Prevod

Two great ships had been sent far north towards the North Pole, to discover where the lands met the sea and to test how far human beings could make their way there. For years they had sailed through fog and ice in those regions, enduring great hardships; now winter had begun, and the sun had sunk below the horizon. For many, many weeks there would be one long night; everything around them was a single sheet of ice, and each ship was moored fast to it. The snow lay deep, and from the snow itself houses shaped like beehives had been built, some as large as the ancient burial mounds at home, others no bigger than would hold two or four men. Yet it was not dark: the northern lights shone red and blue in an endless, magnificent display of fireworks, and the snow gleamed; the night here was one long, glowing twilight. At the brightest time, bands of the native people came, strange to behold in their shaggy fur clothes, on sledges fashioned from blocks of ice. They brought great heaps of skins, which furnished the snow houses with warm rugs; skins served as blankets and quilts as the sailors made their beds beneath the snowy domes, while outside the frost sparkled with a bitter cold unknown to us even in the depths of winter. At home it was still autumn, and they thought of that up there; they remembered the sunshine at home and the red and yellow leaves still hanging on the trees. The clock showed that it was evening and time for sleep, and in one of the snow houses two men had already stretched themselves out to rest. The younger had brought with him his best and dearest treasure from home, the gift his grandmother had given him before he sailed: the Bible. Every night it lay beneath his pillow; since childhood he had known what was written in it. Each day he read a passage, and as he lay in bed the sacred words often came to him with such comfort: “If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me!” And with those words of truth and faith he closed his eyes, and sleep came, and a dream came, a revelation of the spirit in God. His soul was awake while his body rested; he sensed it, like the melodies of dear, familiar songs of old. The air breathed so gently, so warm with summer, and from his bed he saw a radiance above him, as though light were streaming through the dome of snow from outside. He raised his head; that gleaming whiteness was neither walls nor ceiling, but the great wings springing from an angel’s shoulders, and he looked up into his gentle, shining face. From the pages of the Bible, as from the cup of a lily, the angel rose and spread his arms wide, and the walls of the snow hut fell away around them like a weightless veil of mist. The green fields of home and the hills with their russet woods lay all around in the quiet sunshine of a lovely autumn day. The stork’s nest stood empty, but apples still hung on the wild apple tree, though its leaves had fallen; the red rose hips shone, and the starling whistled in its little green cage above the window of the farmhouse, the heart of home. The starling whistled as it had been taught, and Grandmother hung chickweed about its cage, as her grandson had always done. And the blacksmith’s daughter, so young and so beautiful, stood at the well drawing water; she nodded to Grandmother, and Grandmother waved, holding up a letter from far away. It had arrived that morning from the frozen lands, from far up at the North Pole itself, where her grandson was—in God’s hands. And they laughed and wept, and he, beneath the ice and snow, who in the world of the spirit, under the angel’s wings, saw and heard it all, laughed and wept with them. And from the letter those very words of the Bible were read aloud: “In the uttermost parts of the sea, his right hand shall hold me!” They rang all around like a beautiful hymn, and the angel let his wings settle like a veil about the sleeper—the dream was over. It was dark in the snow house, but the Bible lay beneath his head, and faith and hope lay in his heart. God was with him, and home was with him—“in the uttermost parts of the sea!”