Gordon Stables - Wild Adventures round the Pole

“Oh, look, doctor dear!” he cried; “sure, look for yourself; the world is moving away from us altogether!”

And this was precisely the sensation they experienced. Both the doctor and Rory were inclined to clutch nervously and tremulously the sides of the car in the first part of their ascent; but though the former was not much of a sailor, somewhat to his surprise he experienced none of those giddy feelings common to the landsman when gazing from an immense height. He could look beneath him and around him, and enjoy to the full the strange bird’s-eye landscape and seascape that every moment seemed to broaden and widen, until a great portion of the northern island, with its mountains, its lakes, its frozen torrents, its gulfs and bays and islands, and the great blue southern ocean, even to the far-off Faroe Isles, lay like a beautifully portrayed map beneath their feet. The grandeur of the scene kept them silent for long minutes; it impressed them, it awed them. It did more than even this, for it caused them to feel their own littleness, and the might of the Majesty that made the world.

De Vere himself seldom vouchsafed a single glance landwards; he seemed to busy himself wholly and solely with the many strange instruments with which he was surrounded. He was hardly a moment idle. The intense cold, that soon began to benumb the senses of Sandie, seemed to have no deterrent effect on his efforts.

“I must confess I do fell sleepy,” said the worthy medico, “and I meant to assist you, Mr De Vere.”

“Here,” cried the scientist, pouring something out of a phial, and handing it to him, “drink that quick.”

“I feel double the individual,” cried Sandie, brightly, as soon as he had swallowed the draught.

“Come,” said Rory, “come, monsieur, I want to feel double the individual, too.”

“No, no, sir,” said De Vere, smiling, “an Irishman no want etherism; you are already – pardon me – too ethereal.”

Sandie was gazing skywards.

“Happy thought!” cried Rory; “let us go to the moon.”

“No,” laughed the doctor; “nobody ever got that length yet.”

“Oh, you forget, Mr Surgeon,” said Rory, – “you forget entirely all about Danny O’Rourke.”

“Tell us, then, Rory.”

“Troth, then,” began Rory, in his richest brogue, “it was just like this same. Danny was a dacint boy enough, who lived entoirely alone with Biddy his wife, and the pig, close to a big bog in old Oireland. Sitting on a stone in the midst of this bog was Danny, one foine summer’s evening, when who should fly down but an aigle. ‘Foine noight,’ says the aigle. ‘The same to you,’ says Danny, ‘and many of them.’ ‘But,’ says the aigle, ‘don’t you see that it is sinking you are?’ ‘Och! sure,’ cries Danny, ‘and so it is. I’ll be swallowed up in the bog, and poor Biddy and the pig will nivir set eyes on me again. Och! och! what’ll I do?’ ‘Git on to me back, troth,’ says the aigle, ‘and I’ll fly you sthraight to your Biddy’s door.’ ‘And the blessings av the O’Rourkes be wid ye thin,’ says Danny, putting his arms round the aigle’s neck, ‘for you are the sinsible bird, and whatever I’d have done widout ye, ne’er a bit o’ me knows. But isn’t it high enough you are now, aroon? Yonder is my cottage just down there.’ For,” continued Rory, “you must know that by this time the aigle had mounted fully a mile high with poor Danny. ‘Be quiet wid ye,’ says the aigle, ‘or I’ll shake ye off me back entoirely. Don’t ye remember robbing my nest last year? I do. And it’s niver a cottage you’ll ever see again, nor Biddy, nor the pig either. It’s right up to the moon I’m flying wid ye.’ ‘What!’ cries Danny, ‘to that bit av a thing like a raping-hook? Och! and och! what’ll become av me at all at all?’ But the moon got bigger the nearer they came to it, and they found it a dacint size enough when they got there entirely. ‘Catch a howld av the end av the raping-hook,’ says the aigle, ‘or by this and by that I’ll shake ye off me shoulder.’ And so poor Danny had no ho’ but just to do as he was told, and away flew the aigle and left him. While he was wondering what he should do now, a stern voice behind him says, ‘Let go – let go the end of the raping-hook, and be off wid ye back to your own counthry.’ ‘It’s hardly civil av you,’ says Danny, ‘to ask me sich a thing. Sure it is few ever come to call on you anyhow.’ ‘Let go,’ thundered the man o’ the moon; and he gave Danny just one kick, and off went the poor boy flying into the air. ‘It’s killed I’ll be,’ says he to himself, ‘killed entoirely wid the fall, and what’ll become o’ me wife Biddy and the pig is more’n I can tell.’ But he fell, and he fell, and he fell, and he never seemed to stop falling, till plump he alights right in the middle o’ the sea, and there he lay on the broad back av him, till a big lump av a whale came and splashed him all over wid his tail. But sure enough the sea was only his bed, and the big whale turned out to be Biddy herself, with the watering-pot, telling him to get up, for a lazy ould boy, and feed the pig, and troth it was nothing but a dream after all.

“But where in the name of wonder are we now?” he continued, gazing around.

It was a very natural question. It had got suddenly dark. They were enveloped in a snow-cloud. The brave balloon seemed to struggle through it.

Ballast was thrown over, and up and out into the sunshine she rose again, but what a change had come over her appearance – every rope and length of her and the car itself and our bold aeronauts were covered white with virgin snow.

“Monsieurs,” said De Vere, “this is more than I bargained for. We must descend. You see she has lost all life. De lofely soul dat was in de balloon seems to have gone. We will descend.”

Indeed the huge balloon was already moving slowly earthwards, and in a minute more they were again passing through the snow-cloud. Once clear of this a breeze sprang up, or, to speak more correctly, they entered a current of air, that carried them directly inland for many miles. Tired of this direction, the valve was opened, out roared the gas, and the descent became more rapid, until the wind ceased to blow – they were beneath the adverse current. More ballast was thrown out, and her “way” was stopped.

But see, what aileth our hero, boy Rory? For some minutes he has been gazing southwards over the sea, so intensely indeed that his looks almost frighten the honest doctor.

“The glass, the glass,” he hisses, holding round his hand, but not taking his glance for a moment off the southern horizon.

The glass is handed to him, he adjusts it to his eye, and takes one long, fixed look; and when he turns once more towards the doctor his face is radiant with joy and excitement.

“It is she,” he cried, “it is she , it is she!”

The doctor really looked scared.

“Man!” he said, “are ye takin’ leave o’ your wuts? There, tak’ a hold o’ my hand and dinna try to frighten folk. There’s never a ‘she’ near ye.”

“It is she , I tell you,” cried Rory again; “take the glass and look in under the land yonder, and heading for Stromsoe. It is the pirate herself, – the pirate we fought in the Snowbird . Hurrah! hurrah!”