t," replied the giant, with a
modest look, "but I am mistaken. The Kablunets make me stare and feel
foolish."

"But it is not possible to search for _nothing_," urged Toolooha.

"So I said," replied her son, "but Blackbeard only laughed at me."

"Did he?" cried the mother, with a much relieved expression, "then let
your mind rest, my son, for Blackbeard must be a fool if he laughed at
_you_."

"Blackbeard is no fool," replied Chingatok.

"Has he not come to search for new lands _here_, as you went to search
for them _there_?" asked Toolooha, pointing alternately north and south.

"No--if I have understood him. Perhaps the brainless walrus translated
his words wrongly."

"Is the thing he searches for something to eat?"

"Something to drink or wear?"

"No, I tell you. It is _nothing_! Yet he gives it a name. He calls it
_Nort Pole_!"

Perhaps it is needless to remind the reader that Chingatok and his
mother conversed in their native tongue, which we have rendered as
literally as possible, and that the last two words were his broken
English for "North Pole!"

"Nort Pole!" repeated Toolooha once or twice contemplatively. "Well, he
may search for nothing if he will, but that he cannot find."

"Nay, mother," returned the giant with a soft smile, "if he will search
for nothing he is sure to find it!"

Chingatok sighed, for his mother did not see the joke.

"Blackbeard," he continued with a grave, puzzled manner, "said that this
world on which we stand floats in the air like a bird, and spins round!"

"Then Blackbeard is a liar," said Toolooha quietly, though without a
thought of being rude. She merely meant what she said, and said what
she meant, being a naturally candid woman.

"That may be so, mother, but I think not."

"How can the world float without wings?" demanded the old woman
indignantly. "If it spinned should we not feel the spinning, and grow
giddy?"

"And Blackbeard says," continued the giant, regardless of the questions
propounded, "that it spins round upon this _Nort Pole_, which he says is
not a real thing, but only nothing. I asked Blackbeard--How can a world
spin upon nothing?"

"And what said he to that?" demanded Toolooha quickly.

"He only laughed. They all laughed when the brainless walrus put my
question. There is one little boy--the son I think of Blackbeard--who
laughed more than all the rest. He lay down on the ice to laugh, and
rolled about as if he had the bowel-