Chapter Two.
A Christmas in the Arctic Ocean.
“Here Winter holds his unrejoicing Court,
Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost,
Moulds his fierce hail, and treasures up his snows,
Throned in his palace of cerulean ice.”
Thomson.
“If you will take a map of the world,” began Frank, “and with a pin or a needle to direct you, follow one of the lines of longitude running south and north through England, up towards the mysterious regions round the Pole, you will find that this line will run right away through Scotland, through the distant Orkney and Shetland, past the lonely Faroe Isles till, with Iceland far on the left, you cross the Arctic Circle. Go north still, and still go north, and presently you will find yourself near to a little island called Jan Mayen, that stands all by itself—oh! so desolate-looking—right in the centre of the Polar ocean. In that lonely isle of the sea I spent my Christmas many years ago.
“What took me there, you ask me, Ida? I will tell you. I was one of the officers of a strongly built but beautiful steam yacht, and we had spent nearly all the summer cruising in the Arctic seas. For about three weeks we sojourned near an island on the very confines of the No-Man’s land around the Pole, and nearly as far to the nor’ard as any soul has ever yet reached.
“We named this island the Skua, after our good yacht—a wild mountainous island it was, with never a trace of living vegetable life on it, but, marvellous to relate, the fossil remains of sub-tropical trees.
“I say we sojourned there, but this need not give you the idea that we stopped there of our own free will, for the truth is we were caught in a trap—a large one sure enough, but still a trap. We found ourselves one morning in the midst of an ocean lake, or piece of open water in the ice-field, as nearly circular as anything, and about four miles in width. We wanted to get out, but everywhere around us was a barrier of mountainous icebergs. So, baffled and disappointed, we took up a position in the centre of the lake, blew off steam, banked our fires, and waited patiently for a turn in events.
“In three weeks’ time a dark bank of mist came rolling down upon us, and so completely enveloped our vessel that a man could not see his comrade from mast to mast.
“That same night a swell rose up in the lake, and the yacht rocked from side to side as if she had been becalmed in the rolling seas of the tropics, while the roar of the icebergs dashing their sides together, fell upon our ears like the sound of a battle fought with heavy artillery.