Can you realize what that meant to me? Startled, I withdrew my thumb from Ikik's soft lips and raised myself on my elbow. About me in the gloom were vague bundles, Swank and Yalok, Frissell and Snak, Whinney and Lapatok, Wigmore and Klipitok, Triplett and Sausalito, silent, rapturous, oblivious. But a strange thing was happening.
All about the circumference of the great ice bowl, of which we were the center, rose trembling, blue flames. I could hear their fluttering hiss and crackle. Now they leaped higher, shooting out giant arms toward the zenith, waving lambent fingers, shivering, interlocking, melting. My companions, aroused, sat up and I could see their startled faces lighted by an unearthly light.
The noise and glare increased. Swishing waves of fuchsia-pink swept up the sky; muffled explosions were followed by writhing snakes of lemon-yellow and far-flung globes of purple and crimson gleamed in the sky while, directly overhead, millions of miles away, the North Star looked down indifferently.
At times the wall of encircling flames, now approximately ten miles high, leaped in unison, to a diabolical rhythm; again they moved about us in procession, gigantic, towering, flapping, hissing, whistling, rippling, a night-mare of glorious colors which have no names. The very ice below me, cracking and groaning, was shot with fiery veins.
AN ARCH ARCHEOLOGIST
One of the most pathetic figures in the author's startling "exposure" is that of Bartholomew Dane, the Egyptologist who is here shown with Snak, his Klinka assistant, pursuing his speciality of comparative archeology.
A word as to Dane's previous record may bring some information to the few Americans who have not made archeology, with emphasis on Egyptology, a hobby. Born of Nordic stock (his maternal Grandmother was one of the Iceland Krakkens), educated in the more-than-usually-common schools of South Bend, young Dane showed early aptitude in geography, history and kindred studies. His passion for research work was early in evidence his every leisure moment being spent in the examination of abandoned cellar-holes, cisterns, wells, rubbish-heaps and public dumps. His parents, fearful lest their son turn out to be a rag-picker secured for him an under-janitorship at the Natural History Museum of New York City, doubtless hoping to thereby shift the blame for his development from South Bend to the Metropolis. From then on his rise was rapid. Working his way up from the cellar we next hear of him as Secretary to Prof. Thurston Mudgett of the Extinct Civilizations Dept. His course from there to the Nile delta was clearly indicated.
Six months later the young archeologist disappeared, only to reappear six months later laden with honours conferred by the Egyptian government, a full-professor in the College of Alexandria, a recognized authority abroad belatedly received with equal honors at home. His great work on Scarabs among the Arabs is in itself an enduring monument.
What led Dane northward is a mystery. That he hoped to find the missing link in the almost completed itinerary of the lost tribes of Israel we know. That he failed in this dream is a sad fact. But there is solace in the thought that amid the snowy wildernesses of the Pole he found in the companionship of the sympathetic Snak a love which could never have reached him over the hot sands of Sahara.
Due to overwork, exposure and an unavoidable blow on the head, his mind has failed considerably of late but in his lucid moments he hints darkly at having made certain interesting discoveries which have nothing whatever to do with archeology. His earlier achievements, his protracted sojourn in the Tomb of Put, his discovery of the Temple of Murad, all these he lightly dismisses. "The first year was the pleasantest," he laughs; the rest is silence, and the silence is, we trust for this courageous spirit—rest.
An Arch Archeologist
The Eskimos had buried their heads in their oomiaks, my companions lay face downward.
Desperately frightened, I still resolved to face the end, to see what my dazed senses told me was the final conflagration of the world.