HOW TINKER BRADLEY FOUND THE NORTH POLE.
Reading edition
BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
The winter had been a long one and very hard. The ice on Deacon Potter's mill-pond had been wonderfully hard, and had staid so until the first week in March. Then it began to grow slushy, and the skating was gone, but the winter hung round in one way and another until after the 1st of April.
It was just as all the old folks said, nevertheless. When so hard a winter as that was did at last break up, it went in a hurry, and the spring followed it like a ready-made coat, only needing to be picked out and put on.
That was the reason why the weather was so warm the second week in May that all the boys and girls in the class in geography at the Putnamville Academy were glad to hear Professor Hackleman talk about the Arctic Ocean. It was cooling and comfortable to know about such a deal of snow and ice. It was all the better, perhaps, to sit and hear about it with all the windows open, and a lost bumble-bee buzzing around the ceiling.
Some of the boys and girls in that class were young ladies and young gentlemen, and could sit still and be dignified without an effort—at least so long as Professor Hackleman turned his eyes so fast along the benches, and sent so many sudden questions flying here and there. More than half, however, were somewhere about the age and size of Tinker Bradley, and nobody had ever known him sit still so long as he did that morning. His mouth was open, too, and that was almost proof that he was thinking of something.
Perfectly still he kept until Professor Hackleman remarked, "The North Pole, my young friends, is a place where winter remains the year round, and where the ice and snow do not melt—not even in May."
Tinker Bradley's mouth shut like a steel-trap, but it opened again, almost instantly, with, "I know where it is, then; I found it last Saturday."
"Did you, indeed?"
"Yes, sir; there's three woodchuck holes on the side-hill."
"My young friend, if you have found the North Pole, and know where it is, you know more than any other living man," said the Professor.
"Yes, sir," said Tinker Bradley.
That was not the first time by a good deal that the vast extent of his knowledge had occurred to the mind of Tinker Bradley, and when, at the noon recess, a dozen boys of his own size asked him questions about it, he stoutly answered: "It's just what he said it was, and it's over in the hemlock woods north of our pasture lot. If you don't believe it, I'll go and show you right away after school. Show you three of the biggest woodchuck holes you ever saw, too, and a crow's nest, and a place where there's going to be cords of raspberries."
It was enough to spoil school for all of them on so hot an afternoon as that, and they were hardly let loose at three o'clock before there was a small army, with Tinker Bradley at its head, marching straight away across the green.
On they went, over the bridge and up the hill, and they were all puffing and nearly out of breath when they reached the bars that let down into Mr. Bradley's pasture lot.
"Now, boys," said their leader, "if we come across the brindle cow, don't you say a word to her. She's got a calf, and she gets mad the easiest you ever saw."
Each one of them made up his mind to let the brindled cow alone; and all would have been well if it had not been for Soddy Corcoran's dog.
They came across the cow, indeed, and her calf was with her; but they made a great bend to the left, and would have been safe if the dog had made the bend when they did. They had hardly noticed that he was with them, he was so very small, until Tinker Bradley shouted, "Soddy! Soddy Corcoran! there goes your dog—right straight for the cow!"
"Ape! Ape! April! coom here wid ye. She'll be the death of ye, sure."
"April? Did you name him—"
"That isn't the whole of it. I've only had him six weeks. Wait till you hear him bark. Hark to that now!"
It was not a bark; it was a growl. The little, grisly, wiry, bow-legged mite of a quadruped was almost hidden by the tuft of grass he was sitting in; but a bush twenty feet high could not have hidden that growl, or the short, hoarse, gruff, threatening bark which followed it. It was no wonder the brindled cow stopped feeding, and began to look around her.
"Did your dog growl that growl?" asked Tinker Bradley.
"'Dade an' he did."
"There isn't room in him for such a growl as that and such a bark. The cow can't find him."
"No more there is. When I got him I thought it was a bad cold he had, an' it wud lave him wid warrum weather, but he's only worse. He's an April-fool of a dog, and that's his whole name."
Again and again all that big sound was thrown at the head of the brindled cow, and she knew it came from somewhere in the grass. She saw the wiry-haired bit of a quadruped, of course, but she was an old experienced cow, knowing all about dogs, and she knew the bark could not come from him.
Those boys! She knew a good deal about boys, and she had never before seen so many at once in that pasture lot. Her calf could be left alone for a moment, with nothing to hurt him but a tuft of yellow hair in a bunch of grass. She herself went at once after that Polar Expedition.
It was already running, every boy of it, as fast as its many short legs could carry it, and the cow had no idea how triumphantly Soddy Corcoran's dog was galloping over the grass behind her. He had no doubt whatever but what he had scared the calf's mother, and was chasing her.
The boys made for the north fence, because it was nearest, but not all of them would have reached it in time if the cow had not hesitated for a moment just as she got almost among them. She stopped in her tracks, with her head down, and right behind her, almost under her heels, again arose that awful growl and the short hoarse bark. There was no room in that dog for a longer bark of that thickness, but it made the angry cow wheel to look for it.
"Woof! Ur-r-r-r-r! Woof!"
Right at her heels all the time, and nothing to be seen, however fast she might wheel, for Soddy Corcoran's dog was determined to sit in a safe spot, and the cow, after all, might have looked for half an hour without hitting so small a mark.
"Ape! Ape! Sure an' ye've fooled her enough for wanst. Coom along, now."
He might not have obeyed, but the cow either thought of her calf just then, or was frightened at having so near her what seemed to be a bark without a body, for she suddenly ceased wheeling after it, and galloped back across the pasture lot.
"Now, Tink, where's your North Pole?"
Three or four boys asked that question, one after another, but Tinker Bradley stoutly replied: "Come right along. We're in the woods now. It's only a little ways further. There's the first woodchuck hole."
There it was, sure enough, and the moment the boys saw it they began to have more confidence, for the cow had chased some of that out of them. In less than five minutes Tinker said, "There's the second woodchuck hole. Maybe you'll begin to believe what I told you."
Some of them would indeed have been nearly ready to look around for poles of some kind, but then the north pole—that was another thing.
The hill-side grew steeper and steeper, with great rocks and bowlders showing here and there among the hemlocks; and now Tinker Bradley shouted: "There's the third woodchuck hole! What do you think of that?"
They had never seen any hole in the ground made by any woodchuck that yawned upon them with so very wide a mouth, and it almost seemed as if the weather must be growing cooler. Still, nobody had ever heard of polar bears' being found in Bradley's woods.
"Here we are. I'll show you."
"Why, Tink, it's the Gulch."
"Come right along. Follow me."
So they did, and the whole procession disappeared, to its last boy, between the jaws of that deep, jagged, gloomy ravine. That is, it would have been gloomy if everything around it had not been so green, and if it had been evening instead of afternoon.
Away up to within twenty or thirty rods of the upper end of the Gulch, and then Tinker Bradley halted, with just enough of breath left to shout: "There it is! Didn't I tell you?"
Straight before them, as they turned their eyes to the right, where he pointed, was a great wide fissure, cloven in the rock. Above, it was almost closed over by a leaning crag, and the upper edges, sixty feet from the bottom, were thickly lined with hemlocks and cedar bushes. Nobody could guess how deep it went in, for it was packed full half way up with what was as nearly like ice as anything they had ever seen. No sunshine could reach it. The rocks and trees protected it. It was a great natural ice-house, and was doing its duty capitally.
"That ain't the North Pole."
"Then Professor Hackleman don't know, that's all. He said it was a place where the snow and ice didn't melt in May."
"Woof! Ur-r-r-r-r! Woof!"
Soddy Corcoran's dog was with his master again, and had seated himself in the shadow of a big stone to give his opinion of Tinker Bradley's discovery.
"You're right, me boy!" exclaimed Soddy. "That's one April-fool, and you're another."
"Isn't it all there—the ice and the snow? And didn't I show you the three woodchuck holes?"
"'Dade an' you did. It's worth comin' to see any day."
They each broke off a big piece of the North Pole to show to Professor Hackleman. That is, they all started for the lower end of the pasture lot, away below the cow, carrying as large a fragment of ice to each boy as he thought he could get home with. Every piece had to be broken smaller before they reached the bars, however, and by the time they got home they all knew that if the North Pole is to stay frozen, it must be left where it is, especially in May, for their share of it had melted.