THE LAST

In course of time the long and dreary winter passed away, and signs of the coming spring began to manifest themselves to the dwellers in the Polar lands.

Chief and most musical among these signs were the almost forgotten sounds of dropping water, and tinkling rills.  One day in April the thermometer suddenly rose to eighteen above the freezing-point of Fahrenheit.  Captain Vane came from the observatory, his face blazing with excitement and oily with heat, to announce the fact.

“That accounts for it feeling so like summer,” said Benjy.

“Summer, boy, it’s like India,” returned the Captain, puffing and fanning himself with his cap.  “We’ll begin this very day to make arrangements for returning home.”

It was on the evening of that day that they heard the first droppings of the melting snow.  Long before that, however, the sun had come back to gladden the Polar regions, and break up the reign of ancient night.  His departure in autumn had been so gradual, that it was difficult to say when night began to overcome the day.  So, in like manner, his return was gradual.  It was not until Captain Vane observed stars of the sixth magnitude shining out at noon in November, that he had admitted the total absence of day; and when spring returned, it was not until he could read the smallest print at midnight in June that he admitted there was “no night there.”

But neither the continual day of summer, nor the perpetual night of winter, made so deep an impression on our explorers as the gushing advent of spring.  That season did not come gradually back like the light, but rushed upon them suddenly with a warm embrace, like an enthusiastic friend after a long absence.  It plunged, as it were, upon the region, and overwhelmed it.  Gushing waters thrilled the ears with the sweetness of an old familiar song.  Exhalations from the moistened earth, and, soon after, the scent of awakening vegetation, filled the nostrils with delicious fragrance.  In May, the willow-stems were green and fresh with flowing sap.  Flowers began to bud modestly, as if half afraid of having come too soon.  But there was no cause to fear that.  The glorious sun was strong in his might, and, like his Maker, warmed the northern world into exuberant life.  Mosses, poppies, saxifrages, cochléaria, and other hardy plants began to sprout, and migratory birds innumerable ­screaming terns, cackling duck, piping plover, auks in dense clouds with loudly whirring wings, trumpeting geese, eider-ducks, burgomasters, etcetera, began to return with all the noisy bustle and joyous excitement of a family on its annual visit to much-loved summer quarters.

But here we must note a difference between the experience of our explorers and that of all others.  These myriads of happy creatures ­and many others that we have not space to name ­did not pass from the south onward to a still remoter north, but came up from all round the horizon, ­up all the meridians of longitude, as on so many railway lines converging at the Pole, and settling down for a prolonged residence in garrulous felicity among the swamps and hills and vales of Flatland.

Truly it was a most enjoyable season and experience, but there is no joy without its alley here below ­not even at the North Pole!

The alloy came in the form of a low fever which smote down the stalwart Leo, reduced his great strength seriously, and confined him for many weeks to a couch in their little stone hut, and, of course, the power of sympathy robbed his companions of much of that exuberant joy which they shared with the lower animals at the advent of beautiful spring.

During the period of his illness Leo’s chief nurse, comforter, and philosophical companion, was the giant of the North.  And one of the subjects which occupied their minds most frequently was the Word of God.  In the days of weakness and suffering Leo took to that great source of comfort with thirsting avidity, and intense was his gratification at the eager desire expressed by the giant to hear and understand what it contained.

Of course Alf, and Benjy, and the Captain, and Butterface, as well as Grabantak, Makitok, and Amalatok, with others of the Eskimos, were frequently by his side, but the giant never left him for more than a brief period, night or day.

“Ah!  Chingatok,” said Leo one day, when the returning spring had begun to revive his strength, “I never felt such a love for God’s Book when I was well and strong as I feel for it now that I am ill, and I little thought that I should find out so much of its value while talking about it to an Eskimo.  I shall be sorry to leave you, Chingatok ­very sorry.”

“The young Kablunet is not yet going to die,” said the giant in a soft voice.

“I did not mean that,” replied Leo, with the ghost of his former hearty laugh; “I mean that I shall be obliged to leave Flatland and to return to my own home as soon as the season permits.  Captain Vane has been talking to me about it.  He is anxious now to depart, yet sorry to leave his kind and hospitable friends.”

“I, too, am sorry,” returned Chingatok sadly.  “No more shall I hear from your lips the sweet words of my Great Father ­the story of Jesus.  You will take your book away with you.”

“That is true, my friend; and it would be useless to leave my Bible with you, as you could not read it, but the truth will remain with you, Chingatok.”

“Yes,” replied the giant with a significant smile, “you cannot take that away.  It is here ­and here.”  He touched his forehead and breast as he spoke.  Then he continued: ­

“These strange things that Alf has been trying to teach me during the long nights I have learned ­I understand.”

He referred here to a syllabic alphabet which Alf had invented, and which he had amused himself by teaching to some of the natives, so that they might write down and read those few words and messages in their own tongue which formerly they had been wont to convey to each other by means of signs and rude drawings ­after the manner of most savages.

“Well, what about that?” asked Leo, as his companion paused.

“Could not my friend,” replied Chingatok, “change some of the words of his book into the language of the Eskimo and mark them down?”

Leo at once jumped at the idea.  Afterwards he spoke to Alf about it, and the two set to work to translate some of the most important passages of Scripture, and write them down in the syllable alphabet.  For this purpose they converted a sealskin into pretty fair parchment, and wrote with the ink which Captain Vane had brought with him and carefully husbanded.  The occupation proved a beneficial stimulus to the invalid, who soon recovered much of his wonted health, and even began again to wander about with his old companion the repeating rifle.

The last event of interest which occurred at the North Pole, before the departure of our explorers, was the marriage of Oolichuk with Oblooria.  The ceremony was very simple.  It consisted in the bridegroom dressing in his best and going to the tent of his father-in-law with a gift, which he laid at his feet.  He then paid some endearing Eskimo attentions to his mother-in-law, one of which was to present her with a raw duck, cleaned and dismembered for immediate consumption.  He even assisted that pleased lady immediately to consume the duck, and wound up by taking timid little Oblooria’s hand and leading her away to a hut of his own, which he had specially built and decorated for the occasion.

As Amalatok had arrived that very day on a visit from Poloeland with his prime minister and several chiefs, and Grabantak was residing on the spot, with a number of chiefs from the surrounding islands, who had come to behold the famous Kablunets, there was a sort of impromptu gathering of the northern clans which lent appropriate dignity to the wedding.

After the preliminary feast of the occasion was over, Captain Vane was requested to exhibit some of his wonderful powers for the benefit of a strange chief who had recently arrived from a distant island.  Of course our good-natured Captain complied.

“Get out the boats and kites, Benjy, boy,” he said; “we must go through our performances to please ’em.  I feel as if we were a regular company of play-actors now.”

“Won’t you give them a blow-up first, father?”

“No, Benjy, no.  Never put your best foot foremost.  The proverb is a false one ­as many proverbs are.  We will dynamite them afterwards, and electrify them last of all.  Go, look sharp.”

So the Captain first amazed the visitor with the kites and india-rubber boats; then he horrified him by blowing a small iceberg of some thousands of tons into millions of atoms; after which he convulsed him and made him “jump.”

The latter experiment was the one to which the enlightened Eskimos looked forward with the most excited and hopeful anticipations, for it was that which gratified best their feeling of mischievous joviality.

When the sedate and dignified chief was led, all ignorant of his fate, to the mysterious mat, and stood thereon with grave demeanour, the surrounding natives bent their knees, drew up elbows, expanded fingers, and glared in expectancy.  When the dignified chief experienced a tremor of the frame and looked surprised, they grinned with satisfaction; when he quivered convulsively they also quivered with suppressed emotion.  Ah!  Benjy had learned by that time from experience to graduate very delicately his shocking scale, and thus lead his victim step by step from bad to worse, so as to squeeze the utmost amount of fun out of him, before inducing that galvanic war-dance which usually terminated the scene and threw his audience into fits of ecstatic laughter.

These were the final rejoicings of the wedding day ­if we except a dance in which every man did what seemed best in his own eyes, and Butterface played reels on the flute with admirable incapacity.

But there came a day, at last, when the inhabitants of Flatland were far indeed removed from the spirit of merriment.

It was the height of the Arctic summer-time, when the crashing of the great glaciers and the gleaming of the melting bergs told of rapid dissolution, and the sleepless sun was circling its day-and-nightly course in the ever-bright blue sky.  The population of Flatland was assembled on the beach of their native isle ­the men with downcast looks, the women with sad and tearful eyes.  Two india-rubber boats were on the shore.  Two kites were flying overhead.  The third boat and kite had been damaged beyond repair, but the two left were sufficient.  The Englishmen were about to depart, and the Eskimos were inconsolable.

  “My boat is on the shore, ­”

Said Benjy, quoting Byron, as he shook old Makitok by the hand ­

  “And my kite is in the sky,
  But before I go, of more,
  I will ­bid you ­all ­good-b ­”

Benjy broke down at this point.  The feeble attempt to be facetious to the last utterly failed.

Turning abruptly on his heel he stepped into the Faith and took his seat in the stern.  It was the Hope which had been destroyed.  The Faith and Charity still remained to them.

We must draw a curtain over that parting scene.  Never before in human experience had such a display of kindly feeling and profound regret been witnessed in similar circumstances.

“Let go the tail-ropes!” said Captain Vane in a husky tone.

“Let go de ropes,” echoed Butterface in a broken voice.

The ropes were let go.  The kites soared, and the boats rushed swiftly over the calm and glittering sea.

On nearing one of the outer islands the voyagers knew that their tiny boats would soon be shut out from view, and they rose to wave a last farewell.  The salute was returned by the Eskimos ­with especial fervour by Chingatok, who stood high above his fellows on a promontory, and waved the parchment roll of texts which he grasped in his huge right hand.

Long after the boats had disappeared, the kites could still be seen among the gorgeous clouds.  Smaller and smaller they became in their flight to the mysterious south, until at last they seemed undistinguishable specks on the horizon, and then vanished altogether from view.

One by one the Eskimos retired to their homes ­slowly and sadly, as if loath to part from the scene where the word farewell had been spoken.  At last all were gone save Chingatok, who still stood for hours on the promontory, pressing the scroll to his heaving chest, and gazing intently at the place on the horizon where his friends had disappeared.

There was no night to bring his vigil or his meditations to a close, but time wore him out at last.  With a sigh, amounting almost to a groan, he turned and walked slowly away, and did not stop until he stood upon the Pole, where he sat down on one of the Captain’s stools, and gazed mournfully at the remains of the dismantled observatory.  There he was found by old Makitok, and for some time the giant and the wizard held converse together.

“I love these Kablunets,” said Chingatok.

“They are a strange race,” returned the wizard.  “They mingle much folly with their wisdom.  They come here to find this Nort Pole, this nothing, and they find it.  Then they go away and leave it!  What good has it done them?”

“I know not,” replied Chingatok humbly, “but I know not everything.  They have showed me much.  One thing they have showed me ­that behind all things there is something else which I do not see.  The Kablunets are wonderful men.  Yet I pity them.  As Blackbeard has said, some of them are too fond of killing themselves, and some are too fond of killing each other.  I wish they would come here ­the whole nation of them ­and learn how to live in peace and be happy among the Eskimos.  But they will not come.  Only a few of their best men venture to come, and I should not wonder if their countrymen refused to believe the half of what they tell them when they get home.”

Old Makitok made no reply.  He was puzzled, and when puzzled he usually retired to his hut and went to bed.  Doing so on the present occasion he left his companion alone.

“Poor, poor Kablunets,” murmured Chingatok, descending from his position, and wandering away towards the outskirts of the village.  “You are very clever, but you are somewhat foolish.  I pity you, but I also love you well.”

With his grand head down, his arms crossed, and the scroll of texts pressed to his broad bosom, the Giant of the North wandered away, and finally disappeared among the flowering and rocky uplands of the interior.