“Truly,” returned the old man, sitting down with a sigh, “the Kablunets are kind. They never forget. Bunjee never fails to bring the cuffy, though he does sometimes pretend to forget the shoogre, till I have tasted it and made a bad face; then he laughs and remembers that the shoogre is in his pouch. It is his little way. But I come not to-day for cuffy; I come to warn. There is danger in the air. Blackbeard must take his strange things,” (thus he referred to the philosophical instruments), “away from here—from—ha!—from Nort Pole, and put them in my hut, where they will be safe.”
The Captain did not at once reply. Turning to his companions he said—
“I see no particular reason to fear this ‘danger in the air.’ I’ll go and consult Chingatok or his father on the point.”
“The ancient one, as you call him,” said Benjy, “seems to be growing timid with age.”
“The youthful one,” retorted the Captain, “seems to be growing insolent with age. Go, you scamp, and tell Amalatok I want to speak with him.”
Whatever faults our young hero had, disobedience was not one of them. He rose promptly, and soon returned with the chief of Poloeland.
Amalatok confirmed the wizard’s opinions, and both opinions were still more powerfully confirmed, while he was speaking, by a gust of wind which suddenly came rushing at them as if from all points of the compass, converging at the Pole and shooting upwards like a whirlwind, carrying several hats of the party with volumes of the now wildly agitated snow up into the sky.
There was no room for further hesitation.
“Why, Massa Bunjay, I thought my woolly scalp he hoed up ’long wid my hat!” cried Butterface, leaping up in obedience to the Captain’s hurried order to look sharp and lend a hand.
In a short time all the instruments were removed from the observatory and carefully housed in Makitok’s hut. Even while they were thus engaged the storm burst on them with excessive violence. The snow which had been falling so softly, was caught up by the conflicting winds and hurled high into the air, or driven furiously over the valley in all directions, for the gale did not come from any fixed quarter; it rose and swooped and eddied about, driving the snow-drift now here, now there, and shrieking as if in wild delight at the chaotic havoc it was permitted to play.