Punch (68.1875)

I

Jhl> 3, 1875. PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

THE Longest Day was creeping slowly to its close. It was hot, very hot. Cool garments and cooling drinks were impera-
tively the order of the time. Motion was out of the question. Perspiration and meditation reigned supreme.

Under the shade of his own vine and fig-tree, over the coolest of cups, in the airiest of zephyrs, sat Mr. Punch, with
his feet on the refrigerator from which he had been extracting the crystalline lumps which bobbed refreshingly, amidst the
green leaves and blue blossoms of the fragrant borage, on the waves of the cool Moselle. There he reclined, in the summer
stillness, thinking, for more coolness, of the Pole and our gallant Explorers, who, by this time, must have taken a long
leave of Cape Farewell.

Already they must be within the Arctic Circle. Before this, probably, they have replenished their bunkers, and shipped
their dogs, at Disco. Dogs !—who knows ? Ere now, perhaps, they may be beset by the formidable “ pack ” en masse,
gathering and growling and showing sharp, jagged teeth under the stems of the daring Islanders who have dared to invade
that solitary realm. Even now they may be sighting the “ Devil’s Thumb,” protruded ominously to warn all comers off his
ice-preserves in Melville Bay.

Punch quaffed his cup to their success, and wished himself, for the moment, in their cooler quarters.

“ Yes,” he murmured, “ it is a noble achievement to break into that charmed circle where sits enthroned—-for the
winning of some Thomas Carlyle of the Future—his oft-invoked favourite, The Everlasting Silence.

“ ‘ The Everlasting Silence ’ ! Can she be a Woman, by the way, as I have limned her ? And if she is, how tired she
must be of herself! How fain, methinks, to fling herself into the arms of the gallant mariners who come to break her—and
substitute the silvern speech for her pale and frosted gold !

“ But what a realm is hers—-with what mysteries she has been entrusted, no doubt, as a reward for holding her tongue !

“ There, at her frost-fettered feet,” Punch said, as Maury said before him, “ icebergs are framed and glaciers launched ;
there the tides have their cradle and their grave, the whales their nursery ; there the winds complete their circuits, and the
currents of the sea their round in the wonderful sy stem of oceanic circulation ; there the Aurora is lighted up, and the
trembling needle brought to rest. There are the Pole of the Winds, aud the Poles of Cold; the Pole of the Earth and the
Magnet. It is a great treasure-house of mysteries, aud the desire to explore its secret chambers has grown into a longing.
It is no feverish excitement, no vain ambition, that leads men there. It is a higher feeling, a holier motive,—a desire to look
;"to the works of Creation, to comprehend the economy of our planet, and to grow wiser an t better by the knowledge ! ”