The Book of Dragons
you have to go on to the end--unless you fall down--and then it hurts
just as much as the smaller kind on ponds. The great slide runs
downhill all the way, so that you keep on going faster and faster and
faster. George and Jane went so fast that they had not time to notice
the scenery. They only saw the long lines of frosted trees and the
starry lamps, and on each side, rushing back as they slid on, a very
broad, white world and a very large, black night; and overhead as well
as in the trees the stars were bright like silver lamps, and far ahead
shone and trembled and sparkled the line of fairy spears. Jane said
that, and George said: "I can see the Northern Lights quite plain."
It is very pleasant to slide and slide and slide on clear, dark
ice--especially if you feel you are really going somewhere, and more
especially if that somewhere is the North Pole. The children's feet made
no noise on the ice, and they went on and on in a beautiful white
silence. But suddenly the silence was shattered and a cry rang out over
the snow.
"Hey! You there! Stop!"
"Tumble for your life!" cried George, and he fell down at once, because
it is the only way to stop. Jane fell on top of him--and then they
crawled on hands and knees to the snow at the edge of the slide--and
there was a sportsman, dressed in a peaked cap and a frozen moustache,
like the one you see in the pictures about Ice-Peter, and he had a gun
in his hand.
"You don't happen to have any bullets about you?" said he.
"No," George said, truthfully. "I had five of father's revolver
cartridges, but they were taken away the day Nurse turned out my pockets
to see if I had taken the knob of the bathroom door by mistake."
"Quite so," said the sportsman, "these accidents will occur. You don't
carry firearms, then, I presume?"
"I haven't any fire_arms_," said George, "but I have a fire_work_. It's
only a squib one of the boys gave me, if that's any good." And he began
to feel among the string and peppermints, and buttons and tops and nibs
and chalk and foreign postage stamps in his knickerbocker pockets.
"One could but try," the sportsman replied, and he held out his hand.
But Jane pulled at her brother's jacket-tail and whispered, "Ask him
what he wants it for."
So then the sportsman had to confess that he wanted the firework to kill
the white grouse with; and, when they came to look, there was the white
grouse himself, sitting in the snow, looking quite pale and careworn,
and waiting anxiously for the matter to be decided one way or the other.
George put all the things back in his pockets, and said, "No, I shan't.
The reason for shooting him stopped yesterday--I heard Father say so--so
it wouldn't be fair, anyhow. I'm very sorry; but I can't--so there!"
The sportsman said nothing, only he shook his fist at Jane, and then he
got on the slide and tried to go toward the Crystal Palace--which was
not easy, because that way is uphill. So they left him trying, and went
on.
Before they started, the white grouse thanked them in a few pleasant,
well-chosen words, and then they took a sideways slanting run and
started off again on the great slide, and so away toward the North Pole
and the twinkling, beautiful lights.
The great slide went on and on, and the lights did not seem to come much
nearer, and the white silence wrapped around them as they slid along the
wide, icy path. Then once again the silence was broken to bits by
someone calling: "Hey! You there! Stop!"
"Tumble for your life!" cried George, and tumbled as before, stopping in
the only possible way, and Jane stopped on top of him, and they crawled
to the edge and came suddenly on a butterfly collector, who was looking
for specimens with a pair of blue glasses and a blue net and a blue book
with colored plates.
"Excuse me," said the collector, "but have you such a thing as a needle
about you--a very long needle?"
"I have a needle _book_," replied Jane, politely, "but there aren't any
needles in it now. George took them all to do the things with pieces of
cork--in the 'Boy's Own Scientific Experimenter' and 'The Young
Mechanic.' He did not do the things, but he did for the needles."
"Curiously enough," said the collector, "I too wish to use the needle in
connection with cork."
"I have a hatpin in my hood," said Jane. "I fastened the fur with it
when it caught in the nail on the greenhouse door. It is very long and
sharp--would that do?"
"One could but try," said the collector, and Jane began to feel for the
pin. But George pinched her arm and whispered, "Ask what he wants it
for." Then the collector had to own that he wanted the pin to stick
through the great Arctic moth, "a magnificent specimen," he added,
"which I am most anxious to preserve."
And there, sure enough, in the collector's butterfly net sat the great
Arctic moth, listening attentively to the conversation.
"Oh, I couldn't!" cried Jane. And while George was explaining to the
collector that they would really rather not, Jane opened the blue folds
of the butterfly net, and asked the moth quietly if it would please step
outside for a moment. And it did.
When the collector saw that the moth was free, he seemed less angry than
grieved.
"Well, well," said he, "here's a whole Arctic expedition thrown away! I
shall have to go home and fit out another. And that means a lot of
writing to the papers and things. You seem to be a singularly
thoughtless little girl."
So they went on, leaving him too, trying to go uphill towards the
Crystal Palace.
When the great white Arctic moth had returned thanks in a suitable
speech, George and Jane took a sideways slanting run and started sliding
again, between the star-lamps along the great slide toward the North
Pole. They went faster and faster, and the lights ahead grew brighter
and brighter--so that they could not keep their eyes open, but had to
blink and wink as they went--and then suddenly the great slide ended in
an immense heap of snow, and George and Jane shot right into it because
they could not stop themselves, and the snow was soft, so that they went
in up to their very ears.
When they had picked themselves out and thumped each other on the back
to get rid of the snow, they shaded their eyes and looked, and there,
right in front of them, was the wonder of wonders--the North
Pole--towering high and white and glistening, like an ice-lighthouse,
and it was quite, quite close, so that you had to put your head as far
back as it would go, and farther, before you could see the high top of
it. It was made entirely of ice. You will hear grown-up people talk a
great deal of nonsense about the North Pole, and when you are grown up,
it is even possible that you may talk nonsense about it yourself (the
most unlikely things do happen) but deep down in your heart you must
always remember that the North Pole is made of clear ice, and could not
possibly, if you come to think of it, be made of anything else.
All around the Pole, making a bright ring about it, were hundreds of
little fires, and the flames of them did not flicker and twist, but went
up blue and green and rosy and straight like the stalks of dream lilies.
Jane said so, but George said they were as straight as ramrods.
And these flames were the Aurora Borealis, which the children had seen
as far away as Forest Hill.
The ground was quite flat, and covered with smooth, hard snow, which
shone and sparkled like the top of a birthday cake that has been iced at
home. The ones done at the shops do not shine and sparkle, because they
mix flour with the icing sugar.
"It is like a dream," said Jane.
And George said, "It _is_ the North Pole. Just think of the fuss people
always make about getting here--and it was no trouble at all, really."
"I daresay lots of people have gotten here," said Jane, dismally. "It's
not the getting _here_--I see that--it's the getting back again.
Perhaps no one will ever know that _we_ have been here, and the robins
will cover us with leaves and--"
"Nonsense," said George. "There aren't any robins, and there aren't any
leaves. It's just the North Pole, that's all, and I've found it; and now
I shall try to climb up and plant the British flag on the top--my
handkerchief will do; and if it really _is_ the North Pole, my pocket
compass Uncle James gave me will spin around and around, and then I
shall know. Come on."
So Jane came on; and when they got close to the clear, tall, beautiful
flames they saw that there was a great, queer-shaped lump of ice all
around the bottom of the Pole--clear, smooth, shining ice, that was
deep, beautiful Prussian blue, like icebergs, in the thick parts, and
all sorts of wonderful, glimmery, shimmery, changing colors in the thin
parts, like the cut-glass chandelier in Grandmamma's house in London.
"It is a very curious shape," said Jane. "It's almost like"--she moved
back a step to get a better view of it--"it's almost like a dragon."
"It's much more like the lampposts on the Thames Embankment," said
George, who had noticed a curly thing like a tail that went twisting up
the North Pole.
"Oh, George," cried Jane, "it _is_ a dragon; I can see its wings.
Whatever shall we do?"
And, sure enough, it _was_ a dragon--a great, shining, winged, scaly,
clawy, big-mouthed dragon--made of pure ice. It must have gone to sleep
curled around the hole where the warm steam used to come up from the
middle of the earth, and then when the earth got colder, and the column
of steam froze and was turned into the North Pole, the dragon must have
got frozen in his sleep--frozen too hard to move--and there he stayed.
And though he was very terrible he was very beautiful too.
Jane said so, but George said, "Oh, don't bother; I'm thinking how to
get onto the Pole and try the compass without waking the brute."
The dragon certainly was beautiful, with his deep, clear Prussian
blueness, and his rainbow-colored glitter. And rising from within the
cold coil of the frozen dragon the North Pole shot up like a pillar made
of one great diamond, and every now and then it cracked a little, from
sheer cold. The sound of the cracking was the only thing that broke the
great white silence in the midst of which the dragon lay like an
enormous jewel, and the straight flames went up all around him like the
stalks of tall lilies.
And as the children stood there looking at the most wonderful sight
their eyes had ever seen, there was a soft padding of feet and a
hurry-scurry behind them, and from the outside darkness beyond the
flame-stalks came a crowd of little brown creatures running, jumping,
scrambling, tumbling head over heels and on all fours, and some even
walking on their heads. They joined hands as they came near the fires
and danced around in a ring.
"It's bears," said Jane. "I know it is. Oh, how I wish we hadn't come;
and my boots are so wet."
The dancing-ring broke up suddenly, and the next moment hundreds of
furry arms clutched at George and Jane, and they found themselves in the
middle of a great, soft, heaving crowd of little fat people in brown fur
dresses, and the white silence was quite gone.
"Bears, indeed," cried a shrill voice. "You'll wish we were bears before
you've done with us."
This sounded so dreadful that Jane began to cry. Up to now the children
had only seen the most beautiful and wondrous things, but now they began
to be sorry they had done what they were told not to, and the difference
between "lawn" and "grass" did not seem so great as it had at Forest
Hill.
Directly Jane began to cry, all the brown people started back. No one
cries in the Arctic regions for fear of being struck by the frost. So
that these people had never seen anyone cry before.