It was a joy-shout, however, and then his antics commenced. They were somewhat ungainly, it is true, for he tumbled on his back, he stood on end, first on his hind legs, then on his head, then he went shuffling off in search of a seal with the two Newfoundlands, who could move much quicker than he, racing round and round him, and barking for joy. No seal was to be found, but Gruff smote, first one king penguin, then another. They lay dead on the snow, the air full of their beautiful feathers. These birds were nice eating, and Gruff made a hearty meal off them, and licked his great chops with satisfaction.
He seemed very happy and contented after this, and lay down in the sun to sleep, while our heroes went prospecting round and over this wondrous island of ice.
When the boys sat down at last on the lee-side of the iceberg to rest and enjoy a sun-bath, what impressed them most, I think, was the intensity of the silence.
There was not a sound to be heard save the lapping of the waves against the ice-cliffs, and the strange cries of the penguins, which, although the birds were fully half a mile off, could be most distinctly heard. No one talked save in subdued tones. To have rudely broken the holy silence would have seemed something akin to sacrilege.
Beyond the jagged snow-ridge was the dark rippling sea—wondrously blue to-day—while high above the sky itself looked like another ocean, the clouds like bergs of snow-clad ice.
“On such a day as this,” said Ingomar, “what a pleasure it is even to live and have one’s being!”
“Isn’t it just like being in another world?” cried Charlie, enthusiastically.
“Ay, lad, ay, and you are already coming under the glamour of the ice-spirit. The influence is felt in the seas around the North Pole, where you’ve been so long; but old sailors have told me that it is far more perceptible down here.”
“The very dogs appear to feel it. Look, both Nick and Nora are sound asleep!”
“No one,” he added, “can understand the glamour that steals over one in these regions. It is usually ascribed to a species of magnetism which affects the mind, the very soul itself, with a gentle, contented languor, which is nothing if it be not happiness. For sailors, who have once experienced it, will return again and again to the seas of ice, and brave dangers cheerfully that the bravest mariners of other oceans would hesitate to face.”