by Edith Nesbit
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 firearms,” said George, “but I have a firework. 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 colo
rs 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.
“Don’t cry for real,” whispered George, “or you’ll get chilblains in your eyes. But pretend to howl - it frightens them.”
So Jane went on pretending to howl, and the real crying stopped: It always does when you begin to pretend. You try it.
Then, speaking very loud so as to be heard over the howls of Jane, George said: “Yah - who’s afraid? We are George and Jane - who are you?”
“We are the sealskin dwarfs,” said the brown people, twisting their furry bodies in and out of the crowd like the changing glass in kaleidoscopes. “We are very precious and expensive, for we are made, throughout, of the very best sealskin.”
“And what are those fires for?” bellowed George - for Jane was crying louder and louder.
“Those,” shouted the dwarfs, coming a step nearer, “are the fires we make to thaw the dragon. He is frozen now - so he sleeps curled up around the Pole - but when we have thawed him with our fires he will wake up and go and eat everybody in the world except us.”
“WHATEVER - DO - YOU - WANT - HIM - TO - DO - THAT - FOR?” yelled George.
“Oh - just for spite,” bawled the dwarfs carelessly - as if they were saying, “Just for fun.”
Jane stopped crying to say: “You are heartless.”
“No, we aren’t,” they said. “Our hearts are made of the finest sealskin, just like little fat sealskin purses - ”
And they all came a step nearer. They were very fat and round. Their bodies were like sealskin jackets on a very stout person; their heads were like sealskin muffs; their legs were like sealskin boas; and their hands and feet were like sealskin tobacco pouches. And their faces were like seals’ faces, inasmuch as they, too, were covered with sealskin.
“Thank you so much for telling us,” said George. “Good evening. (Keep on howling, Jane!)”
But the dwarfs came a step nearer, muttering and whispering. Then the muttering stopped - and there was a silence so deep that Jane was afraid to howl in it. But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white silence better.
Then the chief dwarf came quite close and said: “What’s that on your head?”
And George felt it was all up - for he knew it was his father’s sealskin cap.
The dwarf did not wait for an answer. “It’s made of one of us,” he screamed, “or else one of the seals, our poor relations. Boy, now your fate is sealed!”
Looking at the wicked seal-faces all around them, George and Jane felt that their fate was sealed indeed.
The dwarfs seized the children in their furry arms. George kicked, but it is no use kicking sealskin, and Jane howled, but the dwarfs were getting used to that. They climbed up the dragon’s side and dumped the children down on his icy spine, with their backs against the North Pole. You have no idea how cold it was - the kind of cold that makes you feel small and prickly inside your clothes, and makes you wish you had twenty times as many clothes to feel small and prickly inside of.
The sealskin dwarfs tied George and Jane to the North Pole, and, as they had no ropes, they bound them with snow-wreaths, which are very strong when they are made in the proper way, and they heaped up the fires very close and said: “Now the dragon will get warm, and when he gets warm he will wake, and when he wakes he will be hungry, and when he is hungry he will begin to eat, and the first thing he will eat will be you.”
The little, sharp, many-colored flames sprang up like the stalks of dream lilies, but no heat came to the children, and they grew colder and colder.
“We shan’t be very nice when the dragon does eat us, that’s one comfort,” said George. “We shall be turned into ice long before that.”
Suddenly there was a flapping of wings, and the white grouse perched on the dragon’s head and said: “Can I be of any assistance?”
Now, by this time the children were so cold, so cold, so very, very cold, that they had forgotten everything but that, and they could say nothing else. So the white grouse said: “One moment. I am only too grateful for this opportunity of showing my sense of your manly conduct about the firework!”
And the next moment there was a soft whispering rustle of wings overhead, and then, fluttering slowly, softly down, came hundreds and thousands of little white fluffy feathers. They fell on George and Jane like snowflakes, and, like flakes of fallen snow lying one above another, they grew into a thicker and thicker covering, so that presently the children were buried under a heap of white feathers, and only their faces peeped out.
“Oh, you dear, good, kind white grouse,” said Jane, “but you’ll be cold yourself, won’t you, now you have given us all your pretty dear feathers?”
The white grouse laughed, and his laugh was echoed by thousands of kind, soft bird voices.
“Did you think all those feathers came out of one breast? There are hundreds and hundreds of us here, and every one of us can spare a little tuft of soft breast feathers to help to keep two kind little hearts warm!”
/> Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners.
So now the children snuggled under the feathers and were warm, and when the sealskin dwarfs tried to take the feathers away, the grouse and his friends flew in their faces with flappings and screams, and drove the dwarfs back. They are a cowardly folk.
The dragon had not moved yet - but then he might at any moment get warm enough to move, and though George and Jane were now warm they were not comfortable nor easy in their minds. They tried to explain to the grouse; but though he is polite, he is not clever, and he only said: “You’ve got a warm nest, and we’ll see that no one takes it from you. What more can you possibly want?”
Just then came a new, strange, jerky fluttering of wings far softer than the grouse’s, and George and Jane cried out together: “Oh, do mind your wings in the fires!”
For they saw at once that it was the great white Arctic moth.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, settling on the dragon’s tail.
So they told him.
“Sealskin, are they?” said the moth. “Just you wait a minute!”
He flew off very crookedly, dodging the flames, and presently he came back, and there were so many moths with him that it was as if a live sheet of white wingedness were suddenly drawn between the children and the stars.
And then the doom of the bad sealskin dwarfs fell suddenly on them.
For the great sheet of winged whiteness broke up and fell as snow falls, and it fell upon the sealskin dwarfs; and every snowflake of it was a live, fluttering, hungry moth that buried its greedy nose deep in the sealskin fur.