Steve Young Part 61

"Sail and steam, as we did."

"Yes, sir, that sounds easy; but suppose they cannot? Suppose you made up your mind to sail south to-morrow?"

"Well, we couldn't go for the ice."

"Exactly, sir; and the walrus boats couldn't sail up here for the ice."

"Ugh! it is cold," said Steve with a shiver. "I wonder what the gla.s.s says. Wish I'd looked."

"It would not have been a fair test, sir; it is warmer down in the cabin. You are not unwell, only you feel the chill just waking up from sleep."

"Yes, I feel better now. How the stars shine!"

"You'll see them brighter by-and-by, sir," said Johannes. "Have you got anything hard in your pocket?"

"Only my knife. What do you want?"

"Something for you," replied the Norseman. "Wait a minute, sir."

He turned and stepped down into the furnace-room, to return directly.

"Take that, sir."

"What is it? Lump of coal? What for?"

"Throw it right out on the ice, sir. I want you to try it. Quick!

there's something for you to look at now."

"But surely there's no ice for it to fall on," said Steve. "It's impossible."

All the same, he took the lump of coal, and, drawing back, threw it as far as he could out over the fiord; and, to his utter astonishment, when it fell he heard it rebound with the regular musical ring of a hard substance upon ice, and strike again and again before it became motionless.

"Why, the ice must be quite half an inch thick!" cried Steve. "No wonder I felt cold."

"Yes, sir, it's freezing hard; the winter has begun, though of course it will be warm in the fine days. But look; there's a sure sign of the cold weather coming."

He pointed to the northward, where the Great Bear shone with a brightness foreign to that which he would have seen at home.

"What am I to look at?" said Steve; "that soft light? It's the Milky Way."

"No, sir, the aurora. There it goes; it is spreading right along."

"Then it's the sun going to rise!" cried Steve.

"In the north-west, sir? No, it's the aurora; you will see it stream up in rays right away to the Pole Star soon. Yes, I thought so;" for, even as he was speaking, sheaves of thin pencils of soft lambent light streamed right away up toward the zenith, then sank, wavered about, and then streamed up once again.

"Finer than I should have expected, sir," said Johannes, as the glow near the horizon increased till it was now pale white, now of a delicate blush, while the pencils of light flickered up and streamed and waved, and looked in their delicate, dawn-like colouring like the spirits of fire or light flying upward from earth to heaven.

"What is it?" said Steve at last, after gazing at the wondrous phenomenon for a long time.

"Ah, sir, you must ask some one wiser than I am to answer that question.

All I can tell you is that cold weather generally comes after the sky has been lit up as if it was the inside of some great sh.e.l.l, and with as many colours, only more light and faint."

The aurora flashed up brighter and then sank, flickered as if dying out, and then blazed up again, if the term can be applied to the exquisitely soft, lambent glow playing in the north; but its movements were those of leaping flame flashing up from a huge fire, growing exhausted, and then dying down till almost invisible, but only to light up the northern heavens again, from horizon almost to zenith, with its dawn-like beauty, till it grew hard to imagine that there was not something more to follow.

"One would think that some kind of pale, cold sun was about to rise over there," said Steve at last. "Are you sure that nothing will rise?"

"Nothing but more rays, sir."

"Cold rays," muttered Steve, drawing his fingers in under the sleeves of his sheep-skin coat. "I say, Johannes, are you warm?"

"Yes, sir."

"My fingers are numbed, and it's getting hold of my toes. I'll go down and have five minutes' warm by the cabin fire."

"No, sir, don't. Take my advice. Let's have a trot up and down the deck till your blood circulates. Exercise is the thing out here. Blood always running about through your veins, that's the thing to keep you warm."

"But one is so much better after a good warm!"

"For a few minutes, sir; but get yourself warm by a good run, and it will last for hours. Take my word; I know."

"But you've never been frozen up here?"

"Oh yes, sir, twice. Not for long, but quite long enough to know how to act most sensibly as to eating and drinking."

"Does that make much difference?" said Steve, as they walked sharply along the deck, and then broke into the double, step for step.

"All the difference, sir. Eat and drink well up here in these cold places, and you are able to stand the cold."

"What do you eat, then?"

"Meat with plenty of fat, sir, and warmth-producing stuff like sugar.

The Eskimo people almost live upon fat--blubber and oil."

"Ugh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Steve; "how horrible! But look here, Johannes, what do you people drink up here to help--plenty of grog?"

"No, sir, not a drop," said the Norseman sharply. "That does more harm than good. Makes a man feverishly hot for a few minutes, then leaves him colder than he was before."

"What do you drink, then?" said Steve, staring at the man's earnestness.

"Tea, sir; plenty of good, hot tea. It rests and refreshes a man directly, and he can do more work on hot tea than upon anything else that has been tried."

"Well, I don't mind tea," said Steve rather jerkily; for it was beginning to be hard work to keep on talking while trotting round and round the deck. But Johannes, though measuring his big strides to make them fit with the boy's, kept up the trot till Steve was so thoroughly out of breath that at the end of a quarter of an hour he stopped short and then dropped upon a coil of rope.

"Don't sit down, sir!" cried Johannes. "It's too cold for that. Out of breath?"

"Yes--quite!" panted Steve. "My word! what a run!"