Chapter VII

The longer I live the more of a fatalist I become. Looking back on the weeks which followed our meeting with Makuik and his family I see myself powerless in the grip of a force superior to my own. How else can I account for the procrastination which, day after day, week after week, held me in my perilous location. For that it was perilous my brain told me clearly.

Seven previous trips into the Arctic had taught me that its climate could be treacherous as well as friendly. If I have seemed to expatiate on the tropical warmth of an exceptional summer, the hottest on record in the meteorological archives of Iceland (which are the oldest in the world), rest assured that it is with no wish to encourage ill-equipped pleasure-parties to venture forth into these icy solitudes. I have been warned by an eminent polar authority that it would be dangerous and wrong to instill this idea. I thoroughly agree with him. Woe betide the week-end tripper or basket-picnicker who fares beyond eighty-six with no protection other than a warm sweater and a quart thermos of coffee! He is doomed before he starts or immediately thereafter. When the short summer wanes the thermometer plunges without warning to incredible depths and almost certain disaster results.

A NIMROD OF THE NORTH

A large volume might be written about this illustration alone.

Big game hunting, in the last analysis, is usually a feeble sort
of sport. The stalking of itself is a beneficial form of exercise
but when at last the two strong brutes, human and animal, stand
face to face it is an odds-on bet on the human. An express-bullet
takes little account of hide or hair. Compared with this form of
target-practice, fly-swatting and mosquito-slapping are gallantry
itself.

We may learn something from Makuik, the Kryptok huntsman who is seen
_en face_ in the act of capturing part of his winter's meat-supply
in the person of a magnificent specimen of the _ursus polaris_.
The method universally employed by the Eskimo is that of the
surprise-onslaught. Polar bears, for some reason, do not expect to be
attacked by men from the air.

Perched on a rocky eyrie the native huntsman warily scans the floe
for his victim. The path beneath the precipice is baited with small
cubes of seal and pemmican meat along which the prey is led by
appetite just as children at birthday parties are led through the
mazes of a peanut-hunt. When the bear is directly below him, the
hunter springs silently into the air and descends like a falling
archangel on the creature's back. A hunter's prowess is measured by
the height from which he dares to jump. Makuik holds the Kryptok
record in this event is 40 Kyaks (approximately 520 ft.). At the
termination of a successful jump the bear breaks the fall and the
fall not infrequently breaks the bear. But the risk is great and in
case of a miss the Nimrod becomes forthwith data for the actuaries
and food for the bear. As in all aerial feats the important part is
the landing.

In the incident portrayed the result was the not unusual one of a
glancing blow. Striking the bear's shoulder Makuik was thrown for a
loss of seven yards, not, however, before he had pinned one of the
bear's paws to the ice with his keen-edged ratak. From then on the
fight was a fierce hand-to-paw affair, one round to a finish with the
incessant in-fighting, knife against claw, brain against brain.

Makuik won the decision after forty-three minutes of gruelling
and growling work, not without considerable damage to his person.
Throughout the battle he consistently placed his knife-thrusts where
they could later be made into buttonholes by his beautiful wives,
beginning at the lowest button and working upward to the lapel. The
bear was thus actually tailored during the process of destruction.
_Forest and Stream_ please copy.

And yet, knowing these things, I stayed. Discarding all plans, scrapping all schedules, denying all reasons, I delayed, lingered and waited. For what? Death, perhaps, but before death, Love! Ah, love! love! mad will-o'-the-wisp, flaming with tragic intensity in the very core of a berg, destroying passion, paralyzing my will-power even as the spirit of winter laid his icy hand on my shoulder.

My companions, fatally influenced by my example, were no longer restless but completely satisfied with their surroundings and with the society of the Klinka women who, as the light waned and the temperature dropped, ventured more and more into the open.

Nowhere in the world will one find such gaiety, friendliness, and generosity as among these child-like denizens of the North. I do not except even the glorious Filbert Islanders who were my own discovery. During many a long twilight I sat with Whinney, Triplett and Swank about the Primus stove which we now found comfortable, chatting of our Polynesian friends and evoking many a tender memory. Of all who made that famous cruise only our former crew was missing, Thomas, the sailor-man whom we left behind. But I could not find it in my heart to envy him.[20]

Compared with northern tribes all Polynesians are slow and lethargic. Nothing could exceed the swift grace of these glorious Klinkas, and many a day of rare sport we had while there was still light. Our contribution to the program usually consisted of an American game adapted to local conditions: tennis, using the native snowshoes for rackets and balls of inflated fish-membrane, or golf over a sporty nine-hole course with constantly shifting snow-bunkers and water-hazards. This variable quality in the links made play extremely interesting and likewise supplied a much needed alibi for our scores. Frissell's inventiveness created extraordinary good clubs out of parts of our cooking utensils lashed to whale-bone shafts, with which it was no unusual thing to drive upwards of seven hundred yards. The idea is covered by patents.

To my amusement Makuik and his entire family were deathly afraid of the pogo-sticks. In their simple minds this contrivance was endowed with life of its own. When I finally forced one on Ikik she planted it fervently on a little cairn where it was worshipped as a God. How strangely the idea of the totem-pole persists! And speaking of poles, no outdoor sport proved more popular than tether-ball, with the ball tethered to the Pole itself.

The Eskimos were far from lacking in amusements of their own, though these naturally had a direct bearing on some ulterior object such as blubber for food-supply or furs for warmth. It has remained for the superior white races to invent games which are of no use whatever.

Time and again Makuik thrilled us by his long distance harpooning of seals which now sought the floes in large numbers.

The perfect poise, the powerful thrust, the long trajectory and the final, squashing hit just behind the ear were enough to excite the envy of an Olympic javelin thrower.[21] The feat was the more remarkable when it is considered that a seal's ear is on the inside and, therefore, invisible.

Some of the novices in my party were slightly overcome by the mad rush of Makuik's family toward the stricken carcass from which they tore and devoured long strips of blubber, but needless to say this was an old story to me. Fresh seal's eyes are a coveted tid-bit, and I was much touched when Ikik brought me one, warm and quivering, in the palm of her hand. It was plainly a love offering as I saw when I looked from her eyes to that of the seal. One should chew them, not gulp them down, in order to get the full flavor which is not unlike a Cape Cod oyster, though more salty and slightly oily.

The women were particularly fond of leading us on searching parties in quest of seal roe, which we found in large quantities in the shallow nests lined with the yellow wax which exudes from the pores of the mother. Both roe and wax are highly prized by the natives who spread them, mixed, on squares of seal hide, forming sandwiches. In winter the seal fur is also included on account of the extra warmth which is provided.[22]

It was a happy thought of mine to present Ikik with an enormous church candle which, having been blessed, had been presented to me by the Bishop Metaxis Polyphlosboios in Constantinople. Ikik and I were alone when I offered it, in return for the eye she had given me. I wish my readers could have seen her divine smile as she touched, smelled and finally tasted the white cylinder, which was so much more refined than the fresh fat and tallow which had been daily pabulum.

"_Tapok, Ataki!_ Traprock, I adore you!" she cried, throwing herself at my feet and chewing the uppers of my moccasins, the native expression of complete devotion.

"Enough!" I murmured, raising her by her hair; "here come the others."

Though my "affaire de cœur" was progressing satisfactorily, I was forced to walk warily. Some of my fellows were infernal busy-bodies and Sausalito, poor wretch, watched over me with furious jealousy.

Innumerable were the diversions of those happy, happy days, the mad pursuit of an occasional musk-ox, of which the women were insanely fond because of the perfume derived from its peripatetic gland, and the absorbingly interesting observations of the Arctic guppys, those unique fish which bear their live and full-formed young on the ice without the tedious formality of laying an egg. The mother guppy immediately eats her offspring and the race between her and the Eskimo audience to see which could get the most, was not the least amusing phase of this quaint accouchement.

And then the long, twilight evenings, snuggled down in the deep furs of our friends, sharing the warmth of our tiny Primus under the Kawa's lee, crooning our songs, passing our plugs and our gay banter. I feel sure than I shall never be nearer heaven.

On an immemorial date, for our watches had long ago run down, we sat thus in our little Arctic circle listening languidly to a number on Whinney's radio,--"What the Sunday Schools of Kansas are Doing," I believe it was,--no; "The weather a hundred years ago today," that was it,--when I suddenly realized that it was dark; not twilight, but actually dark!

Can you realize what that meant to me? Startled, I withdrew my thumb from Ikik's soft lips and raised myself on my elbow. About me in the gloom were vague bundles, Swank and Yalok, Frissell and Snak, Whinney and Lapatok, Wigmore and Klipitok, Triplett and Sausalito, silent, rapturous, oblivious. But a strange thing was happening.

All about the circumference of the great ice bowl, of which we were the center, rose trembling, blue flames. I could hear their fluttering hiss and crackle. Now they leaped higher, shooting out giant arms toward the zenith, waving lambent fingers, shivering, interlocking, melting. My companions, aroused, sat up and I could see their startled faces lighted by an unearthly light.

The noise and glare increased. Swishing waves of fuchsia-pink swept up the sky; muffled explosions were followed by writhing snakes of lemon-yellow and far-flung globes of purple and crimson gleamed in the sky while, directly overhead, millions of miles away, the North Star looked down indifferently.

At times the wall of encircling flames, now approximately ten miles high, leaped in unison, to a diabolical rhythm; again they moved about us in procession, gigantic, towering, flapping, hissing, whistling, rippling, a night-mare of glorious colors which have no names. The very ice below me, cracking and groaning, was shot with fiery veins.

AN ARCH ARCHEOLOGIST

One of the most pathetic figures in the author's startling "exposure"
is that of Bartholomew Dane, the Egyptologist who is here shown with
Snak, his Klinka assistant, pursuing his speciality of comparative
archeology.

A word as to Dane's previous record may bring some information
to the few Americans who have not made archeology, with emphasis
on Egyptology, a hobby. Born of Nordic stock (his maternal
Grandmother was one of the Iceland Krakkens), educated in the
more-than-usually-common schools of South Bend, young Dane showed
early aptitude in geography, history and kindred studies. His
passion for research work was early in evidence his every leisure
moment being spent in the examination of abandoned cellar-holes,
cisterns, wells, rubbish-heaps and public dumps. His parents,
fearful lest their son turn out to be a rag-picker secured for him
an under-janitorship at the Natural History Museum of New York City,
doubtless hoping to thereby shift the blame for his development
from South Bend to the Metropolis. From then on his rise was rapid.
Working his way up from the cellar we next hear of him as Secretary
to Prof. Thurston Mudgett of the Extinct Civilizations Dept. His
course from there to the Nile delta was clearly indicated.

Six months later the young archeologist disappeared, only to
reappear six months later laden with honours conferred by the
Egyptian government, a full-professor in the College of Alexandria,
a recognized authority abroad belatedly received with equal honors
at home. His great work on Scarabs among the Arabs is in itself an
enduring monument.

What led Dane northward is a mystery. That he hoped to find the
missing link in the almost completed itinerary of the lost tribes of
Israel we know. That he failed in this dream is a sad fact. But there
is solace in the thought that amid the snowy wildernesses of the Pole
he found in the companionship of the sympathetic Snak a love which
could never have reached him over the hot sands of Sahara.

Due to overwork, exposure and an unavoidable blow on the head,
his mind has failed considerably of late but in his lucid moments
he hints darkly at having made certain interesting discoveries
which have nothing whatever to do with archeology. His earlier
achievements, his protracted sojourn in the Tomb of Put, his
discovery of the Temple of Murad, all these he lightly dismisses.
"The first year was the pleasantest," he laughs; the rest is silence,
and the silence is, we trust for this courageous spirit--rest.

The Eskimos had buried their heads in their oomiaks, my companions lay face downward.

Desperately frightened, I still resolved to face the end, to see what my dazed senses told me was the final conflagration of the world.

Staggering to my feet, I glared about me, taking in the picture with all its ghastly details, the Pole and its flags, the cairn, the Kawa, every block and halyard of which was etched on this field of flame. How insignificant it all seemed.

The world had finished its trick; it was as a tiny bead, cast away by the Creator, a cinder in the eye of God!

Suddenly the flames turned incandescently white, rushed toward me and, on an overwhelming wave of siren wailing, I was swept away, billions of miles beyond the Pole-star, to Eternity....

* * * * *

Ikik was rubbing my forehead with a cool tundra sponge and her face above me was that of an angel.

"Did you see?" she asked. "It was beautiful."

The Eskimos were discussing the display critically.

"Too green," said Makuik. "No good. Cold come."

Peering through the darkness I saw the dim outline of the Kawa. The Pole stood intact. Nothing was harmed, nothing singed.

The astounding truth burst upon me, astounding and important to me though nothing to these ages-old Aryans.

We had been in the exact center of the aurora borealis.

Another milestone for American science!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 20: William Henry Thomas, cook, valet and foremast-hand who refused to leave the Islands, where he now rules with the title of Filbert the First, under an individual mandate conferred by the Paris Conference. See "Cruise of the Kawa," Chap. 9, p. 133.

W.E.T.]

[Footnote 21: For an interesting account of Eskimo games see the essay by Dr. R. Petersen. "In Lintinwinger i Kippenskabssel-skabet i Christiania," delivered April 3, 1920. W.E.T.]

[Footnote 22: I tried to eat one of these fur-bearing sandwiches in 1898 and nearly died laughing. T.]

Chapter VIII

_The Arctic Night. The temptation of Traprock. The pros and cons
of falling. We solve an age-old riddle. Our Polar Christmas. The
love-philtre. Abandonment._