Freddy Goes to the North Pole Page 11

  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—”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Bashwater as he hurled his harpoon again at the snow man, “and the men is contented, ain’t they, Joel?”

  “Ay, that they are,” said the boatswain. “Happy as larks, they are. And why, sir? Well, if you ask me—”

  “We didn’t ask you, Joel,” said Mr. Hooker quietly. “Don’t forget that.”

  “No, sir, now I come to think, you didn’t. But I’ll tell you anyway. They’re happy because they get lots to eat and presents every day, and because they can lie abed o’ mornin’s, but mostly on account o’ the ice cream.”

  “The ice cream!” exclaimed the mate.

  “Ay, sir. Y’ see, our cookie is a good cook; I ain’t breathin’ a whisper against him. But he ain’t no hand with a freezer; you know it yourself, sir. While Mr. Claus’s ice cream—well, sir, I never tasted nothin’ like it. It’s grand, and that’s the gospel truth.”

  Jack did not wait to hear any more, but went up into the Present Room, where his friends were playing games. He told them what Joel had said. “And,” he added, “if we could do something to the ice cream so it wouldn’t be so good, maybe the sailors would get homesick, and then they would leave of their own accord.”

  The animals didn’t think it was a very bright idea, but as it was the only one they had, they decided to try it out. Freddy, who spent a good deal of time in the kitchen and could come and go there without being noticed, went downstairs and presently returned with the inside part of the freezer under his fur coat. They put it on Mrs. Wiggins’s left horn, and after several tries she managed to punch a hole through it. Then Freddy took it back. And that day at dinner the ice cream was so salty that no one could eat it.

  The animals were greatly pleased when they looked down the long dining-room and saw the sailors waving their arms angrily and beating on the table with their spoons and heard the shouts of anger. “That’ll fix ’em,” said Freddy. “If we can just keep them good and discontented, the captain’ll have to take them back to the ship.” But unfortunately for their plot, Santa Claus, having found out the cause of the trouble, had an enormous bowl of caramel custard brought in to take the place of the ice cream. The animals, knowing that the ice cream would be bad, had all said they didn’t want any dessert, so of course the caramel custard wasn’t passed to them, and the sailors got it all.

  “Well,” said Uncle William, “I guess we bit off our nose to spite our face that time.”

  The animals all looked very glum—all but Ferdinand, who didn’t care for sweets. He laughed. But Jinx said: “Well, we mustn’t stop trying to think of something just because this failed. We’ve got to make them go away.”

  All this time it was getting closer to Christmas. Every day the eagle came with a big sack of mail in his claws containing letters that children had written to Santa Claus. They had been forwarded by the postmasters in different cities to the Postmaster General in Washington, who kept a special sack for them. Letters that didn’t go through the mail, but were put up chimneys and into fireplaces by their writers, were collected by birds and passed on from claw to claw until they reached some point on the eagle’s route, where he stopped and picked them up. The toy-makers in the workshops were carving and whittling and sawing and hammering and gluing and painting for dear life; and the sailors worked all day in the wrapping-room, surrounded by piles of coloured paper and bales of ribbon and big boxes of stickers, wrapping up presents. Santa Claus got his sleigh out and gave it a fresh coat of red paint and greased the runners and shined up the harness. He was a little worried about one of his reindeer, who had gone lame as the result of a fall, but the reindeer himself wasn’t worried. “I’ll be all right Christmas Eve,” he said. “Sound as a dollar! Don’t you fret, sir.”

  The captain had become very fond of the mice. He carried them round in his pocket and petted them all the time, and as he was very handy at carving things with a jack-knife, he had made them a little merry-go-round that they never got tired riding on. In the evening he would take them up to his room, which was fitted up like the cabin of a ship, and put them on the table, and then he would play old-fashioned waltzes and polkas and mazurkas and schottisches on his flute, and they would dance for him. Then when it was ten o’clock, he would take them to their own room and tuck them up in bed. This was a little difficult for him, as the room was so small that he could only get his head and one arm through the door, but he enjoyed doing it very much.

  They particularly liked it when he took them to the meetings of the board, because then he and Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Bashwater all made long speeches at Santa Claus. They liked Mr. Bashwater’s speeches best, because he made a great many gestures and banged on the table and was so eloquent that he was always bathed in perspiration when he finally sat down. They were a little sorry for Santa Claus, who always seemed to want to know what the speeches were about. They themselves, like most people, just enjoyed the speeches, without caring what they were about.

  They were a little embarrassed when the other animals asked them what had been going on. “Oh, Mr. Bashwater made a fine long speech,” they’d answer.

  “But what did he say?” Jinx would ask impatiently.

  They’d think and think, and by and by Eeny would say: “We—e—ell, let me see; I guess it was about the advertising appropriation for 1931, wasn’t it, Eek? Mr. Hooker wanted to use some of the big magazines, and Mr. Pomeroy said they were trying to reach children and not just people with childish minds, and then Mr. Bashwater made a long speech, and—Well, I don’t know, but it was a swell speech, anyway.” And so the animals knew just as much as they did before they had asked.

  But sometimes the captain took the mice down into the smoking-room where the sailors went to have what they called a night-cap before going to bed, and here they learned two very important things. The sailors sat in a big half-circle before the roaring fire, each with a cup of tea or a glass of hot milk in his hand, smoking and telling stories and munching on cookies and little sweet crackers. But all the stories were of three kinds: they were about whales, or about ghosts, or about buried treasure. When Ferdinand heard of this, he said: “H’m” several times very thoughtfully, and then he flew up on to the big chandelier in the Present Room and stood on one leg a
nd put his head under his wing and meditated for nearly an hour.

  The mice didn’t think very much about it, because Ferdinand always said he was meditating when he did this, but they knew that usually it was only another way of saying that he was taking a nap. But that evening the crow called them together in a corner of the Present Room.

  “I want you to tell me,” he said, “just what kind of ghost-stories the sailors tell.”

  “Scary ones,” said Eeny; and Quik said: “Awful scary ones.” And Eeny said: “Mostly they’re about figures in long white sheets that wail, and sometimes they’re about voices that come out of the darkness, or about things that creep up behind and jump.”

  “H’m,” said Ferdinand. “All these things take place at night, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes; late at night,” said Cousin Augustus. “Goodness, I wish they wouldn’t tell so many of them. I used to like to run round at night; all mice do. But now whenever I’m up after twelve, I hear footsteps coming after me and at every corner see giant cats with phosphorescent eyes.”