i cannot attempt to picture the vast antarctic night. the words i have learned were never intended to convey the supreme mightiness of the polar dark. chauncey gale has referred to it as “creation’s cold storage.” i am willing to let it go at that.
in the electric blaze of the billowcrest we made merry, and occupied ourselves usefully. when the cold without was not too severe we went snow-shoeing over bottle bay, where a crust of ice had eventually formed, and where snow grew ever deeper until we half expected to be overwhelmed. sometimes we heard the roaring of the pack outside, but in our snug harbor we felt little of its grinding discontent. how much we were warmed by our current beneath the ice we could not know, but the thermometer at no time showed more than 30° below zero. i have seen it as cold in northern nebraska.
neither was it wholly dark in clear weather. 175we had the stars, and at regular intervals, through our harbor gateway, the moon looked in. often it was a weird, distorted moon—flattened and wrinkled by radiations of cold from the far-lying ice—but always welcome. more than once it was doubly and even trebly welcome, for the atmosphere was responsible for some curious effects. once gale came down hastily to where edith and i were deep in a game of cribbage.
“i want you and johnnie to come on deck a minute,” he said with some urgency, “i want you to look at the moon.”
we arrayed ourselves and obeyed. gale led the way and pointed to the harbor entrance.
“nick,” he commanded, “i want you and johnnie to tell me how many moons you see there.”
my hand lay on edith’s arm and i gave it a significant pressure.
“why,” i said, “i see one moon, of course. how many do you want me to see?”
“i hope, papa,” said his daughter gravely, “that you haven’t been taking too much wine. you know that it doesn’t agree with you. it makes you too stout, and now that it affects your eyes this way, i should think you would at least moderate your appetite for strong waters.”
“johnnie,” said gale severely, “you’re a goose, as usual. but on the dead, now, i want you and 176nick to tell me how many moons you see there. i see three. if you only see one, then this cold storage, or something else, has got into my eyes, and it’s time i was doing something for it.”
we assured him, then, that we saw what he did, one real moon and two false ones, the result of some strange condition of the air. when we descended to the cabin, gale followed singing,
“three moons rose over the city where there shouldn’t have been but one.”
besides these things we had the aurora australis, though from our position under the ice-wall we seldom got a direct view of this phenomenon, and we sometimes made excursions into the desolation of the pack to view it. on one of these we were separated from the ship by a wide waterway that opened just outside the harbor. it seemed a serious predicament for a time, but the little telephone, which we always carried, promptly “vibrated” a message to the ship, and our balloon-boat-and-sled combination was first put into actual service as a ferry to bring us safely over. from without, our harbor entrance had seemed a portal to the lower regions. crossing to it in the boat was like being ferried over the river styx.
to me the days did not drag, though to others of the party they may have passed less swiftly. love did not speed the hours for them, unless in the 177sense that all the ship loved the lovers, and in making our lives interesting for us they found sufficient entertainment for themselves. gale’s acceptance of the new understanding between edith and myself had been characteristic and hearty.
“well,” he said, “’tain’t my fault. don’t come around now, you and johnnie, tryin’ to blame it onto me. i told you how it would be. oh lord, what’s a circus without monkeys!” he took our hands then, and squeezed them together in one big, splendid palm. “nicholas chase,” he went on, “you’ve got the boat, and me, and now a mortgage on johnnie. if there’s any other outlying and unattached property you’d like to have, just name it. and if you don’t see what you want ask for it. johnnie’s the only undivided interest i had left that i cared anything about, and if you’re going to get that you might as well have all the rest.” but at this point edith had thrown her arms about his neck, laughing and crying at once. happy as i was, there was a moment or two just then in which i did not feel entirely comfortable.
one day, perhaps a week later, when we came in from an hour’s snow-shoeing, he suddenly greeted us with:
“look here, johnnie, how did it come you didn’t turn nick down like the others?”
my sweetheart’s cheeks were already aglow, and 178her eyes sparkling. but i thought there came an added glow and sparkle at the unexpected question. her eyes sent a quick look into mine that warmed my soul.
“why, you see, daddy, we—we were away off down here, and—and we couldn’t afford to have any unpleasantness on the ship, and——”
“oh, yes, i see—i see! and you’re going to bounce him when we get back to new york. great girl! takes after her daddy.”
from the hand that rested on my arm she had been withdrawing the little fur mitten. now a small palm and some cold fingers came creeping up into mine for warmth, and to bestow a reassuring pressure.
“but—but don’t you see, daddy,—i—i—we can’t afford to have any unpleasantness there, either,” she said.
we had a long series of whist rubbers in the cabin, and entertainments in which the forecastle was frequently invited to join. in turn, we sometimes looked in on the forecastle, or, for exercise, took a hand with the sailors in clearing snow and ice from the vessel. altogether we were a well-fed, contented little world—a warm, bright spot in a wide waste of dark and cold—and even zar grew stout and comfortable, and more considerate of my feelings.
179“i can stay heah jes’ as long as de boat stays and de perwision hold out,” was her frequent assertion. “mistah sturritt certney is a mighty good perwider.” and mr. sturritt deserved this compliment, for whatever may have been his eccentricities in the matter of tablets, as our regular commissary, he appeared to be a complete and continuous success.
as spring approached and the return of the sun drew near, preparations for scaling the ice-wall and for the journey inland were perfected. our balloon, the cloudcrest, was carefully overhauled, and our boat-car furnished with all the requirements of an extended voyage, should we find, after making observations, such an undertaking to be advisable. the boat was very light and had air-tight aluminum compartments, as well as many water-tight compartments for our stores. mr. sturritt’s condensed food lozenges, which we had all tested and voted a success, were variously distributed.
“we don’t want to carry all our pills in one box,” explained gale, “and say, bill, don’t you think we’d better leave one place for a few old-fashioned sandwiches? just to start on, you know; then we can kind o’ taper off onto tablets, as it were. you’ve fed us too well through the winter to jump right into pills at the drop of the hat.”
so a place for sandwiches was left; also places for field-glasses and other instruments, as well as 180for furs and sleeping-bags, which were likely to be needed, we thought, in the early stages of the journey. for ballast, instead of sand, we filled bags with zinc filings, these to be used later in making hydrogen for replenishing the balloon. it is true we thought it more than likely that we should return in some new fashion, to be provided by the antarcticans, but we believed it well to be prepared for emergencies. our propeller for both wind and water was now thoroughly tested, the retorts for making the gas were complete and ready, and all grew impatient at last for the day when we were to make our trial ascension.
ferratoni, i think, was more eager than the others. he seemed convinced now that not only were there human beings beyond the barrier, but that they knew of us, and waited for our coming. in just what form this had “vibrated” to him he could not quite explain, and in fact rarely attempted to do so. he was quite willing, however, to experiment with us in telepathy, or, as he termed it, in the chording of mental vibrations, through which he could often follow a train of thought in another with a success that was certainly interesting, and even startling.
it appeared in no sense to be a gift with ferratoni, but a scientific attainment, acquired by patient and gradual steps. he claimed that the principle 181of it was quite as simple as that of the answering musical or electric vibrations—in fact, the same. we grew to accept this theory in time, though we made little progress in its application. perhaps our minds were too full of other things.
to ferratoni all the problems of the ages resolved themselves into chorded vibrations.
“there is no change in the individual at death,” he said to me one day. “it is simply a moving out of the old house. the life vibration—the intelligence—remains the same. i shall be able by and by to chord and communicate with those no longer in the physical house.”
later, when i saw edith, i said:
“the long night is telling on ferratoni. he is becoming a spiritualist.”
edith gale looked thoughtful.
“if he does, he will be a scientific one,” she said, “and able to demonstrate reasonably the how and why of his inter-spheric communications. if all he says of his chorded vibrations be true, who shall say how far, and through what dim spaces they may not answer?”
you see, we had had time to speculate on a good many things during the long antarctic night. even in an ordinary night, between the hours of three and five in the morning, strange problems come drifting in and the boundary lines between 182substance and shadow waver. keep this up for a period of months, without a break of sunlight, and one’s skepticism on almost any point begins to totter. at the end of the third month, if ferratoni had announced that he could render himself invisible and transport himself to any point of the compass at will, we would have been less surprised than eager to learn the process; and had mr. sturritt suddenly declared that he had perfected a lozenge which would confer eternal youth, i feel certain that any of us would have been willing to accept a trial package.
