“Boh!” exclaimed Amalatok, rising impatiently. “I will not listen to the nonsense of Blackbeard. Have I not heard him say that the world stands on nothing, spins on nothing, and rolls continually round the sun? How can anything spin on nothing? And as to the sun, use your own eyes. Do you not see that for a long time it rolls round the world, for a long time it rolls in a circle above us, and for a long time it rolls away altogether, leaving us all in darkness? My son, these Kablunets are ignorant fools, and you are not much better for believing them. Boo! I have no patience with the nonsense talk of Blackbeard.”
The old chief flung angrily out of the hut, leaving his more philosophic son to continue the discussion of the earth’s mysteries with Makitok, the reputed wizard of the furthest possible north.
Note. The writer has often waded knee-deep in such boots, for hours at a time, on the swampy shores of Hudson’s Bay, without wetting his feet in the slightest degree.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
Tells, among other Things, of a Notable Discovery.
Soon after this, signs of approaching winter began to make their appearance in the regions of the North Pole. The sun, which at first had been as a familiar friend night and day, had begun to absent himself not only all night, but during a large portion of each day, giving sure though quiet hints of his intention to forsake the region altogether, and leave it to the six months’ reign of night. Frost began to render the nights bitterly cold. The birds, having brought forth and brought up their young, were betaking themselves to more temperate regions, leaving only such creatures as bears, seals, walruses, foxes, wolves, and men, to enjoy, or endure, the regions of the frigid zone.
Suddenly there came a day in October when all the elemental fiends and furies of the Arctic circle seemed to be let loose in wildest revelry. It was a turning-point in the Arctic seasons.