And bound him there upon his back.
“The train then came; the whistle blew,
And the goat knew well his time was due;
But with a mighty shriek of pain
Coughed up the shirt and flagged the train.”
When all was over, and everyone had gone to bed or bunk, and dreams, I stole out alone on the deck of the “Astrum” and “thought it over.” The Arctic silence weighed upon me like an ominous portent; the dusky sun rolling its flaming orb along the western horizon (it was two o’clock past midnight) sent shafts of bronzy light over the rubbled ice fields that returned a twilight glow, and along the horizon on either side of the sun, low down, burned a spectral conflagration. It was clear, the wind blew, and chafing sounds, that may have been roars from where they emanated, but came to me as hoarse whispers, rose northward, as if spirits spoke.
I remembered how Oolah, the Eskimo, explained Peary’s success in reaching the pole; he said “the devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife, or we should never have come back so easily.” I devoutly prayed that domestic turmoil in the household of his satanic majesty might again prove distracting.
But to penetrate that vast icy solidity with a naphtha launch! It seemed like trying to break one’s way through a glacier with an ice pick. I recalled the fable of the Pied Piper when at the “mighty top” of Koppelberg Hill:
“A wondrous portal opened wide
As if a cavern were suddenly hollowed,”