The ground was quite flat, and covered with smooth, hard snow, which shone and sparkled like the top of a birthday cake that has been iced at home. The ones done at the shops do not shine and sparkle, because they mix flour with the icing sugar. "It is like a dream," said Jane. And George said, "It _is_ the North Pole. Just think of the fuss people always make about getting here--and it was no trouble at all, really." "I daresay lots of people have gotten here," said Jane, dismally. "It's not the getting _here_--I see that--it's the getting back again. Perhaps no one will ever know that _we_ have been here, and the robins will cover us with leaves and--" "Nonsense," said George. "There aren't any robins, and there aren't any leaves. It's just the North Pole, that's all, and I've found it; and now I shall try to climb up and plant the British flag on the top--my handkerchief will do; and if it really _is_ the North Pole, my pocket compass Uncle James gave me will spin around and around, and then I shall know. Come on." So Jane came on; and when they got close to the clear, tall, beautiful flames they saw that there was a great, queer-shaped lump of ice all around the bottom of the Pole--clear, smooth, shining ice, that was deep, beautiful Prussian blue, like icebergs, in the thick parts, and all sorts of wonderful, glimmery, shimmery, changing colors in the thin parts, like the cut-glass chandelier in Grandmamma's house in London. "It is a very curious shape," said Jane. "It's almost like"--she moved back a step to get a better view of it--"it's almost like a dragon." "It's much more like the lampposts on the Thames Embankment," said George, who had noticed a curly thing like a tail that went twisting up the North Pole. "Oh, George," cried Jane, "it _is_ a dragon; I can see its wings. Whatever shall we do?" And, sure enough, it _was_ a dragon--a great, shining, winged, scaly, clawy, big-mouthed dragon--made of pure ice. It must have gone to sleep curled around the hole where the warm steam used to come up from the middle of the earth, and then when the earth got colder, and the column of steam froze and was turned into the North Pole, the dragon must have got frozen in his sleep--frozen too hard to move--and there he stayed. And though he was very terrible he was very beautiful too. Jane said so, but George said, "Oh, don't bother; I'm thinking how to get onto the Pole and try the compass without waking the brute." [Illustration: "Sure enough, it was a dragon." _See page 68._]