WHERE NIGHT IS SIX MONTHS LONG
CHAPTER X
WHERE NIGHT IS SIX MONTHS LONG
“IT IS a good thing that both the Evening Star and the Equator shine,” said Billy. “We can find them so easily in the dark.”
“But there isn’t going to be any dark,” said Jack Frost.
“Oh, but there will be at night!” said Billy confidently. “It is always dark at night. It has to be or you wouldn’t know it was night.”
“But there won’t be any night for six months where we are going,” said Jack Frost. “There never is at the North Pole.”
“Gracious!” said Billy; “that must be dreadful. And do the days last for six months, too?”
“To be sure they do. If you ask a boy to come to your house to spend the afternoon at the North Pole he stays for three months.”
“It must be terrible when the baby has the colic all night,” said Billy thoughtfully. “That happens often at our house, and Papa has to walk the floor with him.”
“I don’t know much about babies,” said Jack Frost, “but I suppose they would stop crying before morning. Maybe they’d be satisfied crying for a month or two if they weren’t interrupted.”
“There’s an iceberg,” said Nimbus, who had been keeping a lookout. “We ought to be getting there in a little while now. We are running into a dawn anyway.”
To the southward Billy noticed a faint grayish streak in the sky, and soon he could see the white caps that the breakers always wear to keep their heads warm on windy days.
They were going very fast. Little white specks that seemed to be flying past beneath them he now saw were icebergs, and by-and-by these began to appear in great numbers, dotting the sea like schools of tiny islands in all directions.
Although the light was growing brighter all the time, he was still aware of a faint flickering glow to the northward, and this his friends told him was Aurora Borealis flashing the news that the Equator and the Evening Star were still in the neighborhood.
“I wish this thing would hurry,” said Nimbus impatiently. “We are not going more than five hundred miles an hour now. Mere dawdling, I call it.”
“Crawling,” said Jack Frost.
“I wonder how long it will be before we catch up to them,” said Billy.
“Can’t tell,” said Nimbus. “Depends on whether we are going in their direction or not.”
Suddenly Jack Frost gave a roar of rage.
“Look there!” he shouted. “Just look there. It took me centuries to make that glacier, and now look at it. Isn’t that a shame?”
Below them, where a range of snowy mountains skirted the sea, they saw a long dark streak which, when more closely observed, proved to be a mountain area entirely bared of snow and leading like a great broad road to the north.
“That’s what that wretched Equator has been doing,” said Jack Frost sadly. “He’s spoiled a glacier that was a work of art—almost my masterpiece. I suppose when I get up to the North Pole I’ll find he has melted that. And if he has, it’ll spoil. You cannot possibly keep a North Pole unless you keep it on ice.”
“But,” cried Nimbus, who plainly did not share Jack Frost’s annoyance, “we can trace him now. That is where he must have lighted. Let’s go down there and see if we can find any trace of the Evening Star.”
He had hardly spoken when the car began rapidly to descend, and presently it was resting on a mountain top between two tall ice cliffs.
Jack Frost looked at them ruefully.
“That was my glacier,” he said. “My beautiful glacier—one of the best I ever built. And now look at it. Ruined, utterly ruined.”
Nimbus, who had been searching over the rocks, uttered a cry of pleasure.
“Look here,” he said. “The Equator got here first. The Evening Star did not come till later. So she is probably safe, after all.”
“How do you know that?” said Jack Frost.
“See,” said Nimbus. “When he got here and cleaned the snow off”—Jack Frost grunted disgustedly—“the flowers began to spring up. Here are daisies and buttercups and forget-me-nots and violets and trilliums, all growing where he turned the heat on.”
“I don’t see that that proves anything,” said Jack Frost.
“But it does,” said Nimbus, “whether you see it or not. After they grew and blossomed somebody came and picked lots of them. You can see where they have been snipped off.”
“Well?” said Jack Frost.
“It must have been the Evening Star,” continued Nimbus. “She’s very fond of flowers, you know, and nobody else could get here.”
“Humph!” said Jack Frost; “there may be something in that. But whether there is or not, I must rebuild this glacier, or at least start it. I’ll begin by cutting down these flowers.”
“Oh, please don’t!” said Billy. “They look so pretty here among the snowdrifts. Let them just stay for a while anyway.”
“All right,” said Jack Frost, “for a while, if it will please you. But I want you to understand that they are in the way of the loveliest glacier that——”
“Never mind your glacier,” shouted Nimbus. “I’ve found the track of the Evening Star, and she is going east instead of north.”
He had climbed up a crevice in one of the ice cliffs and was studying the surface of a thin covering of new-fallen snow.
There before him were the dainty footprints of the Evening Star, and here and there a blossom apparently fallen from her bouquet lay scattered along the tracks.
“Now,” said Nimbus, “we will separate. Billy, you and I will go after the Evening Star, and you, Jack Frost, can follow the open trail of the Equator and see if you can find him. If you do find him, be sure not to let him get away.”
“How about us?” said the motorman severely.
“Oh, I had forgotten you!” said Nimbus.
“We hadn’t,” said the motorman.
“Then you’d better,” said the Equine Ox, sticking his head out of one of the windows of the car. “Always remember yourself last.”
“I don’t care to hear anything more from you,” said the motorman. “It’s against the rules for a beast to talk, anyway.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that!” said a voice from a little peak just above them.
“A bear,” said Billy, astonished.
“Why not?” said the voice, as a great white Polar Bear threaded his way down the slope toward the trolley car.
But the motorman and the conductor seemed to think there were many reasons why not. They hastily sought shelter inside the car and closed the door after them, while the Equine Ox, with a snort of terror, pulled his head in so quickly that he brought away a part of the sash with his horns.
“My!” said Billy; “I’m afraid that bear will get them or us.”
“He’ll have to eat the side of the trolley car before he gets them,” said Nimbus.
“And by that time,” added Jack Frost, “he’ll be so full he won’t have any more room for them.”
So, leaving the bear busily gnawing at the sash board of the car, Nimbus, Jack Frost and Billy proceeded afoot on their quest.
Jack Frost set out on the Equator’s trail at a prodigious pace, muttering to himself at each fresh discovery of a ruined glacier or melted icefield.
Billy and Nimbus proceeded more slowly, for the track of the Evening Star was not always distinct, and it was plain that, here and there, when the going was hard, she had sailed over the obstructing cliffs.
At the end of an hour the track disappeared altogether, nor could they find it, search as they might.
“Where do you suppose she has gone?” inquired Billy.
“Up,” said Nimbus briefly. “Probably saw the Equator coming.”
As he was speaking they heard a familiar voice, and Jack Frost hailed them.
“Hello!” said Nimbus; “what are you doing over here?”
“This is where the track brought me,” replied Jack Frost, and Billy and Nimbus saw that the trail through the snow which had been melted by the Equator was within a few yards of them.
“That explains why the Evening Star stopped walking,” said Nimbus. “She saw the Equator headed over this way, and decided she had better travel a little faster.”
It had grown quite light, so that the flashes of Aurora could no longer seem to guide them, for they had quite faded in the brighter dawn.
As Billy was very tired, Jack Frost and Nimbus agreed to sit down for a few minutes while he rested. In the mean time they sent a Meteor back for the trolley car so that they might continue their journey more easily.
“Walking is foolish, anyway,” said Jack Frost. “Why any one who can fly should ever walk is a mystery to me.”
“Birds do,” said Billy.
“Yes,” said Jack Frost, “and sometimes they overdo it, like the awkward auk. Did you ever hear about him?”
“No,” said Billy, “I never did, but I should love to.”
“It’s a sad story,” said Jack Frost, “but here it is”:
“Two excellent wings had the awkward auk,
But he was never known to fly,
Preferring a rambling, shambling walk,
And the walruses wondered why;
Yet there seems no reason that on this point
Their minds should have been so hazy,
For it’s clear to me as a thing can be
That the awkward auk was lazy.
“Though he might have skirted the rainbow’s rim
Or circled above the seas,
The only gait that appealed to him
Was one of reposeful ease;
He strutted about o’er the crags and cliffs
In a most ungainly fashion,
And the fowls that flew he was prone to view
With a kind of cold compassion.
“But it chanced one night that a hungry fox
Got a look at the awkward auk,
Who was strolling about on the spray-washed rocks
With his usual clumsy walk;
He made a dash for the startled bird,
And the auk with a frown of fright
On his furrowed brow, observed that now
Was a crisis that called for flight.
“He flapped and flopped with his feeble wings,
And he wobbled his trifling tail;
But, alas! The long-neglected things
Were not of the least avail;
Which is why the fox, as he licked his chops
With a gratified gusto, winked,
And is why the auk who preferred to walk
Has come to be quite extinct.”
Jack Frost had just finished the last word when the Meteor came flying up to them.
“The Equator,” he said, “is at the North Pole, and the Evening Star is hiding under a glacier there. As soon as he melts the glacier——”
“Everything will be lost,” finished Nimbus. “Come on, there is not a moment to lose.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” said Jack Frost, “but I’ve got to start those melted glaciers first; you know that’s my job, and I dare not neglect it.”
“All right,” said Nimbus. “Billy and I will go on without you. Come on, Billy.”
Billy started to follow him, but Nimbus, in his excitement, had completely forgotten the little boy. He struck up a pace that Billy could not possibly keep, and soon was out of hearing—a tiny speck on the vast white snowfield that stretched ahead toward the horizon.
“I guess I’ll have to go with you, Jack Frost,” said Billy, turning sadly toward the spot where that worthy had been standing.
But Jack Frost had vanished utterly, and there was Billy deserted on a great Arctic snowfield, just at the most exciting moment of the chase.