The new northland

by L. P. Gratacap

Clefts or rents tore down their sides, and ragged, serpentine embrasures interrupted the cliffs that bordered it. Black recesses contrasted with the bright surfaces, and sharp crests (arete) bristled here and there in jagged series, where the cliffs attained elevations of probably thousands of feet. It was a vast abyss and was split more deeply by a secondary and later fissure which had uncovered the central masses of radium. Nowhere could we discern any evidences of aqueo-thermal activity, no steam spirals anywhere. The vapor line was eastward along the crack where the Perpetual Nimbus appeared. Beyond, far beyond, rose the snowy tops, the glacier ridden summits of the Krocker Land Rim.

It was enthralling. Remember, Mr. Link, it was the night time of the polar world, and here all was bathed in light or silhouetted in shadow, while that Stationary Sun which filled the immense valley land with light, imparted to it warmth; it shone in its peculiar zenith, deriving in some way (by reflection from the crystalline walls to the west) its replenishment of light and heat from this stupendous source of both. We watched in a trance of amazement for hours. There were perceptible pulsations in the emanation, and it was altogether remarkable to observe that these were recorded in the variable sun, obviously susceptible to these changes. Its reference (the sun’s) to the radium masses, here uncovered, was now indisputable.

It had now in the advanced season become apparent that the earth’s secular changes were not quite dissipated in the Krocker Land basin by its unique feature of the Stationary Sun. For weeks it had been growing colder, and now—to our astonishment a spectacle of dazzling beauty relieved the singular weird terror of this lifeless scene. We saw a gathering gloom from far away darken the peaks of the Krocker Land Rim; it spread and became revealed as a snowstorm. A wind brushed over us—another instant and the wide zone of delicate radiation was transformed into an indescribably glorious firmament of stars, shifting, dying out and renewed, and around us from the sky fell a shower of icy particles, a flurry from the tempest that was sweeping over the distant ranges.

Hardly had we recovered from the shock of this unexpected display when we heard the voice and saw the form of Oogalah approaching our position, from the opposite side of the hill. He had executed his errand and was returning, and the expanded bag in his hands showed that he had accomplished his purpose. We had seen him disappear in the defiles beyond the crumbling hills. He showed the strain of his work and the effect of the unnatural influence of that exposure, but in a short time, after resting, his strength and composure returned, and he was ready for the home journey. He afterwards told me he had never looked into the chasm, or chasms, whence the radium emissions or radiations proceeded. He had not cared to. Once on the field of his dangerous occupation, groveling to the ground, he moved cautiously over the rocky flooring, and extracted the mineral masses from the veins wherein they seemed to be segregated, hammering them out. Formerly he had been able to pick the nodules up loose from the granite ledges. That was no longer possible. He had exhausted the supply of free lumps, and now he was compelled to practice this superficial mining. He knew that the surface finds were abundant further down the slopes of the defile, but he dreaded the experiment of entering further into the disorganizing influences of the lethal chamber. He had once been rash in that way and had swooned, and only the brush of some cavorting wind current from above, such as we had ourselves felt, had sufficiently revived him to enable him to regain his feet and to escape.

On our return Goritz monopolized Oogalah. He plied him with questions, and evinced the most excited interest in his work. Poor fellow—the poison of the lust for gold, sacri fames auri, had entered his mind and heart. A magnificent man, Mr. Link, sturdy, resourceful, remorselessly self forgetful, and most simple in tastes, a lovable brother, if ever there was one, but sir, never the same after that unlucky find of the gold belt, when we crossed the first barrier of the Krocker Land Rim.

He became secretive, avaricious, moody, impatient, a delirious dreamer, and then most unaccountably suspicious. It was a revolution in character that would have puzzled an expert in psychology or nerves to explain. To me it was a pretty bad shock, and when at last the unhappy man—but let that wait. It displays a measure of the pernicious power of the temptation of money to corrupt (the word in Goritz’s case is misapplied), to alter nature and temperament, and all because he expected to enjoy its pleasures in the world we had left; for gold in Krocker Land for any of ordinary uses, like ours, was literally not much more desirable than so much earth. To the Radiumopolite it administered, it is true, a mild esthetic pleasure. There was some recondite recognition in his ingenuous nature of its beauty at least, and its unchangeableness. To the rulers, the doctors, the chiefs, it may have seemed more; at any rate they devoted it to the purposes of distinction and religion.

Goritz on our way back was most impatient to examine the strange mineral Oogalah had brought us, but the man refused to let him, intimating, quite fiercely, that it should be distributed among us when we got back to the Capitol, and not before. This refusal really arose from his intention of giving the Professor the largest piece. As Hopkins averred, the Professor had Oogalah “buffaloed” an epitomized substitute, certainly not intelligible, for a lengthier explanation of the Professor’s extraordinary influence over the man.

I remember we were all silent on our way back; we were dazed, and the journey had been rapid and arduous. The Professor himself had indeed, for weeks past, neglected to speculate on the wonders about us, and we now seldom received from him those lectures with which he had first instructed us. Perhaps he was overwhelmed by the incredible realization of the prophecies he had made to us on the sylvan banks (how far away and distant they seemed) of the beautiful fiord in Norway, under a summer sky.

Once again within the charmed borders of the Valley of Rasselas we found the highway deserted. It was a contrast to the eager multitudes that had escorted us when we left. Past the mysterious swamps on the right from which, at one moment, I thought I heard a queer sucking wail or bark, as of some big animal, and on into the city, and yet no encounters! Past the bathhouses, over the wide serpent pasture with its populous cribs, up the wide western terrace of steps of the Golden Capitol, and not one welcoming face—only the listless snakes sluggishly gliding or coiled in varnished mats.

To these omnipresent, pervading inhabitants we had become, in a manner of speaking, accustomed; we found them in the streets of the city, and through the courtyard of the Palace, over the parapets, ensconced in niches in the walls, rising hideously from the pavement of the inner halls, or unexpectedly and unwholesomely slipping over the mats of our rooms, or dripping like dark thongs from their cornices. Hopkins detested them.