The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole Part 13

"Come here, Leo," he said, after his orders had been obeyed. "Hold this coil, and pay it out as I walk to the berg with the end in my hand."

The coil was one of extremely fine copper wire. Leo let it run as the Captain walked off. A minute or two later he was seen to enter the dark blue cavern and disappear.

"My dear dad is reckless," exclaimed Benjy, in some anxiety, "what if the roof o' that cave should fall in. There are bits of ice dropping about everywhere. What _can_ he be going to do?"

As he spoke, the Captain issued from the cave, and walked smartly towards them.

"Now then, it's all right," he said, "give me the coil, Leo, and come back, all of you. Fetch the machine, Alf."

In a few minutes the whole party had retired a considerable distance from the huge berg, the Captain uncoiling the wire as he went.

"Surely you're not going to try to blow it up piecemeal?" said Leo.

"No, lad, I'm not going to do that, or anything so slow," returned the Captain, stopping and arranging the instrument.

"But if the box contains gunpowder," persisted Leo, "there's not enough to--"

"It contains dynamite," said the Captain, affixing the coil to the machine, and giving it a sharp turn.

If a volcano had suddenly opened fire under the iceberg the effect could not have been more tremendous. Thunder itself is not more deep than was the crash which reverberated among the ice-cliffs. Smoke burst in a huge volume from the heart of the berg. Ma.s.ses, fragments, domes, and pinnacles were hurled into the air, and fell back to mingle with the blue precipices that tumbled, slid, or plunged in horrible confusion.

Only a portion, indeed, of the mighty ma.s.s had been actually disrupted, but the shock to the surrounding ice was so shattering that the entire berg subsided.

"Stu-pendous!" exclaimed Alf, with a look of awe-stricken wonder.

Benjy, after venting his feelings in a shriek of joyful surprise, seemed to be struck dumb. Anders and b.u.t.terface stood still,--speechless. As for the Eskimos, they turned with one hideous yell, and fled from the spot like maniacs--excepting Chingatok, who, although startled, stood his ground in an att.i.tude expressive of superlative surprise.

"So,--it has not disappointed me," remarked the Captain, when the hideous din had ceased, "dynamite is indeed a powerful agent when properly applied: immeasurably more effective than powder."

"But it seems to me," said Leo, beginning to recover himself, "that although you have brought the berg down you have not rendered it much more pa.s.sable."

"That's true, lad," answered the Captain with a somewhat rueful expression. "It does seem a lumpy sort of heap after all; but there may be found some practicable bits when we examine it more closely. Come, we'll go see."

On closer inspection it was found that the ruined berg still presented an absolutely insurmountable obstacle to the explorers, who, being finally compelled to admit that even dynamite had failed, left the place in search of a natural opening.

Travelling along the chain for a considerable time, in the hope of succeeding, they came at last to a succession of comparatively level floes, which conducted them to the extreme northern end of the chain, and there they found that the floes continued onwards in an unbroken plain to what appeared to be the open sea.

"That is a water-sky, for certain," exclaimed Captain Vane, eagerly, on the evening when this discovery was made. "The open ocean cannot now be far off."

"There's a very dark cloud there, father," said Benjy, who, as we have before said, possessed the keenest sight of the party.

"A cloud, boy! where? Um--Yes, I see something--"

"It is land," said Chingatok, in a low voice.

"Land!" exclaimed the Captain, "are you sure?"

"Yes, I know it well. I pa.s.sed it on my journey here. We left our canoes and oomiaks there, and took to sledges because the floes were unbroken. But these ice-mountains were not here at that time. They have come down since we pa.s.sed from the great sea."

"There!" said the Captain, turning to Leo with a look of triumph, "he still speaks of the great sea! If these bergs came from it, we _must_ have reached it, lad."

"But the land puzzles me," said Leo. "Can it be part of Greenland?"

"Scarcely, for Greenland lies far to the east'ard, and the latest discoveries made on the north of that land show that the coast turns still more decidedly east--tending to the conclusion that Greenland is an island. This land, therefore, must be entirely new land--an island-- a continent perhaps."

"But it may be a cape, father," interposed Benjy. "You know that capes have a queer way of sticking out suddenly from land, just as men's noses stick out from their faces."

"True, Benjy, true, but your simile is not perfect, for men's noses don't always stick out from their faces--witness the nose of b.u.t.terface, which, you know, is well aft of his lips and chin. However, this _may_ be Greenland's nose--who knows? We shall go and find out ere long.

Come, use your whip, Leo. Ho! Chingatok, tell your hairy kinsmen to clap on all sail and make for the land."

"Hold on, uncle!" cried Alf, "I think I see a splendid specimen of--"

The crack of Leo's whip, and the yelping of the team, drowned the rest of the sentence, and Alf was whirled away from his splendid specimen, (whatever it was), for ever!

"It is a piece of great good fortune," said the Captain, as they swept along over the hard and level snow, "that the Eskimos have left their boats on this land, for now I shall have two strings to my bow."

"What is the other string?" asked Leo, as he administered a flip to the flank of a lazy dog.

"Ah, that remains to be seen, lad," replied the Captain.

"Why, what a tyrant you are, uncle!" exclaimed Alf, who had recovered from his disappointment about the splendid specimen. "You won't tell us anything, almost. Who ever before heard of the men of an expedition to the North Pole being kept in ignorance of the means by which they were to get there?"

The Captain's reply was only a twinkle of the eye.

"Father wants to fill you with bliss, Alf," said Benjy, "according to your own notions of that sort of thing."

"What do you mean, Ben?"

"Why, have we not all heard you often quote the words:--`Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.'"

"Hear, hear! That's it, Benjy," said the Captain, with a nod and a short laugh, while his son a.s.sumed the satisfied gravity of look appropriate to one who has made a hit; "I won't decrease his bliss by removing his ignorance yet awhile."

"Hain't Buzzby got nuffin' to say on that 'ere pint?" whispered b.u.t.terface to Benjy, who sat just in front of him.

"Ah! to be sure. I say, Alf," said the boy with an earnest look, "hasn't your favourite author got something to say about the bliss of ignorance? I'm almost sure I heard you muttering something in your dreams on that subject the other day."

"Of course he has. He has a long poem on that subject. Here is a bit of it."

Alf, whose memory was good, immediately recited the following:

"How sweet is ignorance! How soothing to the mind, To search for treasures in the brain, and nothing find!

Consider. When the memory is richly stored, How apt the victim of redundant knowledge to be bored!

When Nothing fills the chambers of the heart and brain, Then negative enjoyment comes with pleasures in her train!

Descending on the clods of sense like summer rain.

"Knowledge, 'tis said, gives power, and so it often does; Knowledge makes sorrow, too, around our pillows buzz.

In debt I am, with little cash; I know it--and am sad.

Of course, if I were ignorant of this--how glad!

A loving friend, whom once I knew in glowing health, Has broken down, and also, somehow, lost his wealth.