Chapter 5 CROSSING THE POLCIRKEL

"Polcirkel, Birger, Polcirkel!" cried Gerda from her side of the car.

"Polcirkel!" shouted Birger in answer, and sprang to Gerda's seat to look out of the window.

The slow-running little train groaned and creaked; then came to a stop at the tiny station-house on the Arctic Circle.

The twins, their faces smeared with vaseline and veiled in mosquito netting, hurried out of the car and looked around them. Close beside the station rose a great pile of stones, to mark the only spot where a railroad crosses the Arctic Circle. This is the most northerly railroad in the world, and was built by the Swedish government to transport iron ore to the coast, from the mines four miles north of Gellivare.

As the two children climbed to the top of the cairn, Birger said, "This is a wonderful place; is it not, Gerda?"

His sister looked back doubtfully over the immense peat bog through which the train had been travelling, and thought of the swamps and the forests of pine and birch which lay between them and Lule?, many miles away on the coast. Then she looked forward toward more peat bogs, swamps and forests that lay between them and Gellivare.

"I suppose it is a wonderful place," she said slowly; "but it seems more wonderful to me that we are here looking at it. Do you remember how it looks on the map in our geography, and how far away it always seemed?"

"Yes," replied her brother, "I always thought there was nothing but ice and snow beyond the Arctic Circle."

"So did I," said Gerda. "I had no idea we should see little farms, and fields of rye, oats and barley, away up here in Lapland. Father says the crops grow faster because the sun shines all day and almost all night, too; and that it is only eight weeks from seed-time to harvest.

"No doubt there is plenty of ice and snow in winter; but just here there seems to be nothing but swamps and forests."

"And swarms of mosquitoes," added Birger. "Don't forget the mosquitoes!"

In a moment more the children were back in their seats, and the train was creeping slowly northward, on its way toward Gellivare and Mount Dundret, where, from the fifth of June to the eleventh of July, the sun may be seen shining all day and all night.

Birger took a tiny stone from his pocket and showed it to his sister, saying, "See my souvenir of Polcirkel." But Gerda paid little attention to his souvenir, and slipped over to her father's seat to ask a question.

"Father," she said softly.

Lieutenant Ekman looked up from the maps and papers in his lap. "What do you wish, little daughter?" he asked.

"Will you please make me a promise?" she begged.

"If it won't take all my money to keep it," he answered with a smile.

But Gerda seemed in no hurry to tell what it was that she wanted, and began looking over the papers in his lap. "What is this?" she asked, taking up a small blue card.

"That is my receipt from the Tourist Agency," he answered. "When I give it to the station master at Gellivare, he will give me a key which will open the hut on Mount Dundret, and let us see the midnight sun in comfort."

"How much did you pay for it?" was Gerda's next question.

"I paid about four kronor for the card and all the privileges that go with it," was the answer.

"Have you plenty of money left?" asked the little girl.

Her father laughed. "Enough to get us all three back to Stockholm, at least," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"Because-" said Gerda slowly, and then stopped.

"Because what?" Lieutenant Ekman asked again.

"Because I wondered if we could stop at the lighthouse on our way home and ask Karen Klasson to go to Stockholm and live with us;" and Gerda held her breath and waited for her father to speak.

"Perhaps she would not like to leave her father and mother for the sake of living with us," he said at last.

"I think she would, if it would make her back well," persisted Gerda.

Herr Ekman laughed. "If living with us would cure people's backs, we might have all the lame children in Sweden to care for," he said.

"But I want only Karen," said Gerda; "and I thought it would be good for her to take the Swedish medical gymnastics at the Institute in Stockholm, where so many people are cured every year."

Lieutenant Ekman looked thoughtfully at his daughter. "That is a good idea and shows a loving heart," he said. "But are you willing to give up any of your pleasures in order to make it possible?"

Gerda looked at him in surprise, and he continued, "I am not a rich man. If we should take Karen into our family and send her to the gymnasium, it would cost a good many kronor, and your mother and I would have to make some sacrifices. Are you willing to make some, too?"

Gerda gazed thoughtfully across the stretches of bog-land to the forest on the horizon. "Yes," she said at last; "I will go without the furs Mother promised to buy for me next winter."

Lieutenant Ekman knew well that Gerda had set her heart on the furs, and that it would be a real sacrifice for her to give them up; but if she were willing to do so cheerfully, it meant that she was in earnest about helping her new friend.

"Yes," he said, after a moment; "if you will give up the furs, we will see what can be done. On the way home we will stop at the lighthouse and ask Hans Klasson to lend Karen to us for a little while."

Gerda clapped her hands. "Oh, a promise! A promise!" she cried joyously.

"What a good souvenir of Polcirkel!" and she ran to tell Birger the news.