Ballads of a Cheechako | Page 6

rays never yet seen of man. They writhed like a brood of angry snakes, hissing and sulphur pale; Then swift they changed to a dragon vast, lashing a cloven tail. It seemed to us, as we gazed aloft with an everlasting stare, The sky was a pit of bale and dread, and a monster revelled there.
We climbed the rise of a hog-back range that was desolate and drear, When the Sailor Swede had a crazy fit, and he got to talking queer. He talked of his home in Oregon and the peach trees all in bloom, And the fern head-high, and the topaz sky, and the forest's scented gloom. He talked of the sins of his misspent life, and then he seemed to brood, And I watched him there like a fox a hare, for I knew it was not good. And sure enough in the dim dawn-light I missed him from the tent, And a fresh trail broke through the crusted snow,?and I knew not where it went.?But I followed it o'er the seamless waste, and I found him at shut of day, Naked there as a new-born babe--so I left him where he lay.
Day after day was sinister, and I fought fierce-eyed despair, And I clung to life, and I struggled on, I knew not why nor where. I packed my grub in short relays, and I cowered down in my tent, And the world around was purged of sound like a frozen continent. Day after day was dark as death, but ever and ever at nights, With a brilliancy that grew and grew, blazed up the Northern Lights.
They rolled around with a soundless sound like softly bruised silk; They poured into the bowl of the sky with the gentle flow of milk. In eager, pulsing violet their wheeling chariots came,?Or they poised above the Polar rim like a coronal of flame. From depths of darkness fathomless their lancing rays were hurled, Like the all-combining search-lights of the navies of the world. There on the roof-pole of the world as one bewitched I gazed, And howled and grovelled like a beast as the awful splendors blazed. My eyes were seared, yet thralled I peered?through the parka hood nigh blind;?But I staggered on to the lights that shone, and never I looked behind.
There is a mountain round and low that lies by the Polar rim, And I climbed its height in a whirl of light,?and I peered o'er its jagged brim;?And there in a crater deep and vast, ungained, unguessed of men, The mystery of the Arctic world was flashed into my ken.?For there these poor dim eyes of mine beheld the sight of sights-- That hollow ring was the source and spring of the mystic Northern Lights.
Then I staked that place from crown to base, and I hit the homeward trail. Ah, God! it was good, though my eyes were blurred,?and I crawled like a sickly snail.?In that vast white world where the silent sky?communes with the silent snow,?In hunger and cold and misery I wandered to and fro.?But the Lord took pity on my pain, and He led me to the sea, And some ice-bound whalers heard my moan, and they fed and sheltered me. They fed the feeble scarecrow thing that stumbled out of the wild With the ravaged face of a mask of death?and the wandering wits of a child--?A craven, cowering bag of bones that once had been a man.?They tended me and they brought me back to the world, and here I am.
Some say that the Northern Lights are the glare of the Arctic ice and snow; And some that it's electricity, and nobody seems to know.?But I'll tell you now--and if I lie, may my lips be stricken dumb-- It's a MINE, a mine of the precious stuff that men call radium. I'ts a million dollars a pound, they say,?and there's tons and tons in sight.?You can see it gleam in a golden stream in the solitudes of night. And it's mine, all mine--and say! if you have a hundred plunks to spare, I'll let you have the chance of your life, I'll sell you a quarter share. You turn it down? Well, I'll make it ten, seeing as you are my friend. Nothing doing? Say! don't be hard--have you got a dollar to lend? Just a dollar to help me out, I know you'll treat me white; I'll do as much for you some day . . . God bless you, sir; good-night.
The Ballad of the Black Fox Skin
There was Claw-fingered Kitty and Windy Ike living the life of shame, When unto them in the Long, Long Night came the man-who-had-no-name; Bearing his prize of a black fox pelt, out of the Wild he came.
His cheeks were blanched as the flume-head