Edward Stratemeyer - First at the North Pole - or, Two Boys in the Arctic Circle

“First at the North Pole,” relates the particulars of a marvelous journey from our New England coast to that portion of our globe sometimes designated as “the top of the world.”

Filled with such dreams as come to all explorers, Barwell Dawson fitted out the Ice King for a trip to the north. Because of what had happened, it was but natural that he should invite Andy and Chet to accompany him, and equally natural that they should hasten to accept the invitation.

The boys knew that they would have no easy time of it, yet they did not dream of the many perils that awaited the entire party. Once the staunch steamer was in danger of being crushed by an immense iceberg, in which event this chronicle would not have been written. Again, the boys and the others had a fierce fight with polar bears and with a savage walrus. When the ship was jammed hard and fast in the ice a start was made by the exploring party, accompanied by some Esquimaux and several dog sledges. All had heard of the marvelous achievements of Cook and Peary, and all were fired with a great ambition to go and do likewise. With the thermometer often at fifty degrees below zero, they pushed on steadily, facing death more than once. To add to their troubles they had sickness in camp, and snow-blindness, and once some Esquimaux, becoming scared, rebelled and tried to run off with their supplies. Then, when the North Pole was at last gained, it became the gravest kind of a problem how to return to civilization alive.

In penning this volume I have had a twofold purpose in mind: the first to show what pure grit and determination can do under the most trying of circumstances, and the second to give my readers an insight into Esquimaux life and habits, and to relate what great explorers like Franklin, Kane, Hall, DeLong, Nansen, Cook, and Peary have done to open up this weird and mysterious portion of our globe.

“What be you a-goin’ to do today, Andy?”

“I’m going to try my luck over to the Storburgh camp, Uncle Si. I hardly think Mr. Storburgh will have an opening for me, but it won’t hurt to ask him.”

“Did you try Sam Hickley, as I told you to?” continued Josiah Graham, as he settled himself more comfortably before the open fireplace of the cabin.

“Yes, but he said he had all the men he wanted.” Andy Graham gave something of a sigh. “Seems to me there are more lumbermen in this part of Maine than there is lumber.”

“Humph! I guess you ain’t tried very hard to git work,” grumbled the old man, drawing up his bootless feet on the rungs of his chair, and spreading out his hands to the generous blaze before him. “Did you see them Plover brothers?”

“No, but Chet Greene did, day before yesterday, and they told him they were laying men off instead of taking ’em on.”

“Humph! I guess thet Chet Greene don’t want to work. He’d rather fool his time away in the woods, huntin’ and fishin’.”

“Chet is willing enough to work if he can get anything to do. And hunting pays, sometimes. Last week he got a fine deer and one of the rich hunters from Boston paid him a good price for it.”

“Humph! Thet ain’t as good as a stiddy, payin’ job. I don’t want you to be a-lazin’ your time away in the woods, – I want you to grow up stiddy an’ useful. Besides, we got to have money, if we want to live.”

“Aren’t you going to try to get work, Uncle Si?” asked the boy anxiously, as he gazed at the large and powerful-looking frame of the man before him.

“To be sure I’m a-goin’ to go to work – soon as I’m fit. But I can’t do nuthin with my feet an’ my stomach goin’ back on me, can I?”

“I thought your dyspepsia was about over – you’ve eaten so well the past week. And you’ve walked considerably lately. If you got something easy – ”

“Now, don’t you go to tellin’ me what to do!” cried the old man, wrathfully. “I’m a sick man, that’s what I am. I ain’t able to work, an’ it’s up to you as a dootiful nevvy to git work an’ support us both. Now you jest trot off to the Storburgh camp, an’ don’t you come home till you git work. An’ after this, you better give up havin’ anything to do with thet good-fer-nuthin, lazy Chet Greene.”

The boy’s eyes flashed for an instant and he was on the point of making a bitter reply to his relative. But then his mouth closed suddenly and he turned away. In silence he drew off his slippers, donned his big boots, and put on his overcoat and his winter cap. Then he pulled on his gloves, slung a game bag over his shoulder, and reached for a gun that stood behind a door.

“Wot you takin’ thet fer?” demanded Josiah Graham, with his eyes on the gun. “Didn’t I tell you to look fer a job?”

“That’s what I’m going to do,” was the reply. “But if I come across any game on the way I want the chance to bring it down.”

“Humph! I know how boys are! Rather loaf around the woods than work, any time.”

“Uncle Si, if you say another word – ” began the youth, and then he stopped short, turned on his heel, and walked from the cabin, closing the door none too gently behind him.

It was certainly a trying situation, and as he stepped out into the snow Andy felt as if he never wanted to go back and never wanted to see his Uncle Si again.

“It’s his laziness, nothing else,” murmured the boy to himself, as he trudged off. “He’s as able to work as I am. He always was lazy – father said so. Oh, dear; I wish he had never come to Pine Run!”

Andy was a youth of seventeen, of medium height, but with well-developed chest and muscles. His face was a round one, and usually good to look at, although at present it was drawn down because of what had just occurred.

The boy was an orphan, the son of a man who in years gone by had bought and sold lumber throughout the northern section of Maine. His mother had been taken away when he was a small lad, and then he and his father had left town and come to live in the big cabin from which Andy was now trudging so rapidly. An old colored woman had come along, to do the cooking and other household work.

A log jam on the river had caused Mr. Graham’s death two years before this tale opens, and for a short time Andy had been left utterly alone, there being no near neighbors and no relatives to take care of the orphan. True, he had been offered a home by a lumber dealer of Bangor, but the man was such a harsh fellow that Andy shrank from going with him.

Then, one day, much to everybody’s surprise, Josiah Graham appeared on the scene and announced his intention to settle down and live with his nephew. Josiah was an older half-brother to Andy’s father, and the boy had often heard of him as a shiftless, lazy ne’er-do-well, who drifted from one town to another, seldom keeping a job longer than two or three weeks or a month. He did not drink, but he loved to smoke, and to tell stories of what he had done or was going to do.

“I’m a-goin’ to take Andy in hand an’ make a man of him,” he declared, shortly after his arrival. “A young feller like him needs a guardeen.” And then he had his trunk carted to the cabin and, without asking Andy’s permission, proceeded to settle down and make himself comfortable.

At first it looked as if matters might go along smoothly enough, for Josiah Graham managed to obtain a position as time-keeper at one of the lumber camps, where Andy was employed as a chopper. But soon the man’s laziness manifested itself, and when he did not do his work properly he was discharged.