Tales out of school

by Frank R. Stockton

But, after the ground is freed from its icy envelope, everything starts into life, and grows with the most astonishing rapidity. A plant will spring up, grow two or three feet high perhaps, bud, blossom, and bear fruit in the time our plants of the temperate zone will be producing a foot or so of stalk and leaves. In a few days after the fir trees have dropped the last of their snow-wreaths their branches will be covered with delicate spears of fresh green. A field that a week or two before was white with snow will be carpeted with flowers. The reason of this growth, which seems magical, is that in the Arctic zone, after the sun once gets well up above the horizon, it stays up—it does not set again for a long time, but shines steadily on, day and night.

ICEBERGS AND GLACIERS.

I use the words day and night in the sense we generally use them to mark the division of time into twenty-four hours. In our latitude this division of time also marks the periods of light and darkness, but it is not so in the Arctic countries. There, you know, the day is six months long, and the night six months. But the Esquimaux have their regular times for sleeping, for, of course, they can’t stay awake six months, or sleep six months; but they naturally spend more time in sleep in their dreary winter than during their beautiful summer.

It was on Polargno’s sixteenth birth-day that he had his adventure with the fox. It was mid-winter, and consequently midnight—that is the middle of the six months’ night—the seventh of January, I think, that his birth-day came around.

I don’t know that the Esquimaux are in the habit of remembering, or celebrating birth-days, but it was easy for Polargno’s parents to remember his birth-day, because he was the only child they had. His father, that morning, gave him a bright, new hatchet, that he had bought from the fur traders, and Polargno was so delighted with it that he started off as soon as he had his breakfast to use it in making a new trap, and to mend his old ones which were getting to be rather shaky.

The only persons he found astir in the village were two boys about his own age, and the three proceeded together to inspect their traps. They took no dogs with them, as they were of no use on such an expedition, and were apt to be troublesome.

At this season, trap-making and trap-baiting were about the only amusements that the boys had, for the cold was too severe for hunting. The men of the settlement had their traps too. These traps were made of different sizes and forms, and baited with several sorts of food, to attract all hungry animals, large and small, that might be prowling around. The Esquimaux had many ingenious ways of concealing the traps from the cautious creatures, and thus leading them suddenly to destruction. The fur of all the animals they captured in this way was valuable, and was bought up readily by the fur traders once a year. But some kinds these traders were very anxious to get, and paid for them what to the simple Esquimaux were enormous prices, though, in reality, they were almost nothing compared to the prices these traders got from the fur dealers.

Among the most valuable of these animals is the silver fox.

The boys first visited their traps near the village, but there was nothing in them; and they went on to the more distant ones, which were more likely to have tenants. They were in high spirits and walked briskly along the shore. It was quite light, although they had not had a glimpse of the sun for weeks, for the moon and stars shone brightly, and the reflection from the snow was brilliant.