Part 14 (2/2)
”A clock up in the sky!” exclaimed both the boys; ”why, Captain Hardy, how was that?”
”Why, don't you see, my lads, the 'Great Bear' and all the other constellations of the north go round and round the Pole-star, which is right above your head; and it so happened that I knew the 'Great Bear,'
and the two stars in its side called 'the Pointers' because they point to the Pole-star. Now these two 'Pointers,' going around once in the four-and-twenty hours, pointed up from the south at one time, and up from the north at another time, and up from the east and from the west in the same way; and thus you see we had a clock up in the sky to tell us the time of day, for we had an iceberg picked out all around for every hour, and when 'the Pointers' stood over that particular berg we knew what time it was.
”We should have got along through the winter much more comfortably if we had had some books, or some paper to write on, and pen and ink to write with; but these things were quite beyond the reach of our ingenuity. So our life was very monotonous; doing our daily duties,--that is, whatever we might find to do,--and, after wading through the deep snow in doing it, we came back again to our little hut to get warm, and to eat and talk and sleep.
”And much talking we did, as I can a.s.sure you, about each other, and each other's life, and what great things we would do when we got away from the island, hopeless though that seemed. Thus we came gradually to know each other's history, and thus there came to be greater sympathy between us, and more indulgence of each other's whims and fancies, as we got better and better acquainted.
”The Dean had quite a story to relate of himself. He told me that he was born in the great city of New York. His father died before he could remember, and his mother was very poor; but so long as she kept her health she managed, in one way or another, to live along from day to day by sewing; and she managed, too, to send the Dean to school. She loved her bright-haired little boy so very, very much that she would have spent the last cent she could ever earn, could she only give her darling Dean a little knowledge that might help him on in the world when he grew to be a man. And so she stinted herself and saved, all unknown to her darling Dean; and she had not clothing or fire enough to keep her warm in the bleak winter, when the Dean was out, though she had a fine fire when the Dean came back. All would have been well enough if the poor woman had not, with her hard work and her efforts to save, become thin and weak, and then grown sick with fever; and now there was nothing for her but the hospital, for there was no money to pay for medicines, or doctor's bills, to say nothing of rent and fire and clothes.
”And now for the first time the Dean began to realize the situation; and a vague impression crossed his mind, that the poor, pale woman, now restless with pain on a narrow bed in a great long ward of a dreary hospital,--his own dear mother, suffering here with strange hands only to comfort her,--had been brought to this for his sake; and when she grew better, after a long, long time, but was still far from well, he thought and thought, and cried and cried, and prayed and prayed, and wished that he might do something to show his grat.i.tude, and make amends.
”By and by he got into a factory, and worked there early and late, until he too grew sick, and was carried to the hospital, and was laid beside his poor sick mother, on a narrow bed. But he soon got well again, though his mother did not, and then (he could do nothing else) he went to sea as cabin-boy of a s.h.i.+p sailing to Havana; and he came back too; and, with a proud heart beating in his little breast, he carried a little purse of gold and silver coins that the captain gave him to his poor sick mother; and then he went away again on the same s.h.i.+p, and came back once more with another purse of money, twice as big as the first; but the good captain that had been so kind to him, and rewarded him so well, fell sick, and died of yellow fever on the pa.s.sage home, and the mate, who got command of the s.h.i.+p, being a different sort of man, disliked the Dean, and told him not to come back any more. And so the poor Dean didn't know what to do; until one of his old s.h.i.+pmates met him in the street, and took him off to New Bedford, and s.h.i.+pped him as cabin-boy of the _Blackbird_. 'And now here I am,' said the poor little Dean, 'and all the rest you know,--cast away in the cold, in this awful place, while my poor sick mother has no money and no friends in all the world, and is thinking all the time what a wretch I am to run away and desert her, when, G.o.d knows, I meant to do nothing of the sort!' and so the Dean burst out crying, and, to tell you the truth, I could not help crying a little too.
”But the Dean was a right plucky little fellow, I can tell you; and so full of hope and ambition was he, that nothing could keep him down very long; and nothing, I believe, could ever make him despond for a single minute but thinking of his mother, sick and far away, without friends or money, lying on a narrow bed, all through the weary, dreary days and nights, in the dreary ward of a crowded hospital. Poor Dean! he had something to make him cry, and something always to make him sad, if he had a mind to be; but what had I in comparison?--I who had gone away from home with no good motive like the Dean's.
”After the recital of this story of the Dean's, we were both very sad, until the Dean suddenly roused himself, and said, 'Let's go and look at our traps, Hardy'; and so we sallied out into the moonlight, and waded through the snow, to see if there were any foxes for us. To get outside our hut was not so easy a matter now as it was when we first built it; for, in order to keep the cold winds away, we had made a long, low, narrow pa.s.sage, with a crook in it, through which we crawled on our hands and knees, before we reached the door.
”We walked all the way around the island, and visited all our traps, of which we had seventeen, but only two of them had foxes in them; the others were either filled with snow, or were completely covered over with it, for the wind had been blowing very hard the day before.
”As we got farther and farther into the winter, we met with some very strange adventures,--altogether different from anything I have told you of before; but you see the sun will soon be going down behind the trees, and we are a good long way from the 'Mariner's Rest,' so 'up anchor' 's the word now, my dears, and 'under way' again.”
The merry little yacht was not long in carrying the merry little party over to the Captain's favorite anchorage; and then they were all soon ash.o.r.e, and after many merry and many pleasant speeches, our little friends parted from the ancient mariner once more, leaving him standing in the shadow of the great tall trees, with a string of fish in one hand; while Fred and William, with Main Brace to help them, and with merry Alice running on ahead, each carried off a string for their next day's breakfast,--a trophy to be proud of, as they thought.
CHAPTER XIV.
Proves the Ingenuity of Seals, and Shows That the Great Polar Bear Is No Respecter of Persons.
”When we were last time cruising in the _Alice_, I think I told you all about the Arctic winter,--did I not?” said the ancient mariner to his little friends, when they were met once more.
”Yes,” answered William (who was always ready to act as spokesman for the party),--”yes, Captain Hardy, all about the Arctic winter, and the aurora borealis, and the wonderful moonlight, and the darkness, and how you and the handsome little Dean lived through it, and what you talked about, and how you pa.s.sed the time, and what a doleful life you led, and what a dreadful thing it was, and how it made you s.h.i.+ver now to think of it; and--all that, and a great deal more.”
”Certainly,” replied the Captain, ”certainly, that's it,--all told off nicely, my lad, just as if you were boxing the compa.s.s or repeating the multiplication table;--all about how we protected ourselves from cold, and kept ourselves from hunger, and prepared a home for ourselves on the Rock of Good Hope. And this seemed likely to be our home for life too,--so far, at least, as we could see; for it appeared clear enough to us that our condition would never change except with death, which we, like everybody else, whether they have ever been cast away or not, wanted to put off as long as possible, having no wish at all to die, and not liking either to freeze or starve: so you see we had good motives for energy and patience.”
Here little Alice, in her quiet way, interrupted the Captain to say that the aurora borealis had troubled her dreams all night, and that she would like to know, if the Captain pleased, why anything should have such a strange name.
”That I will tell you with pleasure, my dear,” answered the Captain; ”I'll tell you all about it,--of course I will. Aurora borealis,--that means northern light; and the name comes from a pagan G.o.ddess called Aurora, who was supposed to have rosy fingers, and to ride in a rosy chariot, and who opened the gates of the East every morning, and brought in the light of day; and thus, in course of time, any great flush of light in the heavens got to be called Aurora. And then there was a pagan G.o.d called Boreas, who was the North Wind, and had long wings and white hair, and made himself generally disagreeable. So you see Boreas, from being the pagan name for north wind, got to mean the north; and Borealis, from that, became Northern, and Aurora Borealis became Northern Light.”
”Thank you, Captain Hardy,” said little Alice; and Fred and William said ”Thank you” too; while, as for the Captain, he looked very wise and solemn, like other great philosophers, appearing as if he would say, ”Don't be surprised, for that's nothing to what I could do if I had a mind,” every word of which the children would have believed, you may well be sure. However, the Captain hastened on with the story (which is more to our present purpose) without giving any further proof of his learning.
”When the winter had fairly set in,” said he, ”our field of operations was much enlarged; and, although the birds had all flown away, we were hardly worse off than before, as you shall see; for all through the summer we had been kept close prisoners on the island; but now, when the ice was solid all over the sea, we could walk out upon it, and this we did as soon as it would bear. Once the Dean broke through, being a little careless of where he was stepping; but I got him out, with no more harm coming to him than a cold bath and a fright.
”Soon after this we made a valuable discovery. Some of the seals have a habit, when the sea is frozen over, of cutting holes through the ice with their sharp claws, in order that they may get their heads above the water to breathe,--the seals not being able, as I have told you before, to breathe under water, like fish. They can keep their heads under water about an hour, by closing up their nostrils, so that not a drop can get in; and, during that time, they do not breathe at all; but at last they must find the open sea, or a crack in the ice, or else dig a hole through the ice from below, and thus get their heads to the surface in some way, or they would drown.
<script>