Theosophical Society,
NIGHTMARE
TALES
A
Compilation of Stories
By
H P Blavatsky
H P Blavatsky
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From the Polar Lands
A Christmas Story
By
H P Blavatsky
Just
a year ago, during the Christmas holidays, a numerous society had gathered
in the country house, or rather the old hereditary
castle, of a wealthy landowner in
prepared and implements for divination were being
made ready. For, in that old
castle there were grim worm-eaten portraits of famous
ancestors and knights and
ladies, old deserted turrets, with bastions and Gothic
windows; mysterious
sombre alleys, and dark and
endless cellers, easily transformed into
subterranean passages and caves,
ghostly prison cells, haunted by the restless
phantoms of the heroes of local legends. In
short, the old Manor offered every
commodity for romantic horrors. But alas! this once they serve for nought;
in
the present narrative these dear old horrors play
no such part as they otherwise
might.
Its
chief hero is a very commonplace, prosaical man --
let us call him Erkler.
Yes;
Dr. Erkler, professor of medicine, half-German
through his father, a
full-blown Russian on his mother's side and by
education; and one who looked a rather heavily built, and ordinary mortal.
Nevertheless, very extraordinary
things happened with him.
Erkler, as it turned out, was a great traveller, who by his own choice had
accompanied one of the most famous explorers on his
journeys round the world.
More
than once they had both seen death face to face from sunstrokes under the
Tropics, from cold in the
spoke with a never-abating enthusiasm about their
"winterings" in
Novaya Zemla, and about the
desert plains in
kangaroo and dined off an emu,
and almost perished of thirst during the passage
through a waterless track, which it took them forty
hours to cross.
"Yes,"
he used to remark, "I have experienced almost everything, save what you
would describe as supernatural. . . . . This, of
course, if we throw out of
account a certain extraordinary event in my life
-- a man I met, of whom I will
tell you just now -- and its . . . indeed, rather
strange, I may add quite
inexplicable, results."
There
was a loud demand that he should explain himself; and the doctor, forced
to yield, began his narrative.
"In
1878 we were compelled to winter on the northwestern coast of
We
had been attempting to find our way during the short summer to the pole; but,
as usual, the attempt had proved a failure, owing to the icebergs, and, after
several such fruitless endeavours,
we had to give it up. No sooner had we
settled than the polar night descended upon us,
our steamers got wedged in and
frozen between the blocks of ice in the
cut off for eight long months from the rest of the
living world. I confess I,
for one, felt it terribly at first. We became
especially discouraged when one
stormy night the snow hurricane scattered a mass of
materials prepared for our
winter buildings, and deprived us of over forty deer
from our herd. Starvation
in prospect is no incentive to good humour; and with the deer we had lost the
best plat de resistance against polar frosts, human
organisms demanding in that
climate an increase of heating and solid food.
However, we were finally
reconciled to our loss, and even got accustomed to
the local and in reality more
nutritious food -- seals, and seal-grease. Our men
from the remnants of our
lumber built a house neatly divided into two
compartments, one for our three
professors and myself, and the other for
themselves; and, a few wooden sheds
being constructed for meteorological, astronomical
and magnetic purposes, we
even added a protecting stable for the few remaining
deer. And then began the
monotonous series of dawnless
nights and days, hardly distinguishable one from
the other, except through dark-grey shadows. At
times, the "blues" we got into,
were fearful! We had contemplated sending two of our
three steamers home, in
September,
but the premature, and unforeseen formation of ice
walls round them
had thwarted our plans; and now, with the entire
crews on our hands, we had to
economise still more with our meagre provisions, fuel and light. Lamps were used only for
scientific purposes: the rest of the time we had to content ourselves with
God's light -- the moon and the Aurora Borealis . . . . But how describe these
glorious, incomparable northern lights! Rings, arrows, gigantic
conflagrations of accurately divided
rays of the most vivid and varied colours.
The
November moonlight nights were as gorgeous. The play of moonbeams on the snow
and the frozen rocks was most striking. These were fairy nights.
"Well,
one such night -- it may have been one such day, for all I know, as from
the end of November to about the middle of March we
had no twilights at all, to
distinguish the one from the other -- we suddenly
espied in the play of coloured
beams, which were then throwing a golden rosy hue on
the snow plains, a dark
moving spot. . . . . It grew, and seemed to scatter as
it approached nearer to
us. What did this mean? . . . . It looked like a
herd of cattle, or a group of
living men, trotting over the snowy wilderness . . . .
But animals there were
white like everything else. What then was this? . . .
. human beings? . . . .
"We
could not believe our eyes. Yes, a group of men was approaching our
dwelling. It turned out to be about fifty
seal-hunters, guided by Matiliss, a
well-known veteran mariner from
"'How
did you know that we were here?' we asked.
"'Old
Johan, this very same old party, showed us the way' -- they answered,
pointing to a venerable-looking old man with
snow-white locks.
"In
sober truth, it would have beseemed their guide far better to have sat at
home over his fire than to have been seal-hunting in
polar lands with younger
men. And we told them so, still wondering how he
came to learn of our presence
in this kingdom of white bears. At this Matiliss and his companions smiled,
assuring us that 'old Johan' knew all. They
remarked that we must be novices in
polar borderlands, since we were ignorant of Johan's
personality and could still
wonder at anything said of him.
"'It
is nigh forty-five years,' said the chief hunter, that I have been catching
seals in the
always known him, and just as he is now, an old,
white-bearded man. And, so far back as in the days when I used to go to sea, as
a small boy with my father, my dad used to tell me the same of old Johan, and
he added that his own father and grandfather too, had known Johan in their days
of boyhood, none of them having ever seen him otherwise than white as our
snows. And, as our fore-fathers nicknamed him "the white-haired
all-knower," thus do we, the seal-hunters, call
him, to this day.'
"'Would
you make us believe he is two hundred years old?' -- we
laughed.
"Some
of our sailors crowding round the white-haired phenomenon,
plied him with questions.
"'Grandfather! answer
us, how old are you?'
"'I
really do not know it myself, sonnies. I live as long as God has decreed me
to. As to my years, I never counted them.'
"'And
how did you know, grandfather, that we were wintering in this place?'
"'God
guided me. How I learned it I do not know; save that I knew -- I knew
it."'
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