“Run down to the citadel,” said the captain, “and wake up General Formicularis and tell him to rouse the garrison and bring ’em up right away, all four regiments. Tell him to send through the barracks and turn ’em all out. Tell him there’s good rich booty in it for everyone. Honey! That’ll bring him.”
The ants, old campaigners all, were by this time alert and wide awake, and they dashed down into the narrow passageways leading to the citadel. For a time there was no sound but a faint rustling underfoot, from where, deep down in the underground barracks and corridors and guard-rooms, the call to arms was being sounded.
Suddenly Charles cocked his ear towards the door. “Isn’t that Henrietta’s voice?” he asked.
“Sounds like her,” said Jack. “There’s something going on outside. Perhaps they have come to rescue us.”
“I thought I heard her voice,” said Charles with what seemed to his friend a strange lack of enthusiasm. “She’s angry at something.”
“Probably at the wolves,” said Jack.
“Yes, probably. But you know, Jack, I—I almost begin to like it here. It’s quiet and peaceful and—”
“Nonsense!” said Jack. “You’re afraid of Henrietta because she’s angry. But she isn’t angry at you. She wants to rescue you. Think how glad she’ll be to see you—”
“She’ll hide it pretty well,” said Charles mournfully. “Oh yes, I suppose she’ll be glad. But she’ll give me an awful raking over for getting in such a mess. I shan’t hear the last of it for months.—Ah, here we are!” he exclaimed as the head of a long procession of ant soldiers emerged from a small hole at his feet.
The soldiers came up at the double, and in a few minutes the entire army, four thousand strong, was spread out over the floor of the room, each of the regiments divided into companies with its captain at its head, and the general, a stout, puffy ant, a little in front, surrounded by his staff. Charles gave them a military salute with his right claw and then delivered a short address, telling them what he wanted them to do and ending with a stirring appeal to their patriotism, to the well-known fighting reputation of the famous First Division, which they comprised, and a promise of much honey.
Orders were quickly given. The first regiment, deployed as skirmishers, marched out along the roof of the cave; the others followed in columns of four. For perhaps five minutes after they had gone, there was silence, then a most terrific howling broke out among the wolves. “Hurray!” shouted Charles. “The attack has begun!” And he and Jack in their delight fell into each other’s arms.
Outside the cave their friends, who had been holding a conference and trying to decide upon some method of rescue, were suddenly amazed to see a dozen wolves dash out of the dark opening, howling and snapping at their flanks and pawing madly at their heads. The wolves took no notice of their late enemies, but dashed off in different directions and were soon lost to sight. And before the watchers could recover from their surprise, out of the cave came Charles and Jack.
The animals rushed towards them and surrounded them. “What is it?” they exclaimed. “What did you do to them? They’re gone, every last wolf. How in the world did you ever manage it?”
Charles puffed out his chest grandly. “Manage it?” he said. “Pooh! Nothing to it; nothing to it at all! Have any of you ever been bitten by an ant?”
“I have,” said Bill. “I sat down in an anthill once by mistake, and my word! how those beasts can sting!”
“Well, that’s all there was to it,” said Charles. “I hired an ant army to attack them. Promised them honey. Somebody better go get that honey, by the way. And so here we are again, safe and sound. Ha! Ask old General Charles if you want to get anything done! I guess I showed those wolves a thing or two! I guess they won’t try any tricks on this rooster again!”
But Henrietta pushed herself through his ring of admirers and caught him by the ear with her beak. “That’s enough!” she said furiously. “You think you can cause me all this grief and then get away with it, do you? You think you can just stand around and tell how smart you are, eh? Well, I want a word with you, my lad!” And under the amused glances of his friends, she led him round behind a bush, from which he presently emerged, much crest-fallen. Nothing further was heard of his cleverness. Indeed he did not dare open his beak again in Henrietta’s hearing for two days.
CHAPTER X
THE DASH FOR THE POLE
Word of the brave fight that the travellers had put up had evidently gone round among the animals of the North, for they saw no more wolves after this, though they crossed the tracks of these animals every day. It grew colder and colder; the days were very short and the nights correspondingly long, so much of their travelling had to be done before sunrise and after sunset, by the wavering, drifting light of the aurora borealis. Soon they left the forest behind and travelled over endless snow plains, and the audiences of their lectures were composed mostly of reindeer. And at last they came to the polar sea.
“If I’m not mistaken,” said Ferdinand, “this is about where we went adrift on the iceberg. Of course the sea is frozen over now, and the whaling ship must be frozen in the ice somewhere to the north of us. But we don’t want to find the ship. My guess is that the crew, and probably our friends with them, will have reached Santa Claus’s house long before this. That’s at the north pole—straight north from here. See, here’s a map of how we’ll go.” And he drew it in the snow. He made a mark and said: “That’s where we are,” and then he made another mark and said: “That’s the north pole,” and then he drew a straight line connecting them and said: “That’s the route we take.”
“H’m,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “I don’t see that that tells us much. I could have drawn that map myself.”
“You’re smarter than I thought you were,” remarked Ferdinand, and Mrs. Wiggins didn’t know whether to be angry or not. But the other animals all agreed that that was the only course to take, so they set out due north over the frozen sea.
And in two days they heard news of their friends. Just before dusk—which came at two in the afternoon—Ferdinand, who had gone for a short flight to stretch his wings, which were apt to get a little stiff with disuse when he rode on Bill’s head and didn’t use them all day, spied a black speck in the northern sky. It grew larger and larger, and presently he saw that it was a huge eagle. Ferdinand climbed to meet him, since he knew that only a very hungry eagle will condescend to eat a crow. And soon they were flying side by side.
“Hail, crow,” said the eagle. “Whither away so far from home?” Eagles always speak in very high-flown language and are very touchy of their dignity, because they are the national bird.
“Good evening, your honour,” said Ferdinand. “I’m with a party who have come to rescue a number of friends. They were captured by the crew of a whaling ship, and the last we heard of them, they were bound for the pole to visit Santa Claus. Have you seen anything of them?”
“These eyes beheld them only yesterday,” said the eagle over his shoulder, for he was flying much faster than Ferdinand, who had a hard time to keep up.
“Hey!” said the crow. “What’s that? Would you slow up a little and circle around a bit? It’s very important to me.”
The eagle shrugged his shoulders. “Is a crow’s business as important as an eagle’s?” he demanded. “And he the messenger of Santa Claus? I have no time for your petty affairs, crow. And yet—” He paused in his flight, banked, and soared in a wide circle. “Perchance at this juncture even the aid of the lowly crow is not to be despised. So listen and heed well, for I have little time to spare. Things have gone very ill with my master since the arrival of those seafaring men and their pets—”
“They’re there, then?” interrupted Ferdinand.
“I bade you listen,” said the eagle sharply. “Did I not speak of their arrival? You are wasting with your idle words time that is far more precious than your own—more precious even than mine, for it is the time of my master, Santa Claus, and it lack
s but a short space of time to Christmas.” He said considerably more about wasting time, but Ferdinand had sense enough not to point out that if time was being wasted, it was not he who was wasting it. And presently the eagle went on.
“You have left me little time to inform you how affairs stand, and indeed it is a long story. You are eager, I take it, to rescue your friends and return them to the country of their birth. In this you may be assured of my help—for I shall return in a week—and of the help of others whose acquaintance you will soon make. But those sailors must also be persuaded to return to their pursuit of whales, and this will be no easy matter. It is a problem on which we will consult together upon my return. Farewell, crow, and convey to that excellent pig, your friend, my kindest remembrances.”
“But,” said Ferdinand hastily, as the eagle began to flap his huge wings, “just what is the matter? You haven’t told—”
“He is indeed a most talented member of the porcine race,” went on the eagle. “Never to my knowledge have I been paid so delicate and tactful a compliment as in the poem which he wrote about me. Let me see; how did it go?
O eagle, mightiest of all living things,
Nor Death nor Destiny spreads stronger wings.
Thy claws of brass, thy beak of burnished steel,
Make malefactor pigs in terror squeal.
And so on. Very beautiful words. Request him to sing it for you.”
“Yes, I will; but you haven’t—” Ferdinand began. The eagle by this time, however, was under way. “Good-bye,” he shouted, and drew away from the disappointed crow at a speed which made pursuit useless.
“Well, he was a lot of help,” grumbled Ferdinand as he swooped earthward. “However, we know where they are, and Freddy’s all right. That’s something.”
The animals had watched the meeting with the eagle with great interest and continued the day’s march in the highest spirits when they learned that they were really within so short a distance of their friends. But a day’s flight to an eagle may be a week’s hard going for an animal, and it was several days before there was any indication that they were nearing the pole. Meanwhile they racked their brains to guess what the eagle had meant when he had hinted that things were not all as they should be at Santa Claus’s house. Indeed, they had several quarrels about it, some holding one view, some another, until it was decided that the only sensible plan was to give up talking and speculating about it until they got there.
On the second day after meeting the eagle they climbed up through a low range of ice hills, and Ferdinand said that they were again on land, though it made no difference to them, since both earth and water were frozen, and covered with ice and snow. North from the hills stretched an empty, snowy plain, but they had not gone far over this when they came to something very strange: a gate.
It was a very neat gate, with strong posts set solidly into the snow, and made of pickets freshly painted green, so that it could be seen for a long distance. And tacked to one side of it was a piece of plank with the following legend painted on it:
KEEP OUT
This means YOU!!
By order of the Board
The animals gathered round it. “What are we to keep out of?” they asked each other.
“What are we to keep out of?”
“It looks so silly, without any fence,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “I never heard of such a thing. A gate without a fence is like a roof without any barn under it.”
“And what’s the board?” asked Jack.
“The only board is the one the sign’s painted on,” said Ferdinand. “I expect that’s what it means.”
“Well, I don’t take any orders from any old board,” said Bill. And he went back a little way and put his head down and ran at the sign and butted it flat on the snow.
So the animals went on, and in an hour or two they came to another sign.
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
S. C., Inc.
Hooker, G. M.
Again the animals were puzzled, but Uncle William said: “There are signs like that on some of the farms down our way. I think trespassers are people that shoot and fish. And prosecuting is what the farmer does to them if he catches them.”
“Well, we haven’t got guns or fish-poles,” said Jack, “and if we had, there’s nothing to use them on. I wonder who S. C., Inc., is.”
“Probably the farmer,” said the horse. “And Hooker, G. M., is his address. Like the letters Mrs. Bean sends to her sister, addressed: Elizabeth, N. J., you know.”
“But there isn’t any state called G. M.,” said Ferdinand. “N. J. is New Jersey, but who ever heard—”
“Well, we’re in Canada,” interrupted Cecil. “Perhaps that’s the state of Canada we’re in.”
“Oh, come on,” said the bear. “All these signs mean we’re getting somewhere, at least.” And he started on.
“I don’t want to be prosecuted,” said Mrs. Wiggins doubtfully. But she followed the others as they trailed on past the sign.
They were getting so near the pole now that they had no sunlight at all to travel by. They were in the region where the sun shines day and night all summer long, but where in winter it never lifts its bright head above the horizon. The continuous darkness made the bear even more sleepy, so that he had to have Cecil ride on his back and jump up and down occasionally when he began to get too drowsy. And they could only tell what time of day it was by the position of the stars.
Just after passing the second sign they noticed a glow on the northern horizon which was neither stars nor northern lights, and as they went on, the glow spread and began to twinkle with little points of light. More and more sparkling lights appeared, and in a little while they saw what it was—a long hedge of Christmas-trees, all trimmed with tinsel streamers and gold and silver stars and shiny blue and green and red balls and lighted up with hundreds and thousands of little candles. And behind the hedge they could just make out the gleaming walls and pinnacles and towers and turrets of a tremendous ice palace.
They gave a cheer and hurried forward. They pushed through the hedge and saw before them a high gateway in a wall of ice. High above them in the wall were windows in which lights twinkled. Here they hesitated for a moment, and Ferdinand looked round for the door-bell, but Uncle William said: “The gate’s ajar. It must be all right to go in.” He pushed with his shoulder, and the gate swung open.
They followed him a little doubtfully into a big courtyard, tastefully planted with holly bushes, interspersed with Christmas-trees in tubs, and with a frozen fountain in the middle. They were wondering what they should do next when they heard someone singing. The voice was a light pleasing tenor; it had a familiar ring to their ears. And these were the words:
O Pole, O Pole, O glorious Pole!
To you I sing this song,
Where bedtime comes but once a year,
Since the nights are six months long.
Yes, the nights are six months long, my dears,
And the days are the same, you see,
So breakfast and supper each last a week,
And dinner sometimes three.
Then there’s tea and lunch, and we sometimes munch
Occasional snacks between—
Such mountains of candies and cakes and pies
Have never before been seen.
Let the wild winds howl about the Pole,
Let the snow-flakes swirl and swoop;
We’re snug and warm and safe from harm
And they’re bringing in the soup.
We’ll sit at the table as long as we’re able,
We’ll rise and stretch, and then,
Since there’s nothing to do but gobble and chew,
We’ll sit right down again.
We’ll tuck our napkins under our chins
To keep our waistcoats neat,
And then we’ll eat and eat and eat
And eat and eat and eat.
“Nobody but a greedy pig would sing a song like that,�
� muttered Ferdinand disgustedly.
“It’s piggish, all right,” said Jack, “but I’m glad to hear that voice.” And he shouted: “Freddy!” and all the others shouted with him.
A small round startled face appeared at one of the upper windows and vanished again, and in a few moments a door was flung open and Freddy himself came dashing out. “Ferdinand!” he shouted. “You brought ’em! Good old Ferdy! And Jack! And Mrs. Wiggins! Gosh, but I’m glad to see you! And Uncle William and Charles and Henrietta, and even the mice! Golly, this is great!” He rushed round hugging them one after the other. “And these two children! Now where in the world did you pick them up?—But come in, come in! Mustn’t stay out in the cold, and we’ve a lot to say to each other.”
He led them into a large hall, at the far end of which was a fireplace as big as a barn-door, in which huge logs were burning brightly. “Take off your things and sit down,” said Freddy, throwing off the handsome fur coat he had been wearing.
“My goodness, Freddy, you’re fat as butter,” said Mrs. Wiggins.
Freddy had indeed grown dreadfully stout. He was almost perfectly round, and his cheeks were so fat that his eyes were almost invisible. He looked slightly displeased at the cow’s remark, but then he smiled and his eyes disappeared entirely. “High living,” he explained. “We live well here on the top of the world.”
As they approached the fire, a big man with a bushy white beard and sharp black eyes, twinkling with fun and kindliness, rose from a deep chair and came towards them. He had on a fur-trimmed red coat, belted at the waist, and green trousers tucked into high black boots, and there were bells at his wrists and knees that jingled when he moved. The animals stopped self-consciously. They knew it was no one but Santa Claus himself.
“He looks enough like Mr. Bean to be his brother!” said Mrs. Wiggins.
“Ssssh!” Freddy warned her. “He understands our talk.”
But Santa Claus had heard the remark, and he smiled. “I know of your Mr. Bean,” he said. “He is a fine man; I am proud to resemble him in any way.”
Freddy Goes to the North Pole Page 9
