FROM THE POLAR LANDS
(A Christmas Story)
Just a year ago, during the Christmas holidays, a numerous society hadgathered in the country house, or rather the old hereditary castle,of a wealthy landowner in Finland. Many were the remains in it of ourforefathers' hospitable way of living; and many the medieval customspreserved, founded on traditions and superstitions, semi-Finnish andsemi-Russian, the latter imported into it by its female proprietorsfrom the shores of the Neva. Christmas trees were being prepared andimplements for divination were being made ready. For, in that oldcastle there were grim worm-eaten portraits of famous ancestors andknights and ladies, old deserted turrets, with bastions and Gothicwindows; mysterious somber alleys, and dark and endless cellars, easilytransformed into subterranean passages and caves, ghostly prison cells,haunted by the restless phantoms of the heroes of local legends. Inshort, the old Manor offered every commodity for romantic horrors. Butalas! this once they serve for nought; in the present narrative thesedear old horrors play no such part as they otherwise might.
Its chief hero is a very commonplace, prosaical man--let us call himErkler. Yes; Dr. Erkler, professor of medicine, half-German throughhis father, a full-blown Russian on his mother's side and by education;and one who looked a rather heavily built, and ordinary mortal.Nevertheless, very extraordinary things happened with him.
Erkler, as it turned out was a great traveler, who by his own choicehad accompanied one of the most famous explorers on his journeys roundthe world. More than once they had both seen death face to face fromsunstrokes under the Tropics, from cold in the Polar Regions. All thisnotwithstanding, the doctor spoke with a never-abating enthusiasmabout their "winterings" in Greenland and Novaya Zemla, and about thedesert plains in Australia, where he lunched off a kangaroo and dinedoff an emu, and almost perished of thirst during the passage through awaterless track, which it took them forty hours to cross.
"Yes," he used to remark, "I have experienced almost everything, savewhat you would describe as _supernatural_.... This, of course if wethrow out of account a certain extraordinary event in my life--a manI met, of whom I will tell you just now--and its ... indeed, ratherstrange, I may add quite _inexplicable_, results."
There was a loud demand that he should explain himself; and the doctor,forced to yield, began his narrative.
"In 1878 we were compelled to winter on the north-western coast ofSpitsbergen. We had been attempting to find our way during the shortsummer to the pole; but, as usual, the attempt had proved a failure,owing to the icebergs, and, after several such fruitless endeavors,we had to give it up. No sooner had we settled than the polar nightdescended upon us, our steamers got wedged in and frozen between theblocks of ice in the Gulf of Mussel, and we found ourselves cut offfor eight long months from the rest of the living world.... I confessI, for one, felt it terribly at first. We became especially discouragedwhen one stormy night the snow hurricane scattered a mass of materialsprepared for our winter buildings, and deprived us of over forty deerfrom our herd. Starvation in prospect is no incentive to good humor;and with the deer we had lost the best _plat de resistance_ againstpolar frosts, human organisms demanding in that climate an increaseof heating and solid food. However, we were finally reconciled toour loss, and even got accustomed to the local and in reality morenutritious food--seals, and seal-grease. Our men from the remnants ofour lumber built a house neatly divided into two compartments, one forour three professors and myself, and the other for themselves; and, afew wooden sheds being constructed for meteorological, astronomicaland magnetic purposes, we even added a protecting stable for the fewremaining deer. And then began the monotonous series of dawnless nightsand days, hardly distinguishable one from the other, except throughdark-gray shadows. At times, the "blues" we got into were fearful! Wehad contemplated sending two of our three steamers home in September,but the premature and unforeseen formation of ice walls round them hadthwarted our plans; and now, with the entire crews on our hands, we hadto economize still more with our meager provisions, fuel and light.Lamps were used only for scientific purposes: the rest of the timewe had to content ourselves with God's light--the moon and the AuroraBorealis.... But how describe these glorious, incomparable northernlights! Rings, arrows, gigantic conflagrations of accurately dividedrays of the most vivid and varied colors. The November moonlightnights were as gorgeous. The play of moonbeams on the snow and thefrozen rocks was most striking. These were fairy nights.
"Well, one such night--it may have been one such _day_, for all I know,as from the end of November to about the middle of March we had notwilights at all, to distinguish the one from the other--we suddenlyespied in the play of colored beams, which were then throwing a goldenrosy hue on the snow plains, a dark moving spot.... It grew, and seemedto scatter as it approached nearer to us. What did this mean?... Itlooked like a herd of cattle, or a group of living men, trotting overthe snowy wilderness.... But animals there were white like everythingelse. What then was this?... human beings?...
"We could not believe our eyes. Yes, a group of men was approachingour dwelling. It turned out to be about fifty seal-hunters, guided byMatiliss, a well-known veteran mariner, from Norway. They had beencaught by the icebergs, just as we had been.
"'How did you know that we were here?' we asked.
"'Old Johan, this very same old party, showed us the way'--theyanswered, pointing to a venerable-looking old man with snow-white locks.
"In sober truth, it would have beseemed their guide far better to havesat at home over his fire than to have been seal-hunting in polar landswith younger men. And we told them so, still wondering how he came tolearn of our presence in this kingdom of white bears. At this Matilissand his companions smiled, assuring us that 'old Johan' _knew all_.They remarked that we must be novices in polar borderlands, since wewere ignorant of Johan's personality and could still wonder at anythingsaid of him.
"'It is nigh forty-five years,' said the chief hunter, 'that I havebeen catching seals in the Polar Seas, and as far as my personalremembrance goes, I have always known him, and just as he is now, anold, white-bearded man. And so far back as in the days when I used togo to sea, as a small boy with my father, my dad used to tell me thesame of old Johan, and he added that his own father and grandfathertoo, had known Johan in their days of boyhood, none of them having everseen him otherwise than white as our snows. And, as our forefathersnicknamed him "the white-haired all-knower," thus do we, the sealhunters, call him, to this day.'
"'Would you make us believe he is two hundred years old?'--we laughed.
"Some of our sailors crowding round the white-haired phenomenon, pliedhim with questions.
"'Grandfather! answer us, how old are you?'
"'I really do not know it myself, sonnies. I live as long as God hasdecreed me to. As to my years, I never counted them.'
"'And how did you know, grandfather, that we were wintering in thisplace?'
"'God guided me. How I learned it I do not know; save that I knew--Iknew it.'"
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