Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole

“Certainly, sir,” he replied, with a look of slight surprise. “You know I am quite able to do so. The second mate, too, is as able as I am. For that matter, most of the men, I think, would find little difficulty in navigating a boat to Upernavik.”

“That is well,” returned the Captain, “because I do not intend to return with you.”

“Not return!” exclaimed the doctor; “surely you don’t mean to winter here.”

“No, not here, but further north,” replied the Captain, with a smile which most of the party returned, for they thought he was jesting.

Benjy Vane, however, did not think so. A gleeful look of triumph caused his face, as it were, to sparkle, and he said, eagerly—

“We’ll winter at the North Pole, father, eh?”

This was greeted with a general laugh.

“But seriously, uncle, what do you mean to do?” asked Leonard Vandervell, who, with his brother, was not unhopeful that the Captain meditated something desperate.

“Benjy is not far off the mark. I intend to winter at the Pole, or as near to it as I can manage to get.”

“My dear Captain Vane,” said the doctor, with an anxious look, “you cannot really mean what you say. You must be jesting, or mad.”

“Well, as to madness,” returned the Captain with a peculiar smile, “you ought to know best, for it’s a perquisite of your cloth to pronounce people mad or sane, though some of yourselves are as mad as the worst of us; but in regard to jesting, nothing, I assure you, is further from my mind. Listen!”

He rose from the box which had formed his seat, and looked earnestly round on his men. As he stood there, erect, tall, square, powerful, with legs firmly planted, and apart, as if to guard against a lurch of his ship, with his bronzed face flushed, and his dark eye flashing, they all understood that their leader’s mind was made up, and that what he had resolved upon, he would certainly attempt to carry out.

“Listen,” he repeated; “it was my purpose on leaving England, as you all know, to sail north as far as the ice would let me; to winter where we should stick fast, and organise an over-ice, or overland journey to the Pole with all the appliances of recent scientific discovery, and all the advantages of knowledge acquired by former explorers. It has pleased God to destroy my ship, but my life and my hopes are spared. So are my stores and scientific instruments. I intend, therefore, to carry out my original purpose. I believe that former explorers have erred in some points of their procedure. These errors I shall steer clear of. Former travellers have ignored some facts, and despised some appliances. These facts I will recognise; these appliances I will utilise. With a steam yacht, you, my friends, who have shown so much enthusiasm and courage up to this point, would have been of the utmost service to me. As a party in boats, or on foot, you would only hamper my movements. I mean to prosecute this enterprise almost alone. I shall join myself to the Eskimos.”

He paused at this point as if in meditation. Benjy, whose eyes and mouth had been gradually opening to their widest, almost gasped with astonishment as he glanced at his cousins, whose expressive countenances were somewhat similarly affected.

“I have had some long talks,” continued the Captain, “with that big Eskimo Chingatok, through our interpreter, and from what he says I believe my chances of success are considerable. I am all the more confirmed in this resolution because of the readiness and ability of my first mate to guide you out of the Arctic regions, and your willingness to trust him. Anders has agreed to go with me as interpreter, and now, all I want is one other man, because—”

“Put me down, father,” cried Benjy, in a burst of excitement—“ I’m your man.”

“Hush, lad,” said the Captain with a little smile, “of course I shall take you with me and also your two cousins, but I want one other man to complete the party—but he must be a heartily willing man. Who will volunteer?”

There was silence for a few moments. It was broken by the doctor.

“I for one won’t volunteer,” he said, “for I’m too much shaken by this troublesome illness to think of such an expedition. If I were well it might be otherwise, but perhaps some of the others will offer.”

“You can’t expect me to do so,” said the mate, “for I’ve got to guide our party home, as agreed on; besides, under any circumstances, I would not join you, for it is simple madness. You’ll forgive me, Captain. I mean no disrespect, but I have sailed many years to these seas, and I know from experience that what you propose is beyond the power of man to accomplish.”

“Experience!” repeated the Captain, quickly. “Has your experience extended further north than this point?”

“No, sir, I have not been further north than this—nobody has. It is beyond the utmost limit yet reached, so far as I know.”

“Well, then, you cannot speak from experience about what I propose,” said the Captain, turning away. “Come, lads, I have no wish to constrain you, I merely give one of you the chance.”

Still no one came forward. Every man of the crew of the Whitebear had had more or less personal acquaintance with arctic travel and danger. They would have followed Captain Vane anywhere in the yacht, but evidently they had no taste for what he was about to undertake.

At last one stepped to the front. It was Butterface, the steward. This intensely black negro was a bulky, powerful man, with a modest spirit and a strange disbelief in his own capacities, though, in truth, these were very considerable. He came forward, stooping slightly, and rubbing his hands in a deprecating manner.

“’Scuse me, massa Capting. P’r’aps it bery presumsheeous in dis yer chile for to speak afore his betters, but as no oder man ’pears to want to volunteer, I’s willin’ to go in an’ win. Ob course I ain’t a man—on’y a nigger, but I’s a willin’ nigger, an’ kin do a few small tings—cook de grub, wash up de cups an’ sarsers, pull a oar, clean yer boots, fight de Eskimos if you wants me to, an’ ginrally to scrimmage around a’most anything. Moreover, I eats no more dan a babby—’sep wen I’s hungry—an’ I’ll foller you, massa, troo tick and tin—to de Nort Pole, or de Sout Pole, or de East Pole, or de West Pole—or any oder pole wotsomediver—all de same to Butterface, s’long’s you’ll let ’im stick by you.”

The crew could not help giving the negro a cheer as he finished this loyal speech, and the Captain, although he would have preferred one of the other men, gladly accepted his services.

A few days later the boats were ready and provisioned; adieus were said, hats and handkerchiefs waved, and soon after Captain Vane and his son and two nephews, with Anders and Butterface, were left to fight their battles alone, on the margin of an unexplored, mysterious Polar sea.

There are times, probably, in all conditions of life, when men feel a species of desolate sadness creeping over their spirits, which they find it hard to shake off or subdue. Such a time arrived to our Arctic adventurers the night after they had parted from the crew of the wrecked Whitebear . Nearly everything around, and much within, them was calculated to foster that feeling.

They were seated on the rocky point on the extremity of which their yacht had been driven. Behind them were the deep ravines, broad valleys, black beetling cliffs, grand mountains, stupendous glaciers, and dreary desolation of Greenland. To right and left, and in front of them, lay the chaotic ice-pack of the Arctic sea, with lanes and pools of water visible here and there like lines and spots of ink. Icebergs innumerable rose against the sky, which at the time was entirely covered with grey and gloomy clouds. Gusts of wind swept over the frozen waste now and then, as if a squall which had recently passed, were sighing at the thought of leaving anything undestroyed behind it. When we add to this, that the wanderers were thinking of the comrades who had just left them—the last link, as it were, with the civilised world from which they were self-exiled, of the unknown dangers and difficulties that lay before them, and of the all but forlorn hope they had undertaken, there need be little wonder that for some time they all looked rather grave, and were disposed to silence.