As winter advanced, Captain Vane continued to keep up the interest of the Eskimos, and to increase their respect for the Kablunets, by gradually unfolding the various sources of power which were at his command.

 

He did this judiciously, just giving them a taste of the marvellous now and then to whet their appetites. He was particularly careful, however not to practise on their credulity or to pass himself off as a conjuror. He distinctly stated that all his powers were derived from God,—their father and his,—and that he only excelled them in some matters because of having had better opportunities of acquiring knowledge.

 

Among other things, he effected an adaptation of his kites which produced results so surprising that we feel bound to describe them particularly.

 

During the winter he found, as he had expected, that the average temperature at the Pole was not nearly so cold as that experienced in lower latitudes. As far as mere feeling went, indeed, the cold seemed severe enough; nevertheless it was not sufficiently intense to freeze the great ocean, which remained an “open basin” all the year round,—a result which was doubtless owing to the upflow of the warm under-currents from the equator, referred to in a previous chapter.

 

This, however, did not apply to the waters lying directly around the Poloe and Flatland groups. In these archipelagos the waters being shallow, the frost was quite intense enough to cool them to the bottom. Hence the sea immediately round the islands was covered with a thick coat of solid ice, which resembled in all respects the ordinary Arctic sea-ice, being hummocky in some places, comparatively smooth in others, with a strong iceberg here and there caught and imprisoned amongst it.

 

As this ice surrounded all the Polar land, and stretched out to sea far beyond the reach of vision, it followed that there was little or no difference between the winter experience of our discoverers and that of all other Arctic voyagers. This realm of what we may style island-ice stretched away, all round, in the direction of the Arctic circle, getting thinner and thinner towards its outer margin, until at last it became sludgy, and, finally, melted away into the open sea. This open sea, in its turn, stretched southward, all round, to the known Arctic regions. Thus the Arctic basin was found to be a zone of open water, surrounded by ice on the south, and with a patch of ice and land in its centre.

 

Now, it was a strong desire on the part of Captain Vane to visit the southern edge of this central ice-patch on which he dwelt, that induced him to try the kite adaptation before referred to.

 

“Benjy, my boy,” said he, one fine winter day, when the galaxy of stars, the full moon, and an unusually brilliant aurora, diffused a strong light over the undulations of Cup Valley, “I have a notion of taking a trip to the s’uth’ard soon.”

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