"Sailor, sailor, Tell me true, What's beyond Those waters blue?"
But the sailor Shook his head; "That's a secret, Sir," he said.
THE LITTLE ICE-MEN
Cuthbert and Doris]
III
THE LITTLE ICE-MEN
Marian's daddy was very glad when Captain Jeremy married Gwendolen'saunt, because he and Captain Jeremy had been boys at school together,and he had always been very fond of him; and he was gladder still whenCaptain Jeremy and Gwendolen's aunt left Bellington Square. This theydid a week after the wedding, because Captain Jeremy hated BellingtonSquare; and they went to live in an old farmhouse, two miles out of thetown.
It was a beautiful old house, with a gabled roof and golden-red brickslike a winter sunset; and the hall and passages of it were dark andvelvety, and the rooms upstairs smelt of lavender. Leading from the roadto the front door was a cobbly path, with lawns on each side of it, andbig trees standing on the lawns, with low-spreading branches thattouched the grass. Behind the house was a kitchen-garden full ofcucumber-frames and vegetables, and behind that was an orchard, with agate leading into the fields. These were all hard and crinkly withfrost, and the fruit-trees were bare, because it was the second ofJanuary, but that made the house seem all the snugger, with its lowpanelled walls and log fires.
When they had been in this house a week, Gwendolen's aunt gave achildren's party, and Marian and Cuthbert were asked to go, becausetheir daddy was Captain Jeremy's friend. Marian was very pleased,because she had always liked Gwendolen, although she had never known hervery well, but Cuthbert said that he didn't like her and that he'drather stay at home. Marian told him how much she had improved since hervoyage to Monkey Island, but Cuthbert said that he didn't care, and thatshe was a silly sort of girl anyhow. He was only pretending, however,because just after Christmas he had been in hospital having his tonsilsout, and he had already missed two or three parties and didn't mean tomiss another.
So they went to the party, and Cuthbert was rather glad, because one ofthe girls there was a girl called Doris, who had been in hospital havingher tonsils out just at the same time as he. She was rather a decentgirl, ten years old, with dark-coloured eyes and brown hair, and one ofher thumbs was double-jointed, and she had been eight times to theseaside. Just at present she was a little pale, and so was Cuthberthimself; and Gwendolen was so brown that, when they stood near her, theylooked paler still.
Captain Jeremy came and shook hands with them.
"Hullo," he said, "what's the matter with you?"
"It's their tonsils," said Marian. "They've just had them out, and ofcourse they're a little pulled down."
Captain Jeremy examined them thoughtfully.
Cuthbert liked him, and so did Doris.
"What you want," he said, "is a trip with me. That would soon set you upagain."
Gwendolen and Marian had gone off to play, so Cuthbert and Doris had himto themselves.
"I should like it very much," said Cuthbert.
"So should I," said Doris, "but I'm afraid Mummy wouldn't let me go."
"I see," said the Captain. "Well, I'm off next week to Port Jacobson inthe Arctic Circle. But you wouldn't be able to go to school next term ifyou came with me, because I shan't be back till the middle of May."
Cuthbert put his hand up and pinched his throat.
"It's still rather sore," he said.
"So is mine," said Doris.
Captain Jeremy laughed.
"Well, there's nothing like the Arctic Circle," he said, "for peoplewho've just had their tonsils out."
Then he spoke to Doris.
"Let me see," he said: "I know where Cuthbert lives, but where do youlive?"
Doris told him that she lived in John Street, which was the next streetto Cuthbert's. Her father was dead, and her mummy was rather poor, asshe had five other children besides Doris.
Captain Jeremy nodded.
"Then perhaps I shall be able to persuade her," he said, "to let me takeyou off her hands for a bit."
Doris danced up and down.
"Oh, I wish you would!" she cried. "I'd simply love to see the ArcticCircle!"
"So should I," said Cuthbert, and they were both so excited that theycould hardly eat any tea. When Marian heard about it, she wished thatshe was pale too, and she wished it ever so much more the next morningwhen Captain Jeremy called on her father and mother and persuaded themto let Cuthbert go. Then he went to John Street and talked to Doris'smother, and he looked so commanding and yet so gentle that Doris'smother said she would be very glad to let Doris go with him to PortJacobson.
"Of course, it'll be very cold," he said, "and they'll have to wearfurs, but we can easily get those when we arrive, and all they'll wantfor the voyage is plenty of underclothing and their oldest clothes."
For a voyage like that, all among the ice, Captain Jeremy's sailing-shipwasn't quite suitable, so he had hired a little steamer with very thicksides, and a trusty pilot. Port Jacobson was in a sort of bay just underthe shelter of Cape Fury, and beyond Cape Fury the coast had hardly beenexplored, it was all so bare and bleak and rocky. The only people wholived there were a few fishermen, a clergyman called Mr Smith, and acouple of engineers, who had been there for a year and had just found acoal-mine. It was the engineers who had written to Captain Jeremy,because they wanted him to bring them some machinery, and also becausethey wanted him to take back some of the coal that they had already dugup. That was how Captain Jeremy made his living, fetching and carryingthings across the sea.
Neither Cuthbert nor Doris was the least bit sea-sick, and they lovedto stand on the bridge beside Captain Jeremy and see the great billowsrushing toward the steamer, one after another, in the bright sunshine.Sometimes they went below into the dark engine-room, where they had toshout to make themselves heard, and where the pistons of the enginesslid to and fro like the arms of boxers that never got tired. How theyloved the cabin, too, at meal-times, when the cook rolled in with thesteaming dishes, and what meals they ate, in spite of the lurching tableand the water slamming against the port-holes!
In a couple of days' time they had forgotten all about their tonsils,and two days after that they had almost forgotten their homes, and aweek later they saw something in the distance like the grey ghost of acathedral. It was an iceberg--the first that they had seen; but soonthey began to see them every day, sometimes pale, in mournful groups,like broken statues in a cemetery, and sometimes sparkling in the sun asthough they were crusted with a million diamonds.
One day they came on deck just after breakfast and saw miles and milesof ice, all jumbled together, and three hours later they saw a greatcliff, covered with snow, standing out to sea. That was Cape Fury, andas they drew nearer they could see a little cluster of dark houses, withspires of smoke rising from their chimneys, and that was Port Jacobson.The pilot was on deck now, shouting all the time, and the steamer wasgoing very slowly, with ice on each side of it, and they could see somemen coming toward them, with rough-haired dogs pulling sledges. At lastthe steamer could get no farther, although it was still about a milefrom the town, and they cast out anchors and a long cable that theybegan to carry toward the shore. It seemed very funny to Cuthbert andDoris to feel their feet again on something steady, even though this wasonly the rough surface of the frozen bay in front of the port. The dayswere so short here that the sun was already low, and the great capestood dark and menacing, while far inland they could see the peaks ofmountains slowly fading against the sky.
Among the men who had come to meet them were the two engineers and MrSmith, and they were very surprised to see Cuthbert and Doris runningabout on the ice and trying to make snowballs. Then they all set offtoward the little town, with the lights shining in its windows, and MrSmith said that they must stay with him, because he and Mrs Smith had nochildren. Captain Jeremy was to stay with the two engineers, who hadbuilt a little house of their own, but they all came in to supper withthe Smiths, and Cuthbert and Doris were allowed t
o sit up.
"To-morrow," said Mr Smith, "we'll get you some furs, and then you'll beable to go tobogganing with the other children," and Cuthbert and Dorissaid "Hooray!" because they had learned to toboggan on Fairbarrow Down.Just before they went to bed they saw a wonderful thing, for the wholeof the sky began to quiver, and beautiful colours went dancing acrossit, melting away and then coming back again. These were the NorthernLights, or the Aurora Borealis, and Cuthbert and Doris could havewatched them all night.
But they soon fell asleep; and most of the next day they were outtobogganing with the other children, and they soon became so good at itthat they could go as fast as any of them, and hardly ever had a spill.By the end of the week they had got into the habit of climbing on to thetop of Cape Fury and tobogganing back again, more than a mile and ahalf, right down to Mr Smith's house. The first time they climbed upthere the slope had looked so steep, and the roofs of the houses so farbelow them, that they had stood for nearly ten minutes before they couldmake up their minds to start. But some of the other children had doneit, and at last Doris had said, "Well, come on, Cuthbert, we mustn't beafraid," and Cuthbert had told her to hold on tight, and so they hadpushed off over the frozen snow.
By the time they had got half-way, they were going so fast that the airwas roaring in their ears, but the track was straight, and they had keptin the middle of it, and ran safely into the town. After that it didn'tseem worth while to go tobogganing on any of the lower hills, and thatwas how it came about that the following Wednesday they found themselvesas usual on the top of Cape Fury.
It was a still, cold day, and the air was so clear that they could seethe coast for miles and miles, and the tops of mountains far inland thatthey had never seen before. Below them in the bay, stuck in the ice,they could see the little steamer, with the sailors on the deck, andbeyond the ice a strip of blue water, and beyond that again more icestill. That was on one side of them, and on the other they saw thefarther slope of Cape Fury, slanting down and down and down to theunexplored regions toward the north. It was a gentler slope than theslope toward the town, and suddenly Cuthbert had a great idea.
"I say," he said, "why shouldn't we toboggan down there? I don't supposeanybody has ever done it."
What with the wind and the sun and the snow, the cheeks of both of themwere like ripe chestnuts, and Doris's eyes began to sparkle as shelistened to Cuthbert's great idea. When he was at home Cuthbert didn'tget many ideas, and he generally used to laugh at other people's, so hewas very pleased when he got this one and Doris said that she thought itripping.
"We won't go too fast," he said, "so that, if we see a precipice oranything, we shall be able to stop ourselves in time."
They had a stout little toboggan, just big enough for two, and so theystarted off down this new slope, with the sun shining and the snowglittering. At first they moved quite slowly, but lower down the side ofthe hill became steeper, and soon they were going so fast that, even ifthey had wanted to, they would have found it pretty hard to stopthemselves. And then an awful thing happened, for suddenly, just infront of them, they saw a deep cleft in the snow sliding down, at aterrific angle, into a sort of tunnel under the hillside.
Almost before they could breathe, they had plunged into this, and nowthere was nothing to do but to hold on. They saw the tunnel's mouthleaping toward them, and the next moment they were in darkness. NeitherCuthbert nor Doris had ever been so frightened before. In the pitchyblackness they could see nothing. They could only feel themselvesshooting deeper and deeper into the very heart of the frozen earth.Sometimes a bump on the floor of the tunnel would send them careeringtoward the roof, and then they would come down again with a thud thatalmost pitched them off the toboggan. Every moment they expected to bekilled. There came another tremendous bump. And then they felt theirtoboggan springing through the air and dropping like a stone into somefearful well. They shut their eyes, waiting for death, and then wentrolling over and over, with something strange and soft and featherywrapping them round like a bedroom quilt. For a minute or two they couldonly gasp, and then Cuthbert sat up and called to Doris.
"Hullo, Doris!" he said; "are you all right?"
"Yes, I think so," said Doris. "Are you?"
Cuthbert told her that he was; and now that they could look about, theysaw that they were on the floor of an immense cave, and that they hadpitched down from somewhere near the top of it on to a huge mass offeathers. These were evidently the feathers of thousands and thousandsof sea-birds; but who could have plucked them and stored them here socarefully?
Then they heard a strange sort of coughing and grunting and spluttering,and they saw the oddest of little men. He was about three feet high,with a red beard and a very cheerful sort of face, and he had evidentlybeen asleep in among the feathers, for he was rubbing his eyes andstaring at them in astonishment. Then they heard some more grunting andcoughing, and at last they saw a dozen of these little men standing allround them, dressed in the skins of animals, and with feathers stickingto their beards. They were all looking rather disturbed, but whenCuthbert and Doris smiled they began to smile too and come toward them.Then they began to talk, and, though at first the sounds that they madeseemed very queer, Cuthbert and Doris, rather to their surprise, foundthat they could understand them perfectly well. That was because thelanguage in which the little men spoke was the oldest language in theworld, the father and mother of all the other languages, and so ofcourse the children soon understood it. They also found that in a verylittle while they could talk in this language themselves, and soon theywere all chattering together about what had happened, as if they hadknown each other all their lives.
Now that they had become used to the dim light, they could see that thisgreat cave had walls of rock, with long icicles hanging from the roofand the sticking-out pieces of the walls. Most of the floor of it was ofsmooth ice, but in the middle there was a flat rock; and on this rockthere was a little fire burning, a little fire made of coal. The leaderof the men was a man called Marmaduke, and he told the children thatthey had all been asleep, and that they had lived in this cave forhundreds of thousands of years, and that the great pile of feathers waswhere they went to bed.
"But it's day-time," said Cuthbert. "Why do you go to bed in day-time?"
Marmaduke laughed, and so did all the other men.
"Because at night," he said, "we go out and hunt to get our wolf-andseal-meat, when no one can see us."
But they were all so excited at the appearance of Cuthbert and Doristhat they led them to the fire, where they sat and talked to them, andpresently they cooked a delicious meal for them of seal-soup andwolf-chops. The coal that they burnt they had found in a deep hole inone corner of the cave, and at the other corner there was a littlecrack, down which they presently led the children. This opened upon aledge of ice, five or six feet above the shore, but now they couldhardly see anything, because the air was full of snow, driving fiercelyinto their faces. The little ice-men looked grave.
"It's a blizzard," they said, "and very likely it'll go on for a week.But luckily we've got plenty of meat, so that we shan't be in want offood."
"But how shall we get back?" said Doris. "They won't know where we are,and they'll think that we're both dead."
Marmaduke shook his head.
"I don't exactly know," he replied, "how you'd get back in any case. Youcould never climb up the way you came, and it's very difficult to getround the coast."
"But we'll have to get back somehow," said Cuthbert, "because of ourrelations at home."
Marmaduke looked puzzled.
"What are relations?" he said. "And why should you want to go back?"
So Cuthbert had to tell them all about his father and mother and hisUncle Joe and his sister Marian; and Doris had to tell them all abouther mummy and her five little brothers and her aunts and cousins. Theywere very interested, but it was quite clear that Cuthbert and Doriscouldn't leave that night; and so presently they crept in among thefeathers, and were soon very c
omfy and fast asleep. The next morning itwas still snowing, but it was rather fun helping to cook the meals, andthe little men showed them some lovely dances that were almost as old asthe world itself.
For a whole week they had to stay in the cave, with the blizzard ragingoutside, but one morning when they crept down the crack they found thesky clear and the sun shining. They could now see, towering straightabove them, tremendous precipices of rock, and miles of boulders andbroken ice, stretching out toward the horizon.
"Our only hope," said Cuthbert, "is that Captain Jeremy and some of thefishermen will come exploring for us," and just as he said that far inthe distance they heard the report of a gun. Then a long way off theysaw some little figures and a tiny sledge drawn by dogs; and they stoodon tiptoe and waved and waved, hoping that Captain Jeremy might see themthrough his telescope.
The little ice-men never came out by daylight, and when they heard whatthe children had seen they made them promise on their dying oath not totell anybody the way to the cave. Once before, they said, a learned manhad discovered them, and he had tried to measure them with a pair ofcompasses, so they had had to kill him, as gently as they could, byputting him in the middle of the pile of feathers. Then they saidgood-bye, and all the little men kissed them and sent their love toeverybody at home, and Cuthbert and Doris began to scramble over the icetoward the sledge-party that was now much nearer.
When Captain Jeremy met them, you can guess how pleased he was, becausehe had made up his mind that they must have been killed; and good MrSmith had tears in his eyes, but they were tears of joy. Everybody atPort Jacobson, too, was so pleased that they made a big bonfire tocelebrate the occasion, and they all drank the healths of the littleice-men and ate a lot of sweets in their honour.