Freddy Goes to the North Pole (15 page)

The cow thought a minute. “Yes, I see that,” she said. “But it seems funny to me. If we start somewhere, and both go in the same direction, we're together, aren't we?”

Freddy agreed that this must be so.

“Well, then, if I start out of the back door of this house, and you start out of the front door, and Hank starts out of the side door, we're all going in the same direction. And yet we aren't going together at all, and the farther we go, the farther apart we are.”

“Yes,” said Freddy, “but if we keep on long enough, we'll all meet in the same place, the south pole, so we must be
really
getting nearer together all the time.” And he went on with a long explanation, which interested him so much that he never noticed that the others had gradually left the room. Then he looked up and saw that there was no one with him. “Well, well,” he sighed, “that's what it is to be a poet.” And he went back to his own room, sat down at the little writing-desk by the window, on the wall above which were pinned various sets of verses he was working on, and started another poem. He wrote:

Oh east is east, and west is west,

And never the twain shall meet—

Then he stopped and frowned. “Reminiscent, somehow,” he muttered: “Wonder if it's too metaphysical. It's darned good, though.” He went on.

Until they come to the end of the earth,

To Santa Claus' retreat.

He stopped again. “Oh, yes, I remember,” he said, and grinned. “It'll make Kipling pretty sore—gives him the lie direct.” Then he continued.

Where east is south, and west is south

And north is south also;

Where all directions are the same,

Whichever way you go.

“Hey, Freddy,” came Hank's voice from the hall. “We're going down to the gym.”

Freddy sighed, put in a comma and two exclamation points, then after pinning the paper up beside the others, hurried downstairs to the gymnasium, through the glass door of which the new arrivals were peering with many nudgings and suppressed giggles. For inside, Jinx, as yet unaware of their gaze, was looking at himself in a long mirror. Beside him was a small jar of ointment, and every now and then he would scoop a little out on his paw and rub it carefully into the bald spot on the top of his head, and then he would turn and twist his neck in the effort to see better. He looked very discontented with his appearance while doing this, but pretty soon he backed away from the glass a little and, keeping his chin up so he couldn't see the bald spot, tried the effect of various expressions. He tried looking dignified, and he tried smiling graciously, and he tried looking nonchalant, and superior, and arch, and imposing, and unconcerned in a thunderstorm. But he was so pleased with all these expressions that gradually they all came to be one expression, and whatever he tried he just succeeded in smirking in a self-satisfied way. And at that moment the pressure against the gymnasium door, against which all the animals were pushing in order to see, got so strong that it flew suddenly open, and they all fell in on the floor.

At the crash Jinx jumped three feet in the air, and his tail got as big as a whisk broom, but when he saw who it was, he was so delighted that he forgot to be angry, and when he had greeted them all, he showed them over the gymnasium.

“I spend most of my time here,” he said. “I don't care much for outdoor sports this winter.”

“What do you do, mostly?” asked Jack.

“Oh, I've been doing some high trapeze work,” replied the cat. “It's said to be rather dangerous—jumping from trapeze to trapeze in mid air, and so on—but, goodness, what of that! I always say, what's life without a little spice of danger—”

“Show us some of your stunts,” said Bill.

“Eh?” said Jinx. “Oh yes, I will some time. Let me show you what Santa Claus gave me yesterday.” And he brought out a mechanical mouse, which he wound up and set on the floor, and it ran about just like a real one. “I practise hunting with it. See?” He made a pounce and caught the toy between his fore-paws.

But at this exhibition Cousin Augustus shuddered, covering his eyes with his paw, and the three other mice squeaked violently.

Jinx turned and looked at them. “Hey!” he said. “What's the matter? Why good gosh, that doesn't mean anything! Any more than when children play war, with toy swords and pistols, it means they're going to shoot each other. Don't be so silly, mice.”

But the mice didn't like it and said so. “Suppose we came in here some time and you got us mixed up,” said Eeny. “Where'd we be then?” So Jinx had to apologize and put the mechanical mouse away.

Pretty soon they all went down to supper. The animals all sat at one end of the huge banquet hall at small tables, four at a table according to size. The horses and cows were together, and in front of them were big bowls containing oats, and a big heap of fragrant hay in the centre of the table. At another table were the two dogs and the cat and the pig, and even the mice had a tiny table, which fairly groaned under the weight of an assortment of cheeses—Cousin Augustus counted fourteen kinds. The animals were a little nervous at first about eating at a table, since none of them were used to it, but of course they didn't have to use knives and forks, and they got on pretty well, though they didn't know what to do with the napkins they found at their places. Mrs. Wiggins thought you were supposed to eat them, and she had actually started to chew hers, when her sister stopped her and explained what they were for. Then she said: “Good gracious, I hope I can eat my supper without getting it all over my chin! Fine manners Santa Claus must think we have, to give us these things!”

After supper they went down to a room that was even bigger than the banquet hall. It was called the Present Room, and each of them was given a present, because at Santa Claus's house it was Christmas all the time, so everybody gets a present every day. The presents were very nice. Freddy got a ten-pound box of candied fruit, and Jinx got a red and white striped gymnasium suit, and Mrs. Wogus got a book on skiing, and Hank, who was learning to read, got a copy
of Black Beauty
, and Robert got a collar with his name on it in rhinestones, and so on. Even the mice each got a tiny wrist-watch, and Ella got a big doll, and Everett got an electric train.

Besides the presents that were given to them, there were hundreds and thousands of toys and books and doll houses and presents of all kinds in the Present Room, and they could play with any they wanted to. They spent a very happy evening there, but it had been a busy day, and by nine o'clock they were all tucked up in bed and the lights were out—all except Freddy's. He was sitting at his desk, and in front of him was a sheet of paper on which was written in big capitals: “ODE TO SANTA CLAUS.” And under it was written: “O Santa Claus—” And under that on the paper was Freddy's head, for when he had got that far in the poem, he had fallen asleep.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE POLAR PALACE

There were so many pleasant things to do in Santa Claus's palace that it seemed to the animals that they had hardly finished breakfast before it was time to go to bed. Outdoors they skated and ski'd and tobogganed, and when they slid down hill, there were always some of Santa Claus's reindeer who were glad to pull them up to the top of the hill in exchange for a ride down. They built magnificent snow forts and had pitched battles: animals against sailors. The animals couldn't throw snowballs so straight as the sailors, but they were better strategists; that is, they didn't just give a loud shout and charge the enemy; they retreated and avoided battle until the enemy was in a bad position. Some of these battles lasted all day. Near the palace there was a little depression in the snow surrounded by low ice cliffs, and it was here almost always that the sailors met defeat. They couldn't seem to learn how it was done. Yet it was very simple. As soon as the battle started near the palace, Freddy would lead half the animal army quietly away and station them on the top of these cliffs. Then the rest of the animals would pretend to run away, and the sailors would follow them, shouting and cheering, with Hooker in the lead, waving a wooden sword and yelling: “Forward, my hearties! On to victory! Hew them down! Let not a man escape!” and so on. He loved to lead these charges.

The retreating animals would rush helter-skelter down into the depression in the snow and up the other side, the sailors hot on their heels. But as soon as the animals had reached the top of the cliffs, they would turn and begin heaving down masses of snow on the sailors, and the other animals, who had remained hidden until then, would start rolling down huge snowballs that they had prepared, and pretty soon the sailors would be completely buried in snow, and the animals would have to come down and dig them out.

And then they'd all trudge home together to supper, tired and happy, Mr. Hooker riding on the back of Uncle William or Mrs. Wiggins, and shouting to his mate: “That was a fine fight, Mr. Pomeroy. We'd 'a won, too, if there hadn't been so much snow come tumblin' down on us. Well, we'll try it again tomorrow.”

Sometimes they stayed indoors and played games in the Present Room, or dressed up and did charades, or worked the electric railroads, or had yacht-races in the swimming-pool. There was every kind of game or toy you could think of in the Present Room, so that they could do something different every day for a year if they wanted to. They played with Ella and Everett too. Everett drilled them like soldiers, and Ella had them sit on benches and pretended to teach school. When they were bad and shuffled their feet and whispered and pinched each other, she spanked them. She knew how to spank, too, because she had been spanked so many times herself by Kate. But of course she didn't spank very hard. It was funny to see her trying to spank Mrs. Wiggins or Hank. Sometimes she played school with the sailors, and they really learned a good deal, for their grammar wasn't very good, and Ella had learned a lot of grammar from Pete.

“What is the subject of the sentence ‘I saw the cat,' Mr. Pomeroy?” she would ask.

“Hey, Mr. Hooker,” the mate would mutter behind his hand, “give me a little help, will you?”

The captain would look very virtuous. “Can't do it, Mr. Pomeroy,” he would answer in a hoarse whisper. “'Tain't fair. If you don't know, say so.” Mr. Hooker had no more idea what the answer was than the mate did.

Then Mr. Bashwater, the harpooner, who knew the answers to practically every question because he had had a college education, would whisper: “‘I' is the answer.”

And Mr. Pomeroy would think that Mr. Bashwater was making fun of him and would turn round, forgetting he was in school, and say angrily: “What d'ye mean—‘I is the answer'! You trying to be funny? You can't say: ‘I is.' It's ‘I am.'”

“I mean ‘I
'
is the subject,” Mr. Bashwater would try to explain, but that would only make it worse, and it would end by both Mr. Bashwater and Mr. Pomeroy being sent to stand in the corner with their faces to the wall, for quarrelling.

The animals and the sailors were really very fond of one another, and so although the animals were trying as hard as they could to think of some way of getting the sailors to go away and let Santa Claus alone, they wanted to do it without hurting them or making them unhappy. They talked about it a good deal among themselves.

One day Jack was out watching Mr. Bashwater practising throwing his harpoon at a snow man to keep his hand in. The captain and the mate and the boatswain, a very untidy sailor named Joel, were looking on, applauding the good shots and groaning at the bad ones, and sometimes pretending that the snow man was really a whale. “Thar she blows!” Joel would shout. “Two p'ints off the port bow!” And Mr. Pomeroy would squint under the flat of his hand and sing out: “Eighty barrels, if she's a pint!” meaning that they would get that much oil from the whale. And then Mr. Bashwater would throw the harpoon and bellow: “All aboard for a Nantucket sleighride!” which is a term whalers use for being towed by a whale to which they have made fast.

“I tell you what, Mr. Pomeroy,” said the captain; “I sometimes get home-sick for the old ship. Yes, sir, home-sick ain't the word for what I feel sometimes, thinkin' o' them moonlit nights with the canvas a creakin' and the riggin' a singin' in the wind and the black water a foamin' past.”

“And them other nights, Mr. Hooker,” replied the mate, “with the fire from the try works lightin' up the sea around us, and the blubber a boilin' and a sputterin' in the kettles, and the thick oily smoke a chokin' us so we can't hardly breathe.”

“Ain't no sweeter smell than whale-oil,” put in the harpooner. “But where all the whales is gone to I dunno.”

“Ah, that's just it,” said Hooker, thoughtfully pulling his long black moustache. “If I thought we'd have any luck, I wouldn't stay here another day. Still an' all, it's a good life—easier'n shipboard—and once this business is put on a real efficiency basis—”