“Certainly,” replied the Captain, “certainly, that’s it,—all told off nicely, my lad, just as if you were boxing the compass or repeating the multiplication table;—all about how we protected ourselves from cold, and kept ourselves from hunger, and prepared a home for ourselves on the Rock of Good Hope. And this seemed likely to be our home for life too,—so far, at least, as we could see; for it appeared clear enough to us that our condition would never change except with death, which we, like everybody else, whether they have ever been cast away or not, wanted to put off as long as possible, having no wish at all to die, and not liking either to freeze or starve: so you see we had good motives for energy and patience.”
Here little Alice, in her quiet way, interrupted the Captain to say that the aurora borealis had troubled her dreams all night, and that she would like to know, if the Captain pleased, why anything should have such a strange name.
“That I will tell you with pleasure, my dear,” answered the Captain; “I’ll tell you all about it,—of course I will. Aurora borealis,—that means northern light; and the name comes from a pagan goddess called Aurora, who was supposed to have rosy fingers, and to ride in a rosy chariot, and who opened the gates of the East every morning, and brought in the light of day; and thus, in course of time, any great flush of light in the heavens got to be called Aurora. And then there was a pagan god called Boreas, who was the North Wind, and had long wings and white hair, and made himself generally disagreeable. So you see Boreas, from being the pagan name for north wind, got to mean the north; and Borealis, from that, became Northern, and Aurora Borealis became Northern Light.”
“Thank you, Captain Hardy,” said little Alice; and Fred and William said “Thank you” too; while, as for the Captain, he looked very wise and solemn, like other great philosophers, appearing as if he would say, “Don’t be surprised, for that’s nothing to what I could do if I had a mind,” every word of which the children would have believed, you may well be sure. However, the Captain hastened on with the story (which is more to our present purpose) without giving any further proof of his learning.
“When the winter had fairly set in,” said he, “our field of operations was much enlarged; and, although the birds had all flown away, we were hardly worse off than before, as you shall see; for all through the summer we had been kept close prisoners on the island; but now, when the ice was solid all over the sea, we could walk out upon it, and this we did as soon as it would bear. Once the Dean broke through, being a little careless of where he was stepping; but I got him out, with no more harm coming to him than a cold bath and a fright.
“Soon after this we made a valuable discovery. Some of the seals have a habit, when the sea is frozen over, of cutting holes through the ice with their sharp claws, in order that they may get their heads above the water to breathe,—the seals not being able, as I have told you before, to breathe under water, like fish. They can keep their heads under water about an hour, by closing up their nostrils, so that not a drop can get in; and, during that time, they do not breathe at all; but at last they must find the open sea, or a crack in the ice, or else dig a hole through the ice from below, and thus get their heads to the surface in some way, or they would drown.
“As we did not then know anything about the habits of the seals in this respect, I was very much surprised one day, while walking over ice that was everywhere apparently very solid, to find one of my feet suddenly break through. I was carrying, at the time, our great narwhal horn, which had already been used for so many purposes; and when I had got my foot, as quickly as possible, out of the water, I pounded with the heavy horn all about the place, and found that there was a large round hole there that had evidently been made by some animal; and I could think of nothing else as likely to have made it but a seal. The reason why I had not seen it was because the snow had drifted over it in a hard crust, and through this crust the seal kept open with his nose a small orifice for breathing, that was not larger round than a silver dollar.
“This discovery made us very glad and very curious,—for, having concluded what it was, we concluded also that there must be more like it, and we went in search of them immediately. Our search was soon rewarded, for these seal-holes were very numerous.
“How to catch a seal was the question which now most occupied our thoughts. The difficulty was very great, for we had no weapons of any sort for such a purpose. Once more, however, we fell back upon our narwhal horn. To this horn we had already become much attached, and, as if to express our gratitude, we had bestowed upon it several names,—as, for instance, ‘Life-preserver,’ ‘Crumply Crowbar,’ ‘The Castaway’s Friend,’ and the like of that; but the title which finally stuck to it was ‘Old Crumply,’—not that it was exactly a crumply horn, like the one that grew on the head of the cow that tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built,—for it was not crumply at all in that sense, but, on the contrary, was as straight as an arrow, and was no further crumply than crumply means wrinkled and twisted; and, indeed, the old horn looked as if it might have been once red-hot, and had been twisted several times around before it had cooled off.
“Besides this ‘Old Crumply,’ we made another weapon, in quite an ingenious way, as we thought, though at a great expense of time and labor. This was called by several names, like the other; but generally I called it the ‘Dean’s Delight,’ for it was made after the Dean’s idea, and he used to flourish it about at a great rate, and was very proud of it. It was simply a kind of spear made by lashing together (after carefully cutting with our knife, and fitting and overlapping) a great many pieces of bones. The lashing was the same string or thong we had before used for the duck-traps. It was very strong, though not half so heavy as ‘Old Crumply.’