While these stirring events were taking place in Flatland, our friends in the Island of Poloe continued to fish and hunt, and keep watch and ward against their expected enemies in the usual fashion; but alas for the poor Englishmen! All the light had gone out of their eyes; all the elasticity had vanished from their spirits. Ah! it is only those who know what it is to lose a dear friend or brother, who can understand the terrible blank which had descended on the lives of our discoverers, rendering them, for the time at least, comparatively indifferent to the events that went on around them, and totally regardless of the great object which had carried them so far into those regions of ice.

 

They could no longer doubt that Leo and his companions had perished, for they had searched every island of the Poloe group, including that one on which Leo and the Eskimos had found temporary refuge. Here, indeed, a momentary gleam of hope revived, when Alf found the spent cartridge-cases which his brother had thrown down on the occasion of his shooting for the purpose of impressing his captors, and they searched every yard of the island, high and low, for several days, before suffering themselves to relapse into the old state of despair. No evidence whatever remained to mark the visit of the Eskimos, for these wily savages never left anything behind them on their war-expeditions, and the storm had washed away any footprints that might have remained in the hard rocky soil.

 

Amalatok—who, with his son and his men, sympathised with the Englishmen in their loss, and lent able assistance in the prolonged search—gave the final death-blow to their hopes by his remarks, when Captain Vane suggested that perhaps the lost ones had been blown over the sea to Flatland.

 

“That is not possible,” said Amalatok promptly.

 

“Why not? The distance is not so very great.”

 

“The distance is not very great, that is true,” replied Amalatok. “If Lo had sailed away to Flatland he might have got safely there, but Blackbeard surely forgets that the storm did not last more than a few hours. If Lo had remained even a short time on this island, would not the calm weather which followed the storm have enabled him to paddle back again to Poloe? No, he must have thought the storm was going to be a long one, and thinking that, must have tried, again to face it and paddle against it. In this attempt he has perished. Without doubt Lo and Unders and Oblooria are in the land of spirits.”

 

Eskimos of the far north, unlike the red men of the prairies, are prone to give way to their feelings. At the mention of the timid one’s name, Oolichuk covered his face with his hands and wept aloud. Poor Alf and Benjy felt an almost irresistible desire to join him. All the fun and frolic had gone completely out of the latter, and as for Alf, he went about like a man half asleep, with a strange absent look in his eyes and a perfect blank on his expressionless face. No longer did he roam the hills of Poloeland with geological hammer and box. He merely went fishing when advised or asked to do so, or wandered aimlessly on the sea-shore. The Captain and Benjy acted much in the same way. In the extremity of their grief they courted solitude.

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