Abie Bromfield

Captain Donald Baxter MacMillan, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking at an Eskimo and chuckling from time to time in a delighted fashion, as if he were watching the progress of a practical joke. The Eskimo paid no attention to Captain MacMillan. A big, blubber-bred man with a crouching sinewy figure, a face creased by the wind and reddened by the sun, he tilted an eye at the Woolworth Building. "Big house, by jingo," he said mildly.

He kept on using quiet expletives, more out of decency, it seemed, than real surprise. Captain MacMillan, with the good ship Bowdoin safe in winter anchorage, had brought him down to show him civilization, and Abie Bromfield, "Eskimo" (whose parents were English) felt a certain responsibility to his host. They had talked together by arctic firesides and Captain MacMillan had told him of these big houses, and of sleds that ran around on wheels without any dogs, and of yellow stars made put of glass and stuck like icicles in every corner; the Captain's descriptions, indeed, had been enthusiastic, and Abie Bromfield, who drove the Captain's dog team, evinced a polite interest in the marvels that were told him. The other natives of the expedition. believed that the Captain was either mad or lying, but he, Abie Bromfield, understood things. "By jingo," he said politely, puffing a mouthful of smoke at the arctic moon.

And when the hard voyage was over and the Captain invited him to come and see these things for himself he accepted the opportunity with prompt good taste. All last week he was rushed around Manhattan. Men with papers and pencils in their hands kept pointing things out to him and waiting to see the mist of wonder rise in his face. They made him go through a door with four sides that spun round like a trap and, of course, he got stuck in it--that was what they seemed to expect of him. They asked him what he thought of the women he saw. "They have naked necks," he said. He grew a little tired of taxicabs and tuxedos, of nightclubs and subways and electric lights and elevators. Whenever these things were shown him he was expected to look amazed; to say "By jingo" in his slow, thick voice. He wanted to please the captain; he must keep on being surprised. . . . Perhaps these men with pencils would be surprised if they saw a great island covered with seals like flies on a lump of sugar. Perhaps they would get stuck if they had to walk for five days without food through a world of blue ice lighted by stars as big as melons. Perhaps they would shake, as he was shaking now, if they saw cold fire creep across heaven and throw, with a noise like tearing silk, luminous sheets of red, yellow and green into a void without bounds, over a world without warmth, through a great, glittering night without a dawn . . . by jingo.