The Giant of the North: Pokings Round the Pole by R. M. Ballantyne (best historical biographies TXT) 📕

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.