few seconds’ thought, “expect to find this Nothing—this Nort Pole, in my country?”
“Well, I cannot exactly say that I do,” replied the Captain; “you see, I’m not quite sure, from what you tell me, where your country is. It may not reach to the Pole, but it is enough for me that it lies in that direction, and that you tell me there is much open water there. Men of my nation have been in these regions before now, and some of them have said that the Polar Sea is open, others that it is covered always with ice so thick that it never melts. Some have said it is a ‘sea of ancient ice’ so rough that no man can travel over it, and that it is not possible to reach the North Pole. I don’t agree with that. I had been led to expect to fall in with this sea of ancient ice before I had got thus far, but it is not to be found. The sea indeed is partly blocked with ordinary ice, but there is nothing to be seen of this vast collection of mighty blocks, some of them thirty feet high—this wild chaos of ice which so effectually stopped some of those who went before me.”
This speech put such brains as the Brainless One possessed to a severe test, and, after all, he failed to convey its full meaning to Chingatok, who, however, promptly replied to such portions as he understood.
“What Blackbeard calls the sea of old ice does exist,” he said; “I have seen it. No man could travel on it, only the birds can cross it. But ice is not land. It changes place. It is here to-day; it is there to-morrow. Next day it is gone. We cannot tell where it goes to or when it will come back. The very old ice comes back again and again. It is slow to become like your Nort Pole—nothing. But it melts at last and more comes in its place—growing old slowly and vanishing slowly. It is full of wonder—like the stars; like the jumping flames; like the sun and moon, which we cannot understand.”
Chingatok paused and looked upwards with a solemn expression. His mind had wandered into its favourite channels, and for the moment he forgot the main subject of conversation, while the white men regarded him with some surprise, his comrades with feelings of interest not unmingled with awe.
“But,” he continued, “I know where the sea of ancient ice-blocks is just now. I came past it in my kayak, and can guide you to it by the same way.”
“That is just what I want, Chingatok,” said the Captain with a joyful look, “only aid me in this matter, and I will reward you well. I’ve already told you that my ship is wrecked, and that the crew, except those you see here, have left me; but I have saved all the cargo and buried it in a place of security with the exception of those things which I need for my expedition. One half of these things are on this sledge,—the other half on a sledge left behind and ready packed near the wreck. Now, I want you to send men to fetch that sledge here.”
“That shall be done,” said Chingatok. “Thanks, thanks, my good fellow,” returned the Captain, “and we must set about it at once, for the summer is advancing, and you know as well as I do that the hot season is but a short one in these regions.”
“A moment more shall not be lost,” said the giant.
He turned to Oolichuk, who had been leaning on a short spear, and gazing open-mouthed, eyed, and eared, during the foregoing conversation, and said a few words to him and to the other Eskimos in a low tone.
Oolichuk merely nodded his head, said “Yah!” or something similarly significant, shouldered his spear and went off in the direction of the Cape of Newhope, followed by nearly all the men of the party.
“Stay, not quite so fast,” cried Captain Vane.
“Stop!” shouted Chingatok.
Oolichuk and his men paused.
“One of us had better go with them,” said the Captain, “to show the place where the sledge has been left.”
“I will go, uncle, if you’ll allow me,” said Leo Vandervell.
“Oh! let me go too, father,” pleaded Benjy, “I’m not a bit tired; do.”
“You may both go. Take a rifle with you, Leo. There’s no saying what you may meet on the way.”
In half-an-hour the party under Oolichuk had reached the extremity of the cape, and Captain Vane observed that his volatile son mounted to the top of an ice-block to wave a farewell. He looked like a black speck, or a crow, in the far distance. Another moment, and the speck had disappeared among the hummocks of the ice-locked sea.
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