Chapter XXIX: A Land of the Heart’s Desire 243 (6)

We ran forward like boys. No, it was not land, after all, but the next thing to it—a great black expanse of bare, wind-swept rock! We could not tell, of course, how high it rose above the normal surface, but we did not believe it could be many feet. Looking ahead with the glass we saw many other black patches, stretching away and blending together, as it seemed, on the horizon. We made all haste forward, and when we stopped for our noon rest I made a calculation of our position. We were not quite to the eighty-third parallel, and a little more than two hundred miles from the Billowcrest. I had calculated that the habitable zone would begin here, but it appeared that I had been in error. The cold from the sea reached farther inland than I had supposed. Still, I reflected, this place might be altogether clear of snow a month later, and only uninhabitable because of barrenness.

Immediately after our coffee we pushed on again. All at once I made out what seemed to be the opening, or chasm, among the bare patches to the right. Leaving the others, I ran over to investigate and came back shouting and breathless.

“A river! a river!” I called, “and smooth ice. We can sail on it!”

We steered our boat-sled over there as rapidly as possible. It was difficult getting down to the surface, some forty feet below, but we managed it at last. Then we stopped for breath and observation.

“I’ll bet this is _our_ river,” said Gale, “and that we haven’t been more than a mile from it since we started.”

“No doubt of it,” I said, “and we even may have been on top of it part of the time. Of course it’s filled level full of snow somewhere below here, and we shouldn’t have known the difference. It is a channel that cuts through and carries the melting snow to the sea. If it didn’t the center of the Antarctic Continent would be a big circular pond. There may be many of these rivers.”

“Well, one is enough for us, just now,” said Gale. Then he promptly confessed to Edith that we had “abandoned” our balloon bag, owing to “adverse winds,” but that we didn’t care, for we had reached a river and “good sailing.” She didn’t appear to notice any discrepancy in this statement, and we decided that it would be unsafe to attempt to mend it. The “good sailing,” at least, was true, for the wind continued favorable, and we were presently going up-stream at a fair rate of speed. Gale leaned back and lit a cigar.

“This beats pushing,” he said. “Good boat, good crowd, good cigar. What is joy without a jews-harp!”

By nightfall—it fell much later now—the snowbanks on either side were no more than ten feet high on a level, and when we stopped for camp we found the country above almost more black than white—the bare rocks showing in masses in all directions.

We rejoiced greatly, and fondly hoped to be out of the snow altogether by the following evening, though I was a bit uneasy about the rock. If the Antarctic Continent proved to be nothing but barren granite it would be of as little value as if it were a waste of snow. Still, a circle of nearly a thousand miles in diameter could hardly be the same throughout.

Our failing telephone, however, was a real sorrow. Though still distinct, the voices were very faint, now. Unless Ferratoni could do something, it would fail us altogether, soon. He believed its condition due mainly to our lower altitude, and the vast obstruction that was now lying between us and the Billowcrest. But it had been a great comfort to us all through our hardest hours, and I would be content. The mental vibrations from the vessel, Ferratoni said, were similarly affected, and much confused.

Another day of discovery followed. The wind and weather being too good to waste, by five o’clock we were on our way up the river. The snow crust thinned out rapidly, until, by ten o’clock, there was no more than a foot on the banks above, and we were sailing between shores of genuine stone and clay, the first soil we had seen for a year. Flocks of birds became plentiful, and at one place we saw some strange, brown animals, about the size and shape of rabbits, but with very long hind legs and with a method of locomotion similar to that of a frog. Gale named them “Skipteroons” because of their lightsome mode of travel, and shot at them, without success.

The temperature was barely freezing, now, and we were altogether happy. So much so that we confessed to Edith all the affair of the balloon, and our subsequent difficulties. She was less surprised than we had expected. She had suspected, it seems, that all was not so well as we had pretended, and of course our statements _had_ been a trifle contradictory at times. But she rejoiced now in the reality of good fortune that had come to us, the genuineness of which could not be mistaken, even through our fast failing telephone.

Several times we halted and climbed up on the shore to look at the country for possible inhabitants, but there was as yet no human sign, though much bird life, and some more of the funny half-rabbit creatures, one of which Gale succeeded in killing at last, a welcome addition to our bill-of-fare. All at once, about four o’clock, Ferratoni held out his hand. “Listen!” he said.

We listened very hard, and thought we heard a roaring sound ahead, but as the wind was blowing in that direction, we could not be sure. It grew stronger, however, as we ascended, and was steady and continuous. We decided that it was a fall, and not far away. Hardly had we made this conclusion when there was a cracking sound beneath us, followed by a crash of ice and a splash of water, and our boat-sleigh was no longer a sleigh at all, but a genuine boat, battling with a strong current and broken ice. Our momentum had sent us ahead a few feet, but our sail was too small to stem the current and we were drifting back to the jagged ice. This time it was Ferratoni who saved the situation. He had foreseen just such an emergency and had at hand the little propeller wheel for water. With a quick movement, now, he plunged it beneath the surface at the stern, and deftly slipping and locking it into place, pressed the button of the dynamo. We were off, like a trolley car. The thin ice ahead parted before our sharp bow, and in a few moments we were in open water, heading up-stream under both electricity and sail.

“Like gettin’ money from home,” said Gale. “Look here, Nick, where would your boat scheme have been, anyway, without Tony and me to help you out?”

Certainly the propeller was a success, and I approved it heartily.

We rounded a bend a little later, and the fall came in sight. It was perhaps a mile away and was a long rapid, rather than a fall. There was no thought of ascending it with the boat. Already the current was very swift, and the shores narrowing together. We headed in for the bank. Landing proved a hard job, for the bank here was rather high, and very steep. We had to unload most of our things and carry them up in our arms. By the time we got everything up we were too tired to attempt to climb the long hill which we now saw rose ahead of us. It was this rise that formed the rapid, and against it the snow had blown and drifted, though this was all the better for us, as it made the ascent easier for the boat, which would have been hard to push up over rough, bare rocks. To-morrow morning we would know what lay beyond that hill. To-night we were resting, and getting strength from the “skipteroon” for a long tug. Zar had promised to sing “Brown Cows” to me, and perhaps for the last time, for Edith Gale’s voice when I had called to her just now was barely audible, even though she must have spoken very loudly. I was obliged to shout to make her hear, which made any expression of tenderness between us somewhat difficult. Zar’s voice, however, would probably carry.

XXVI.
THE WELCOME TO THE UNKNOWN.

And now came the day of days! Early in the morning we reloaded our boat, and set out eagerly. The wind helped us somewhat in our upward pull but it was a hard tug. Often we propped our load, and halted for breath. The hill seemed to grow longer as we ascended.

“Nick,” said Gale, “I believe this is the South Pole, and that we’re climbing it.”

“It isn’t quite that,” I said, “but it may be the end of the bare rocks and snow. I shouldn’t wonder if all this bare rock has had the dirt washed off by the million years or so of melting drifts. We’ve already seen dirt along the river bank, and there should be more of it where the snow ends. If this is the place, it explains this rise.”

We tugged on and up. When at last we were within a stone’s throw of the summit, our eagerness made us silent. We halted once more before the final effort.

“Nick,” panted Gale, “it’s the Promised Land. You’re entitled to the first look. Go on ahead, and come back and tell us.”

“No,” I said, “we’ll leave the boat here, and go up four abreast, to look over.”

“Anyhow, you’ll see it first, that way,” said Gale, “and Bill next.”

Side by side we hurried forward. Just at the brow, the hill was a bit steeper, and there was a surface of bare rock, over which we scrambled, and a moment later stood on the summit. Then——

Before us—level upland with here and there a patch of white, where snow still lingered. But between and beyond the white, beginning at our feet, and stretching away to the farthest horizon limits, a thick, yielding carpet of wonderful Purple Violets!

Mr. Sturritt was first to speak.

“The Lord be praised for all His mercies!” he said.

Ferratoni was down with his face among the leaves and blossoms.

Gale said: “I’ve been to violet receptions before, but this rather lays it over anything, so far.”

As for me, I was silent. I hardly knew what I had expected to see. Perhaps trees—perhaps a distant city—perhaps a waste of barren downs. But certainly not this. I knew, of course, that flowers bloomed at the very edge of Alaskan glaciers, but perhaps I had forgotten. Like Ferratoni, I got down to feel and smell them. They had a sweet, delicate odor, that had been borne from us by the wind. The blossom itself was somewhat different in form from our northern violets, and was of a darker hue. The leaf was smaller.

Through a sea of bloom we pushed our boat toward the river above the rapids. The banks were lower, here, and there was no more ice. We were presently sailing between violet-scented shores, and the silence and balm that was in the air brought forgetfulness of our difficulties. To the ship we attempted to convey the great news, but now our telephone failed us almost entirely, and in spite of all that Ferratoni could do to it, it was with the greatest difficulty that we finally conveyed the bare facts, sacrificing altogether the poetic details of the scene about us.

My first attempt to explain to Edith that we were met with violets was understood by her to be “violence,” and this was not easy to get rid of. However, she comprehended at last, and had she been standing on top of the ice-barrier, I think she could have heard me, without the telephone. As for her voice, it was lost utterly in the wide space between, and only the searching quality of Captain Biffer’s tones could convey to us her replies. Even these were lost when we tried again, a little later. Being thus cut off from the ship saddened us, in spite of our pleasant surroundings.

“We’ll have to go it alone,” commented Gale. “Mebbe we’ll hit another set of vibrations up here, somewhere, and be all right again. We’re likely to strike most anything now. Anyway Johnnie knows we were doing well at last accounts. Do you know,” he added, some minutes later, “this would be a great place to lay out an addition. Violet Mead—how’s that for a name? Acre property, no grading, and if there was any way of getting over that ice-wall, it would be the easiest thing in the world to run a gravity railroad down the snowbank from Bottle Bay right to this meadow. There’s a steady incline and the drifts would be easy to cut through.”

“How about the melting underneath in the summer, and the drifting overhead in the winter?” I asked. “I think a line of balloons would be more practical.”

Gale shook his head.

“No more balloons in mine. The going is well enough, but it’s the free and easy way you have of starting and stopping that I object to.”

Gradually the sun slipped down behind the violet fields. The wind died, and a scented, luminous twilight fell. The atmosphere was like an evening in late April. We were preparing to land for the night, when a dark speck appeared on the river ahead. The surface of the water was a dull red gold, reflecting the western sky. Into this there had drifted a sharp, black outline—a boat, we saw presently—a sort of canoe. It was the first indication of human life, and we held our breath, wondering. As it approached, it appeared empty.

We turned our craft toward it, and it drifted just under our side. We leaned over and looked down. A face looked up into ours—the white, dead face of a beautiful young girl, and above and about her there were masses and festoons of flowers.

We held the boat a little, and regarded the sleeper without speaking. She was so beautiful, and had come to us so silently out of the unknown land.

Twilight deepened.

Then presently we loosed the little funeral boat, and saw it pass down into the dimness of evening to the land of eternal cold.

“It was a part of just such a boat that we found in Bottle Bay,” Gale said, as we drew near the shore. “This accounts for its being there.”

I assented, but we did not discuss the matter further, and we spoke but little as we prepared for the night. Communication with those behind had ceased. Before us was mystery, and about us silence. Cut off from every tie we knew, we had entered an enchanted land, and the spell of its potent magic came down with the perfumed dark.

XXVII.
THE PRINCE OF THE PURPLE FIELDS.

I woke next morning to an odor even more inspiring than the smell of violets. There was that about it which at first made me distrust my senses. It seemed too good to be true—that searching, pervading, heavenly odor. I closed my eyes and opened them to make sure I was awake. Then it came again—more persistent than before—and with it a sputter and a crackle. It was! It was! I could not be deceived—it was frying fish!

Gale, it seems, had risen early, upturned some insects and worms from under the violet sod, and found splendid fishing but a step away. Mr. Sturritt had promptly joined him, and now there was ready a breakfast that made up for many days of fasting and tablets.

“I don’t know what kind of fish they are,” explained Gale, “but they seemed as hungry as we were, so we formed a sort of mutual benefit association. Sort of a first aid to the famished.”

The morning was still and beautiful. We had rested on violet beds, and after our bounteous breakfast we set out southward again, in the joyous expectation of further discovery. We were in excellent spirits; the air was balm and the dangers of cold and hunger were behind us. It is true that the Billowcrest was also there, and between, a wide desolation which we could hardly hope to surmount with our present resources. But this fact we kept in the background. It was not an immediate concern, and we were willing to believe that to-morrow, and the day after, and the month following would in some manner provide ways and develop means.

Chauncey Gale became particularly jubilant as we ascended.

“If all the people are like that girl we saw last night,” he said at last,—“I don’t mean of course if they are all dead, but if they all _look_ like that,—it seems to me that this is about the best addition the Lord has yet laid out. Maybe this is His own little pet corner down here, and He didn’t think anybody else would find it. You know I felt a good deal that way when I laid out Tangleside. It was a little shut-in neck of woods, and some of Johnnie’s friends liked it, so we just bought it and let ’em have it. I didn’t suppose anybody else would ever think of wanting to live there, but they did. People found out that we didn’t want them, and you couldn’t keep them away with clubs. They overrun the place and ruined it. Johnnie couldn’t do a thing with them. They cut out the trees and bushes that grew there, and set out a lot of nursery stuff that broke Johnnie’s heart in six months. If this place should turn out to be a sort of Tangleside of the Lord’s, I suppose He’d like it just as well if we kept out. But if the people are all like that girl——”

“You shall know presently,” interrupted Ferratoni. “They are just ahead.”

He had scarcely spoken before during the morning, and there was now a quality in his voice that made us all look first at him, and then in the direction his eyes followed. We thought he might have received some mental impression, but saw now that just beyond a little knoll on the shore, and coming down to the marge to meet us, were the figures of men. It did not surprise us; we had expected them even sooner. During our approach they regarded us, as we them, in silence.

They were very fair—almost pallid of countenance—graceful rather than robust. Their dress was quite simple in form. Something akin to both the early Syrian and Japanese it seemed, and appeared to have grown for them, rather than to have been constructed by artificial devices. Their faces were smooth, and their hair long—parted on top and gathered loosely at the back with a sort of circlet or band. To me they seemed as a part with the fields and sky behind them—some new flowering of our enchanted land.

All were young, but one younger and handsomer than the others advanced as our boat grounded. His wide-sleeved coat, or tunic, of soft glistening white was embroidered over with the flower of the plains above us. That he was of rank seemed evident. Gale, who was in the bow, stepped ashore and held out his hand to this fair youth, who laid his own in it, unhesitatingly.

“How are you?” greeted Gale, heartily. “Glad to see you. We’ve had all kinds of a time getting here, and it’s good to find somebody at home. My name is Gale, Chauncey Gale, and these are my friends. We’re from New York City, United States of America—best town and biggest country on earth. We’ve come down here to discover you, and take a look at your country to see whether we want to annex it or not. Up till yesterday we didn’t think we did, but the farther we get into your proposition the better we like it. Now, tell us who _you_ are.”

During this rather characteristic greeting the youth had been regarding Gale with puzzled inquiry. He answered now with a gentle flow of aspirate syllables—a little address it seemed. The sounds were pleasant to the ear, but often barely audible. As he spoke, he pointed now and then to the half-dozen others about him.

We followed Gale ashore, and something like a general hand-shaking took place. The youth’s followers, however, showed no disposition to do more than lay their palms to ours for a brief instant, and then retire. But when the youth himself came to Ferratoni, their hands lingered together, and the puzzled look that had been on the face of each melted away. Then the youth spoke again, still holding Ferratoni’s hand. When he had finished, the latter, turning to us, said:

“He is the Prince of the Purple Fields. We are in the borders of his domain. With his followers he escorted until yesterday a young lady of his court for a distance on her journey to the Land of the Silent Cold. It was she we passed. Two days ago something which must have been our balloon bag was blown to them, and it was thought we were not far distant. They have dimly known of our coming, somewhat as I had received an impression of their existence.”

We regarded our companion with increasing wonder and amazement.

“But, Ferratoni,” I said, “you do not mean to say that you understand their language.”

“Not the words. The language of thought is the same to all men. The vibration between us is by no means perfect, but when timed to the slow measure of speech, the mental echo is sufficiently good to follow his meaning.”

“Look here,” asked Gale, “can’t you twist up my strings a little? I’d like to get in key and know what’s going on, too.”

“And does he also follow your thought?” I put in.

But the youth was speaking again and Ferratoni gave him close attention. Then he interpreted.

“The conscious exchange of thought without words, he tells me, marks their advancement in communication—perhaps somewhat as the wireless interchange of words marks ours. Their progress has been along different lines it seems. The Prince and his sister, the Princess of the Lilied Hills, whose domain lies beyond this, bid us welcome. Your thought, however, he does not reach as yet, except through me, and this requires a double or repeated process, somewhat like translation.”

“Well,” muttered Gale, “I’m rather glad of that. I want to have a few thinks all to myself when I’m in a new place and seeing things.”

The Prince now said something further to Ferratoni, and then with his suite set off up the bank.

“Their boats are just above,” the latter explained. “We are to overtake them, and all proceed up the river together.”

Around a little bend we found them waiting for us. They had two barges, long, graceful and beautiful, similar to the canoe of the American Indian in shape, but propelled by slender oars in the hands of tall, youthful oarsmen of bare arms and heads, and fair, smooth faces. Near the center of each craft there was a sail of the simplest banner form, white but embroidered with the blue flower of the Prince’s domain. Truly they seemed to us as an integral part of the world about them.

Mr. Sturritt, who had hitherto remained silent, leaned over to me and murmured:

“Look—er—at them, and—and then at us. We’re not very—that is—attractive, while they—why it’s just as if they were condensed—I should say—er—materialized, as it were, from the elements.”

And Chauncey Gale:

“Better food than tablets, just to look at them, eh, Bill?”

“Sustenance for the soul,” said Ferratoni.

XXVIII.
A HARBOR OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS.

Oct. 5. For seven days we have ascended this silent, flowing river, and to-night we rest in the palace of the Prince. At least we call him the Prince, though Ferratoni has explained to us that the word hardly carries the thought as conveyed to him. One whom the others follow and emulate, he thinks would be more exact, but this would mean prince, too, in our acceptation of the word, and so “Prince” he has become to us, and we would not wish for a better title for this fair serene youth, whose unvexed spirit and gentle sway of those about him have wrought a spell upon us all.

We have enjoyed his bounteous hospitality, and often he has traveled in our boat, conversing with Ferratoni, who has translated to us. I have made no previous record, as I desired first to get some definite impression of this new-found country and its people. What their impression of us has been it would not be easy to say.

I am not surprised that we have awakened in them a vague wonder and uneasiness rather than admiration. At least Ferratoni says that this is the case. Our boat with its propeller has been examined with what seemed to me a mingling of mild curiosity and respect, and I think with very little idea of adopting its plans or processes. Its unbeautiful lines and the jar of its propeller would not accord with their placid and graceful lives. Our various instruments and our watches they regard with something akin to fear. Perhaps like our ancestors they consider them the result of witchery. When our balloon bag which preceded us was explained to them, as well as our adventures since leaving the Billowcrest, they showed little interest, and certainly found no pleasure in any episode of this somewhat turbulent period. The picture of Chauncey Gale being jerked and battered through a snowdrift did not, as to us, give joy, now that it was all over, and Gale’s neck and limbs still properly adjusted. To them it was a distressing, because unbeautiful, incident. Something to be deplored quietly and forgotten quickly.

For the people of this secluded land, if we may judge by those we have seen, are all grace, all repose, all serenity of demeanor. Ambition and achievement—of such kind at least as we know and prize—seem foreign to their lives. They do not venture—or very rarely—beyond the violet boundaries, even during the long summer day. The region without—the Land of the Silent Cold—is to them the country of the dead.

Any lingering doubt I may have cherished that my lost uncle had found harbor here has been destroyed by the fact that they have no knowledge of the world without. Something of its existence seems to have been dimly known to them by tradition, and perhaps through vague mental impressions, but heretofore no word from those beyond the great outer barrier has ever come to them. They have speculated very dreamily upon the matter—even more so than we have upon the inhabitants of other planets—and have made as little attempt to reach them. When we came nearer to their zone of vibration the Prince and his sister, who it seems are the high priests of this peculiar development, were able to establish some sort of communication with Ferratoni, whose mental adjustment is less foreign to them than ours. But it was an imperfect chord—a poor connection as we would say—and not until the Prince and Ferratoni were face to face and palm to palm was the result definite and tangible.

Their progress, such as it is, has been along lines totally different from those of our people. They resemble the Orientals in some respects—or at least the idea we have of the Orientals of a long ago time. From what I have seen I judge that their mechanical appliances are as those of a far antiquity. Beautiful, indeed, but to a people like us valuable only as curios. To this, however, there appears to be one exception. The Prince has to-day explained to Ferratoni a new process, invented by himself and his serene sister, the Princess of the Lilied Hills, for dispelling darkness. It seems to be a large plate of metal (probably a sort of yellow aluminum, which we at first took for gold and is the only metal we have seen thus far), and this is arranged to receive, by induction, electric waves from the Aurora Australis, radiating them again in the form of a continuous glow. At least, it is expected to do so—we do not understand that it has been perfected as yet, and as we are to see it later it is more than likely that Ferratoni and Gale will be able to improve it greatly. It appears to be the one real mechanical attempt of this languid race—the child of their one great necessity—and the Prince believes that when perfected it will strengthen their people and give them longer life.

As it is, they are enervated by the long summer day, and depleted still further by the long night that follows. When the first vigor of youth wanes, and often before, they pass quickly out of life, and usually, the Prince tells us, without pain. They regard Gale as old—and Mr. Sturritt as a veritable patriarch.

The contrast between them and us is very great. Between Chauncey Gale and the Prince it is worth going far to see. The one, all languorous grace and spiritual repose; the other, all nerve force and vigor, all action and muscle and overflowing energy.

At least, the latter applied to Gale a few days ago. The spell of quiet content that lies upon this land has possessed him now, somewhat, as it has the others. Like us, he is willing to rest after our hard battle with the snowdrifts—to sail without question, almost without comment along these peaceful shores.

“They don’t seem to need homes and firesides, nor Johnnie’s missionary work in this country,” he remarked to-day, after a long silence. Then we both grew sad, remembering that we had received no word from the vessel for so long. The bell of the telephone rang a little yesterday, and we thought there was a sound of mingled words in the receiver, but nothing intelligible. The Prince, when the nature and use of the invention was explained to him, regarded us with what seemed a mild added wonder, as well as pity, that we should need such an affair when we already have, each within his head, a far better means of communication if we would but develop it.

There are trees along the banks now—curious semi-tropical trees, most of them—and the violets have been replaced here by a multitude of more gorgeous blossoms. Dwellings and people we saw to-day for the first time. The people congregate it would seem—the result of the long night—and there are no dwellers of the fields, save in midsummer. Then they inhabit tents until the harvests, which the warm, untilled earth bountifully provides for them, are gathered. Such as we have seen were collected along the shore to see us pass. There was no eager curiosity or excitement. Some, indeed, slowly waved their arms or banners as we approached, but this I take it was more as a tribute to the Prince than a greeting to the strangers.

Their houses, like everything else of this unvexed land, appear to have grown, rather than to have been built, and are essentially a part of the landscape. Whatever the contour of the location the house conforms to it. Many are against hillsides, and are built in terrace form, with flowers at the top of each story, forming, as it were, a garden for the next. They are for the most part laid up of unhewn stone, logs, limbs, and even interwoven brush. Frequently some surface of the living rock, or a huge bowlder, or a growing tree may become a part of, and blend into, the habitation. It is not always easy to tell where nature ends and artifice begins, or even to distinguish some of the humbler dwellings at first glance.

The terrace form prevails more than any other it seems; so much so that Gale has conferred on this race the name of “Terrace Dwellers,” which effort we regard as more of a success than some of his former attempts at nomenclature. Even when the home is built upon a level spot the lower story usually extends and forms a floral garden for the one above.

Flowers there are, everywhere—many that we seem to recognize, but many more that we have not seen. From what the Prince tells Ferratoni, I gather that while they last, every ceremonial of whatever sort, is a great feast of flowers.

The fact that my camera was not on board when we took our premature flight into the unknown is a matter of deep regret to me, for I would fain preserve some more permanent impressions of these placid and beautiful shores.

But we have reached the Prince’s palace. It is a succession of wonderful terraces, beginning at the river front, and extending back to the hills behind it. Each terrace is supported by a row of slender columns, and on the outer edge of each a carved railing leads to a graceful outside stairway that ascends from one step of flowers to the next. At the summit, on a level with the hills, the last step forms a round colonnaded eyrie, on the top of which the sun still lingers. Along the terraces are groups of waiting people who, as we approach, wave tranquilly their white arms to the Prince. Their dress and attitudes suggest some dim, forgotten land of the East. Us they regard with placid curiosity, yet with a gentle friendliness evident in their faces.

Now, from the wide portal of the lower story, come many down the broad, white steps to greet us. Young are they all, and beautiful—creatures of an unknown world, while from either side troop bare-armed boys and girls, chanting a low, rhythmic melody of welcome.

So are we come at last to the land of my fancy. And a land of fancy indeed it seems to us. A harbor for vanished argosies and forgotten dreams. A port for lost rhymes and strayed melodies—for discarded magic and alchemies long dead. And it is in this enchanted vale that we find once more the shelter of human habitation.

We shall rest to-night with the Prince of the Purple Fields.

THE PALACE OF THE PRINCE.

“A harbor for vanished argosies and forgotten dreams.”—Page 242.
]

XXIX.
A LAND OF THE HEART’S DESIRE.

Oct. 12. This is the land of harmony. Here, shut in from the outer world by the crystal walls of the ages, rhythmic vibrations of the universe have blossomed in a fair, frail, almost supernatural life. Here the ideals of Ferratoni are the realities of the daily round, while the dreams of Edith Gale are but as the play language of little children.

Here, shut away from the greed and struggle of the life we know—few in numbers and simple in their material needs, fragile and brief in their span of physical existence and plunged for half the year into a sunless period of contemplation—the lives of the people have linked themselves with the sun and stars, with the woods and fields, with the winds and waters, and with each other, in one rare, universal chord.

It is the natural result of the long periods of sun and darkness. The polar night binds them in closer sympathy, even as it did those of the Billowcrest, while during the long sunny day they have only to bask in the sun and dream, and let the fecund soil provide amply for their wants. There is no need of struggle—no effort, save to retain life, if I may apply that term to this languorous melody of existence wherein greed, jealousy, vanity and the other elements of discord find no place.

There is no old age here—our most frequent excuse for greed. No necessity for a life of heavy toil to provide for a ghastly period when all save physical want has perished.

Indeed, there is little effort here of any sort. They are not even obliged to talk, for their minds are as open books, and there is not, as with us, the need of many words to cloud and diffuse a few poor thoughts, that in the beginning were hardly worth while.

Truth here is not a luxury—a thing produced with difficulty and therefore conserved for special occasions—but an abounding necessity, like air and water. Concealment, ever the first step toward sorrow, is impossible.

Love flowers naturally and where all may see. Marriage is union, and separation unknown. Joy to one is answered in the bosom of many, and grief is the minor chord that stirs mournfully the heart of a multitude. Verily is it a “Land of the Heart’s Desire,”

“Where nobody ever grows old, and crafty and wise—
Where nobody ever grows false and bitter of tongue.”

If I seem to have waxed poetic in speaking of these people, it is because poetry is the language and breath of their race. Even Chauncey Gale has imbibed something of the pervading spirit, and adapted his phraseology to the conditions.

“The chant of the trolley and the song of the lawn-mower are heard not nor needed,” he said to me this morning, as we looked from our high terrace down on the dream world below.

I speak of it as morning, but there is no morning now. It is always afternoon—the afternoon of a June day, before the gray dust and the withering heat of summer have begun their blight. We have been here a week and we would roam no farther. The world, the vessel, the crew—even Edith Gale—all seem as a page of some half-forgotten tale—something of another and long-ago existence in which we have no further part. The spell of the lotus is upon us. The lives of the lotus-eaters have become our lives.

We have laid off our travel-stained dress, shaved our beards, and become in appearance even as those about us. Ferratoni is as one to the manor born. Mr. Sturritt might have been a seer and a high priest from childhood. His (to them) extreme age has commanded their wonder and reverence, and his pink dessert lozenges are highly regarded as a new and most delightful confection. Altogether he is in high favor, ranking next, it would seem, to Ferratoni, who, as the favorite of the Prince, and interpreter for the rest of us, is exalted somewhat unduly. As for Gale, whose physical and facial lines are perhaps most at variance with those about us, he has put himself on low diet in order to train down to a poetic basis, and goes about reciting verses, remembered from childhood, to slender youths and fair, reclining women, who listen drowsily as they bathe in the life-giving rays of the returning sun. Yesterday I heard him repeating “Mary’s Little Lamb” to a group of languid listeners. It did not matter—they do not understand his words, and his thought vibrations are, I suspect, altogether too highly tensioned for this deliberate race.

Now that there is no more night the people live out of doors. There are no regular hours for sleep or food. Soft-footed, bare-limbed boys bring viands at call, while æolian harps, yielding pillows, and the perfume of flowers everywhere woo to somnolence and repose. Our food consists mainly of preserved fruits, also the meat of a curious, silken-haired goat which these people possess, and sometimes that of the strange, leaping rabbit creature—these being their only animals. The flesh of birds and fishes, however, is plentiful, and to these things are added many preparations of their chief cereal, a sort of rice, which yields abundantly each year, without planting. Our sweets are from the sap of a tree, even finer and more delicate of flavor than our northern maple. Wine we have from the wild grapes that ripen later in great abundance.

Within the palace I find many curious little lamps and torches,—their provision against the long night. The walls and floors are draped with yielding fabrics, woven from the silken fleece of the goat, and from the long hair of the “skipteroon.” Of feather work, too, I have seen some delicate examples. Their looms for weaving, their implements for harvesting, their utensils for preparing food, are all of the simplest and most primitive form, such as our earliest ancestors might have employed, and as may be in use to-day in lands where mechanism has made little or no progress. Their one attempt in this direction is their invention for dispelling darkness, and this has not yet been shown to us, for the complaisant Prince has been quiescent since our arrival, and we have fallen into the way of it all, and are willing to procrastinate, and to keep on procrastinating while the circling sun dispenses the anodyne of eternal afternoon.

It is not strange that like the nations of the Incas these people should be worshippers of the sun. To them comes the fullest realization of its life-giving glory, and the joyless stagnation of the death-breathing dark. We who sleep through much of the sun’s absence come naturally to regard it somewhat as a useful and not always agreeable adjunct to our lives. Yet even we, after days of dull weather—black nights and murky mornings—welcome joyously the return of the life-giver, while to these people it would be strange indeed if the great luminary had not become at least the shining symbol of Infinity. The terrace form of their dwelling is, I think, suggested by the sun’s gradual circling ascent and descent of the sky, and from the topmost step or story they assemble to bid it joyous welcome and reverential farewell. The world itself here appears to be a sort of terrace, the first step of which we ascended when we reached the Violet Fields. The next is the approach to the land ruled over by the Prince’s serene sister, whom we are soon to see, for though we are loth to depart from this pleasant vale, we are daily required by a mental message from her to proceed farther on our journey.

To-morrow, therefore, or the next day, or the day after, we must ascend still higher this enchanted river and “pause not unduly, nor idly linger”—so her august message runs—until we shall arrive at the palace of the Lady of the Lilied Hills.

XXX.
THE LADY OF THE LILIES.

And now, indeed, we are in the land of anodyne and oblivion. Once more we dream and forget, and the palace of the Prince dims out and fades, even as the barges that brought us drift back down the tide and disappear in the distant blue. Here is the world’s enchanted and perfumed casket, and here within it lies the world’s rarest jewel of sorcery—the Princess of the Lilied Hills.

We have been here but a brief time—I no longer keep a record of the days—and we are bound hand and foot, as it were, by the spell of this Circe of the South. In the first moment that we were ushered into her presence, and beheld her in her white robe of state, embroidered with the pale yellow flower of her kingdom, whatever remained to us of the past slipped away like water through the fingers. Chauncey Gale forgot that he had a yacht, and both of us that he had a daughter. Mr. Sturritt forgot everything but his packages of pink lozenges, which he reverentially laid at her feet, thereby earning her cordial acknowledgments and our bitter jealousy.

Ferratoni, however, was not long at a loss. He could converse with her, and it became evident almost from the start that he did not care to translate either fully or literally. He cut out, and revised, and stumbled. She detected his difficulty, of course, and seemed to reprove him. Then he gave up translating altogether, and the rest of us sat there, simply staring at her, until Gale got himself together and recited the “Burning Deck,” while I suffered in spirit because reciting did not seem to be quite what I wanted to do, and I could remember no other tricks to perform.

I finally prevailed upon Ferratoni to tell her that it was I who had conceived the expedition, whereupon Gale hastily claimed credit for having made it possible, while Mr. Sturritt—Sturritt the timid and unassuming—boldly stated that without him and his tablets we should have perished by the wayside. It was altogether distressing to hear them.

When we were through, she looked fondly at Ferratoni, and then, still tenderly regarding him, expressed thanks to all of us with a fervency that was gratifying to him no doubt, but that to the rest of us seemed a poor reward.

She added, presently, that as I was interested in the central point of the kingdom—the South Pole, of course—and that as Gale was interested in the people’s homes and firesides, and Mr. Sturritt in the matter of their food, she would have us escorted about with a view to our observation of these things, but that Ferratoni, whose life and aims were not so widely different from her own, would remain with her to discuss the problems in which they were mutually interested.

Perhaps she did not put it just in this way, but Ferratoni did in his translation; then they both turned away and forgot our existence. We were conducted outside, ere long, and there was a barge at the door into which it was indicated that we should enter.

We did not do so, however. The boatmen were in no haste and neither were we. There is no haste in this land. We lay down by the shore and looked serenely to the south where rose a lofty terraced temple, the top of which we had observed from a great distance. We had been told it was their chief temple of worship, and located exactly in the center of the sun’s daily circuit. Resting thus on the earth’s axis, it became for us the outward and material symbol of our objective point—of my life’s ambition. It was the South Pole!

And now that we are here and it rises before us, the eagerness to set foot upon that magic point—to scale and stand triumphant on the apex of the pole itself, as it were, has passed.

“So that is the South Pole,” murmurs Gale. “Well, I never would have recognized it if I’d seen it any place else. Let’s don’t be in too big a hurry to get to it, Nick.”

“No,” I answer, “suppose we wait awhile. Perhaps if we wait long enough the South Pole will come to _us_.”

For there can be no eagerness in this land. It would be wholly out of place. Neither are we acutely jealous of Ferratoni. Acuteness would be out of place also.

And so we drowse in the fragrance of the lilies, and soft-eyed, soft-voiced people come and sing to us, while the barge waits and becomes a picture on the tide.

And then there falls silence, and it is as if the world and the palace slept, and so would sleep until the wakening kiss.

XXXI.
THE POLE AT LAST.

November ( ). At the top of the Temple of the Sun.

I do not know the precise date, or the hour. Our watches have long since stopped, and there has been neither the desire nor the need to wind them. In a land where the sun slips round the sky, and for half a year no night cometh, the proper measure of time is of little matter.

Neither have I continued the record of these notes, for I thought each day to visit this spot, and so waited. In the light of the Lily Princess we have lingered and drowsed. From the peace of her pleasant palace we have not cared to stray. And she has smiled kindly upon us all, though from the first it has been evident that her joy lies in Ferratoni, and that, in the princess, he too has found at last the ideal—the perfect spirit vibration that completes the chord of souls.

We have become glad of this and rejoice in his happiness. That is, we have rejoiced as much as anybody ever rejoices in this halcyon land. We have been peacefully and limpidly content, and their serene bliss has been our compensation.

Yet there have been other rewards. We have mingled with the fair people of the court and found something of the bliss of their untroubled lives.

Also, we have learned somewhat of their converse—that is, we have learned to imagine that we know what they are thinking and saying, while they have learned, or imagine they have learned, about us, too; and in this land to imagine that you have learned these things is much the same as if you had really done so, for in a place where life is reduced to a few simple principles, and there is neither the reason nor the wish to plan, or discuss, or quarrel about anything, what you say and think, or what they say and think in reply, cannot be wide of the mark in any case. As with time, exactness, or the lack of it, does not matter. Indeed, nothing matters much in this balmy vale. Lingering on a lilied bank in the sun—with—with any one of these gentle people, life becomes a soothing impression which minuteness and detail would only mar.

We have learned, too, though rather vaguely, something of the customs of the race, and the life of those who dwell beyond the palace gates. They are not a numerous people and their ways are primitive. Nature provides their food, and their garments are few and simple. Only the construction of their dwellings calls for any serious outlay of toil, and in this they unite as in a festival until the labor is complete. Their harvests are conducted in the same manner, and in these things they are not widely different from our pioneer ancestors, who exchanged labors of the field, and merrily joined in their house-raisings.

Like the people of the Incas, the Antarcticans have no money and no need of it. The lands are held in common, and the harvests yield more than enough for all. Great storehouses hold the surplus, from which any one may be provided in time of need. Famine, war, and the complications of law are unknown. Indeed, the necessity of law here seems slight. For in a land where there can be no concealment, crime must languish and only such laws result as find natural and willing observance.

Although what we regarded as life is very brief here, there is no dread of that which we know as death. Death in fact appears to have no real empire in this land, for Ferratoni assures us that the disembodied intelligence still vibrates to many of those clothed in the physical life, until it passes altogether out of range in its progress toward that great central force, which they believe to be the sun. To Ferratoni this is no surprise. To the rest of us it is a matter of vague wonder, which we have accepted as we have accepted everything else of this mystic land and race.

There are no schools. Education appears to be absorbed through their peculiar faculty of mental communication or “silent speech,” which develops in childhood, and is now almost universal. A few appear to be unable to master it, though their number is much less in proportion to the race than is the number of those who with us are lacking in the musical sense. In fact there seems to be a close analogy, or possibly a relation between mental speech and the musical vibration—those lacking the ear for tune and melody, they tell us, being deficient in the mental perception as well. The number of these is decreasing, however, with each generation, and in a land where the whole atmosphere breathes harmony the false notes must blend out in time, and the chord at last become universal and complete. There is a written language—a sort of symbolic ideograph—but with the perfection of their mental attainments, it has fallen gradually into disuse, and is now mainly employed in ornamental decoration, and for preserving the songs and records of the people.[3]

Footnote 3:

In no place does Mr. Chase give an example of the Antarctic speech or
writing. Even the native word for their deity or their country is
avoided, whether by intention or oversight cannot now be ascertained.

Of the latter we know but little. They are in the keeping of the Princess, who, since our arrival, has been altogether too happy in the present to go delving back into the myths of her ancestors. We are told that the first Princess came from the sun, and in this, too, the Antarcticans somewhat resemble the people of the Incas. In fact, they have so much in common with the ancient Peruvians that we might suspect a common origin, were it not for their difference of color, and even this becomes less marked with each round of their ascending deity.