The Smoky God Part 5

There was a beautiful beach to our right, and we decided to reconnoiter.

Casting anchor, we waded ash.o.r.e to rest up for a day before continuing the outward hazardous undertaking. We built a fire and threw on some sticks of dry driftwood. While my father was walking along the sh.o.r.e, I prepared a tempting repast from supplies we had provided.

There was a mild, luminous light which my father said resulted from the sun shining in from the south aperture of the earth. That night we slept soundly, and awakened the next morning as refreshed as if we had been in our own beds at Stockholm.

After breakfast we started out on an inland tour of discovery, but had not gone far when we sighted some birds which we recognized at once as belonging to the penguin family.

They are flightless birds, but excellent swimmers and tremendous in size, with white breast, short wings, black head, and long peaked bills.

They stand fully nine feet high. They looked at us with little surprise, and presently waddled, rather than walked, toward the water, and swam away in a northerly direction.(21)

(21 "The nights are never so dark at the Poles as in other regions, for the moon and stars seem to possess twice as much light and effulgence.

In addition, there is a continuous light, the varied shades and play of which are amongst the strangest phenomena of nature."--Rambrosson's Astronomy.)

The events that occurred during the following hundred or more days beggar description. We were on an open and iceless sea. The month we reckoned to be November or December, and we knew the so-called South Pole was turned toward the sun. Therefore, when pa.s.sing out and away from the internal electrical light of "The Smoky G.o.d" and its genial warmth, we would be met by the light and warmth of the sun, shining in through the south opening of the earth. We were not mistaken.(22)

(22 "The fact that gives the phenomenon of the polar aurora its greatest importance is that the earth becomes self-luminous; that, besides the light which as a planet is received from the central body, it shows a capability of sustaining a luminous process proper to itself."--Humboldt.)

There were times when our little craft, driven by wind that was continuous and persistent, shot through the waters like an arrow.

Indeed, had we encountered a hidden rock or obstacle, our little vessel would have been crushed into kindling-wood.

At last we were conscious that the atmosphere was growing decidedly colder, and, a few days later, icebergs were sighted far to the left. My father argued, and correctly, that the winds which filled our sails came from the warm climate "within." The time of the year was certainly most auspicious for us to make our dash for the "outside" world and attempt to scud our fishing sloop through open channels of the frozen zone which surrounds the polar regions.

We were soon amid the ice-packs, and how our little craft got through.

the narrow channels and escaped being crushed I know not. The compa.s.s behaved in the same drunken and unreliable fashion in pa.s.sing over the southern curve or edge of the earth's sh.e.l.l as it had done on our inbound trip at the northern entrance. It gyrated, dipped and seemed like a thing possessed.(23)

(23 Captain Sabine, on page 105 in "Voyages in the Arctic Regions,"

says: "The geographical determination of the direction and intensity of the magnetic forces at different points of the earth's surface has been regarded as an object worthy of especial research. To examine in different parts of the globe, the declination, inclination and intensity of the magnetic force, and their periodical and secular variations, and mutual relations and dependencies could be duly investigated only in fixed magnetical observatories.")

One day as I was lazily looking over the sloop's side into the clear waters, my father shouted: "Breakers ahead!" Looking up, I saw through a lifting mist a white object that towered several hundred feet high, completely shutting off our advance. We lowered sail immediately, and none too soon. In a moment we found ourselves wedged between two monstrous icebergs. Each was crowding and grinding against its fellow mountain of ice. They were like two G.o.ds of war contending for supremacy. We were greatly alarmed. Indeed, we were between the lines of a battle royal; the sonorous thunder of the grinding ice was like the continued volleys of artillery. Blocks of ice larger than a house were frequently lifted up a hundred feet by the mighty force of lateral pressure; they would shudder and rock to and fro for a few seconds, then come crashing down with a deafening roar, and disappear in the foaming waters. Thus, for more than two hours, the contest of the icy giants continued.

It seemed as if the end had come. The ice pressure was terrific, and while we were not caught in the dangerous part of the jam, and were safe for the time being, yet the heaving and rending of tons of ice as it fell splashing here and there into the watery depths filled us with shaking fear.

Finally, to our great joy, the grinding of the ice ceased, and within a few hours the great ma.s.s slowly divided, and, as if an act of Providence had been performed, right before us lay an open channel. Should we venture with our little craft into this opening? If the pressure came on again, our little sloop as well as ourselves would be crushed into nothingness. We decided to take the chance, and, accordingly, hoisted our sail to a favoring breeze, and soon started out like a race-horse, running the gauntlet of this unknown narrow channel of open water.

PART FIVE. AMONG THE ICE PACKS

FOR the next forty-five days our time was employed in dodging icebergs and hunting channels; indeed, had we not been favored with a strong south wind and a small boat, I doubt if this story could have ever been given to the world.

At last, there came a morning when my father said: "My son, I think we are to see home. We are almost through the ice. See! the open water lies before us."

However, there were a few icebergs that had floated far northward into the open water still ahead of us on either side, stretching away for many miles. Directly in front of us, and by the compa.s.s, which had now righted itself, due north, there was an open sea.

"What a wonderful story we have to tell to the people of Stockholm,"

continued my father, while a look of pardonable elation lighted up his honest face. "And think of the gold nuggets stowed away in the hold!"

I spoke kind words of praise to my father, not alone for his fort.i.tude and endurance, but also for his courageous daring as a discoverer, and for having made the voyage that now promised a successful end. I was grateful, too, that he had gathered the wealth of gold we were carrying home.

While congratulating ourselves on the goodly supply of provisions and water we still had on hand, and on the dangers we had escaped, we were startled by hearing a most terrific explosion, caused by the tearing apart of a huge mountain of ice. It was a deafening roar like the firing of a thousand cannon. We were sailing at the time with great speed, and happened to be near a monstrous iceberg which to all appearances was as immovable as a rockbound island. It seemed, however, that the iceberg had split and was breaking apart, whereupon the balance of the monster along which we were sailing was destroyed, and it began dipping from us. My father quickly antic.i.p.ated the danger before I realized its awful possibilities. The iceberg extended down into the water many hundreds of feet, and, as it tipped over, the portion coming up out of the water caught our fishing-craft like a lever on a fulcrum, and threw it into the air as if it had been a foot-ball.

Our boat fell back on the iceberg, that by this time had changed the side next to us for the top. My father was still in the boat, having become entangled in the rigging, while I was thrown some twenty feet away.

I quickly scrambled to my feet and shouted to my father, who answered: "All is well." Just then a realization dawned upon me. Horror upon horror! The blood froze in my veins. The iceberg was still in motion, and its great weight and force in toppling over would cause it to submerge temporarily. I fully realized what a sucking maelstrom it would produce amid the worlds of water on every side. They would rush into the depression in all their fury, like white-fanged wolves eager for human prey.

In this supreme moment of mental anguish, I remember glancing at our boat, which was lying on its side, and wondering if it could possibly right itself, and if my father could escape. Was this the end of our struggles and adventures? Was this death? All these questions flashed through my mind in the fraction of a second, and a moment later I was engaged in a life and death struggle. The ponderous monolith of ice sank below the surface, and the frigid waters gurgled around me in frenzied anger. I was in a saucer, with the waters pouring in on every side. A moment more and I lost consciousness.

When I partially recovered my senses, and roused from the swoon of a half-drowned man, I found myself wet, stiff, and almost frozen, lying on the iceberg. But there was no sign of my father or of our little fishing sloop. The monster berg had recovered itself, and, with its new balance, lifted its head perhaps fifty feet above the waves. The top of this island of ice was a plateau perhaps half an acre in extent.

I loved my father well, and was grief-stricken at the awfulness of his death. I railed at fate, that I, too, had not been permitted to sleep with him in the depths of the ocean. Finally, I climbed to my feet and looked about me. The purple-domed sky above, the sh.o.r.eless green ocean beneath, and only an occasional iceberg discernible! My heart sank in hopeless despair. I cautiously picked my way across the berg toward the other side, hoping that our fishing craft had righted itself.

Dared I think it possible that my father still lived? It was but a ray of hope that flamed up in my heart. But the antic.i.p.ation warmed my blood in my veins and started it rushing like some rare stimulant through every fiber of my body.

I crept close to the precipitous side of the iceberg, and peered far down, hoping, still hoping. Then I made a circle of the berg, scanning every foot of the way, and thus I kept going around and around. One part of my brain was certainly becoming maniacal, while the other part, I believe, and do to this day, was perfectly rational.

I was conscious of having made the circuit a dozen times, and while one part of my intelligence knew, in all reason, there was not a vestige of hope, yet some strange fascinating aberration bewitched and compelled me still to beguile myself with expectation. The other part of my brain seemed to tell me that while there was no possibility of my father being alive, yet, if I quit making the circuitous pilgrimage, if I paused for a single moment, it would be acknowledgment of defeat, and, should I do this, I felt that I should go mad. Thus, hour after hour I walked around and around, afraid to stop and rest, yet physically powerless to continue much longer. Oh! horror of horrors! to be cast away in this wide expanse of waters without food or drink, and only a treacherous iceberg for an abiding place. My heart sank within me, and all semblance of hope was fading into black despair.

Then the hand of the Deliverer was extended, and the death-like stillness of a solitude rapidly becoming unbearable was suddenly broken by the firing of a signal-gun. I looked up in startled amazement, when, I saw, less than a half-mile away, a whaling-vessel bearing down toward me with her sail full set.

Evidently my continued activity on the iceberg had attracted their attention. On drawing near, they put out a boat, and, descending cautiously to the water's edge, I was rescued, and a little later lifted on board the whaling-ship.

I found it was a Scotch whaler, "The Arlington." She had cleared from Dundee in September, and started immediately for the Antarctic, in search of whales. The captain, Angus MacPherson, seemed kindly disposed, but in matters of discipline, as I soon learned, possessed of an iron will. When I attempted to tell him that I had come from the "inside" of the earth, the captain and mate looked at each other, shook their heads, and insisted on my being put in a bunk under strict surveillance of the ship's physician.

I was very weak for want of food, and had not slept for many hours.

However, after a few days' rest, I got up one morning and dressed myself without asking permission of the physician or anyone else, and told them that I was as sane as anyone.

The captain sent for me and again questioned me concerning where I had come from, and how I came to be alone on an iceberg in the far off Antarctic Ocean. I replied that I had just come from the "inside" of the earth, and proceeded to tell him how my father and myself had gone in by way of Spitzbergen, and come out by way of the South Pole country, whereupon I was put in irons. I afterward heard the captain tell the mate that I was as crazy as a March hare, and that I must remain in confinement until I was rational enough to give a truthful account of myself.

Finally, after much pleading and many promises, I was released from irons. I then and there decided to invent some story that would satisfy the captain, and never again refer to my trip to the land of "The Smoky G.o.d," at least until I was safe among friends.

Within a fortnight I was permitted to go about and take my place as one of the seamen. A little later the captain asked me for an explanation.

I told him that my experience had been so horrible that I was fearful of my memory, and begged him to permit me to leave the question unanswered until some time in the future. "I think you are recovering considerably," he said, "but you are not sane yet by a good deal."

"Permit me to do such work as you may a.s.sign," I replied, "and if it does not compensate you sufficiently, I will pay you immediately after I reach Stockholm--to the last penny." Thus the matter rested.

On finally reaching Stockholm, as I have already related, I found that my good mother had gone to her reward more than a year before. I have also told how, later, the treachery of a relative landed me in a madhouse, where I remained for twenty-eight years--seemingly unending years--and, still later, after my release, how I returned to the life of a fisherman, following it sedulously for twenty-seven years, then how I came to America, and finally to Los Angeles, California. But all this can be of little interest to the reader. Indeed, it seems to me the climax of my wonderful travels and strange adventures was reached when the Scotch sailing-vessel took me from an iceberg on the Antarctic Ocean.

PART SIX. CONCLUSION

IN concluding this history of my adventures, I wish to state that I firmly believe science is yet in its infancy concerning the cosmology of the earth. There is so much that is unaccounted for by the world's accepted knowledge of to-day, and will ever remain so until the land of "The Smoky G.o.d" is known and recognized by our geographers.

It is the land from whence came the great logs of cedar that have been found by explorers in open waters far over the northern edge of the earth's crust, and also the bodies of mammoths whose bones are found in vast beds on the Siberian coast.

Northern explorers have done much. Sir John Franklin, De Haven Grinnell, Sir John Murray, Kane, Melville, Hall, Nansen, Schwatka, Greely, Peary, Ross, Gerlache, Bernacchi, Andree, Amsden, Amundson and others have all been striving to storm the frozen citadel of mystery.

I firmly believe that Andree and his two brave companions, Strindberg and Fraenckell, who sailed away in the balloon "Oreon" from the northwest coast of Spitzbergen on that Sunday afternoon of July 11, 1897, are now in the "within" world, and doubtless are being entertained, as my father and myself were entertained by the kind-hearted giant race inhabiting the inner Atlantic Continent.