“An old man’s dream!” said McBain. “No, I do not; old men do not dream such dreams as those, but, like Magnus himself, I put little faith in the spirit part of the story.”
“The question then to be answered,” said Allan, “is, where did Jan Jansen stay during the four or five years of his sojourn in the polar seas?”
“Well,” said McBain, “I have thought that over too, and I think it admits of a feasible enough answer, without having recourse to the spirit theory. There is a mystery altogether about the regions of the Pole that has never been revealed.”
“In fact,” said Rory, “nobody has ever been there to reveal it.”
“That is just it,” contained McBain; “our knowledge of the country is terribly meagre, and merely what we have gleaned from sealers or whalers—men, by the way, who are generally too busy, looking after the interests of their owners, to bother their heads about exploration—or from the tales of travellers who have attempted—merely attempted, mind you—to penetrate as far north as they could.”
“True,” said Ralph.
“England,” continued McBain, “has not all the credit to herself, brave though her sailors be, of telling us all we know about the Pole and the country—lands and seas—around it. Why, I myself have heard tales from Norwegian walrus-hunters, the most daring fellows that ever sailed the seas, that prove to my facile satisfaction that there is an open ocean near the North Pole, that there are islands in it—the Isle of Alba if you like—and that these islands are inhabited. You may tell me it is too cold for human beings to live there; you may ask me where they came from. To your first assertion I would reply that the inhabitants may depend to a great extent for heat on the volcanic nature of the islands themselves, just as they depend in winter for light on the glorious aurora, or the radiant light of stars and moon. When you ask me where they came from, I have but to remind you that Spitsbergen and the islands around it were, before their glacial period, covered with vegetation of the most luxuriant kind, that mighty trees grew on their hills and in their dales, and that giants of the lower animal kingdom roamed through the forests, the wilder beasts preying on the flocks and herds that came down at mid-day to quench their thirst in the streams and in the lakes; Man himself must have lived there too, and if he still exists in the regions of the Pole, he is but the descendant of a former race.
“With some of these tribes Jan Jansen no doubt lived: they were good to him, perhaps so good that he got lazy and wouldn’t work, and so they were glad to get rid of him.”
“And what about the mammoth caves—do you believe in them too?” said Allan.
“Ah! ha!” cried Ralph, laughing; “our brother Allan has an eye to the main chance, you see; he wants to ‘malt’ money.”