“If you please, sir, me and my mates wants to know if so be as you’ll turn back. We’ve naught to eat, and it’s sore goin’ without feed, when it’s growin’ cold—c-o-l-d-e-r e-v-e-r-y m-i-n-u-t-e,” his teeth chattering so that he could scarcely speak.
“Go below! You cowards!” shouted Nordjansen fiercely. “Cold! You are frightened! No wonder your teeth chatter like the boughs of the trees in the winter wind!” he shrieked, hoarse with rage. They crept away, more affrighted of his wrath than of the cold or the fiery phenomenon over their heads.
Nordjansen drew himself up proudly:
“Let them not presume to dictate to me; I am the commander! But it is c-o-l-d; y-e-s, c-o-l-d;” his lips trembled, and his teeth chattered so that his speech halted.
The strange thrills increased in force, and shot through him in more rapid succession.
A wind had arisen, which each moment increased in velocity. Of a sudden the ship lurched wildly, then spun half around, and with an awful thud the iron sheathing of her bow adhered to the North Pole, as the cambric needle is attached to the magnet with which children play. One glimpse of icebergs so awful, so terrible in their magnitude; higher than the highest peaks of the Himalayas, numerous beyond computing; each one a perfect prism, lighted into a blinding radiance of color by the midnight sun. Nordjansen knew that he had found the home of the Aurora Borealis. He had scant time to notice these wonders; all that he saw in that fleeting glance made a horrible impression upon his awe-struck mind, yet no one thought was distinct or clearly defined—one awful throe of fear possessed him.
The wind had increased to a shrieking gale, and although the force of magnetism held the vessel sealed to the pole, it quivered, groaned, and strained for release like a living thing.
Nordjansen’s knees trembled; he turned his terror-stricken gaze away from the awful illumination—the dizzy commingling of rays of every hue—from the vast, unnumbered prisms of ice; his eyeballs ached with the glare; which, though so brilliant, was permeated with a chill more terrible than the rigor of death.
As in affright he turned his eyes away it was but to encounter another horror; before him lay a cavernous entrance, glooming downward and forward, into the very bowels of the earth; he loosed his hold upon the mast—to which he had been clinging for support—to wipe the cold drops of perspiration from his brow, brought there by terror. He wished his sailors were on deck that he might hear the sound of a human voice. He wished—he wished that he had been less harsh. When all is well we are filled with self-sufficiency, but when adversity comes upon us we crave human sympathy as much as does the little child who holds up a hurt hand for mother’s healing kiss.
He had no sooner loosed his hold upon the mast than the strong wind lifted him bodily, and carried him—feet foremost—into the terrors of the abyss which swallowed him up in darkness. He had no time for thought as he was borne rapidly forward; swept along as a feather is borne on the autumn gale; he lay on his back, as the swimmer floats on the water, his arms pressed closely to his sides, his feet held stiffly together. The strange incongruous thought occurred to him: “This is the position in which I shall be placed when I am dead; my feet will lie thus, side by side; my hands should be crossed upon my breast—” he tried to raise his hands and so place them, but found that he had no power to stir them. “I wonder if I am dead! Is this the dread change?” He laughed whimsically, for at this instant the strong wind, sweeping his hair backward, made his head itch; that was no post-mortem sensation.