Among other things, it gave him the right to marry. He had already secured a bride of twelve, but, without this bear conquest, the match would not have been permanent. He danced with the romantic joy of a young lover. We drove the dogs off from the victim with lashes, and fell to and skinned and dressed the carcass. A taste was given to each dog. The balance was placed on the sledges. Soon we were to camp, waiting for the sled loads of bear meat.
On the day following we started to hunt caribou. The sky was beautifully clear; the glacial wind was lost as we left the ice. The party scattered among numerous old bergs of the glacier. Koo-loo-ting-wah accompanied me. We aimed to rise to a small tableland from which I might make a study of the surroundings.
We had not gone inland more than a mile when we saw numerous fresh caribou tracks. Following these, we moved along a steep slope to the tableland above at an altitude of about one thousand feet. We peeped over the crest. Below us were two reindeer digging under the snow for food. The light was good, and they were in gun range. An Eskimo, however, gets very near his game before he chances a shot, so, winding about under the crest of a cliff or a snow-covered shelf of rocks, we got to their range and fired.
The creatures fell. They were nearly white, young, and possessed long fur and thick skins, which we needed badly for sleeping bags. With pocket knives, the natives skinned the animals and divided the meat in three packs while I examined the surroundings.
Part of the face of Humboldt Glacier, which extends sixty miles north, was clearly visible in cliffs of a dark blue color. The interior ice ran in waves like the surface of stormy seas, perfectly free of snow, with many crevasses. An odd purplish-blue light upon it was reflected to the skies, resembling to some extent a water sky. The snow of the sea ice below was of a delicate lilac. Otherwise, sky and land were flooded with the usual dominant purple of the Arctic twilight.
This glacier, the largest in Arctic America, had at one time extended very much farther south. All the islands, including Brook's, had at one time been under its grinding influence. As a picture it was a charming study in purple and blue, but the temperature was too low and the light too nearly spent to venture a further investigation.
The Eskimos fixed for me an extremely light pack. This was comfortably placed on my back, with a bundle of thongs over the forehead. The natives took their huge bundles, and, together, we started for camp. At every rest we cut off slices of caribou tallow. I was surprised to find that I had acquired a taste for a new delicacy. At camp we found the natives, all in good humor, awaiting us beside heaps of meat and skins. All had been successful in securing from one to two animals each in regions nearer by. In a further search they had failed to find promising tracks, so we proposed to return on the morrow, hoping to meet bears en route.
With the stupor of the gluttony of reindeer meat and the fatigue of the long chase, we slept late. Awaking, we partook each of a cup of tea, and packed and loaded the meat. Drawing heavy loads, the dogs gladly leaped forward. The twilight flush already suffused the sky with incandescence. Against the southeastern sky, glowing with rose, the great glaciers of Humboldt loomed in walls of violet, while the sea displayed many shades of rose and lilac, according to the direction of the light on the slope of the drifts.
Knowing that their noses pointed to a land of walrus, the dogs kept up a lively pace. Not a breath of air was stirring. The temperature was -42°. Aiming to make Annoatok in two marches, we ran behind the sledges to save dog energy as much as possible. The cold enforced vigorous exercise. But, weighted down by furs, the comfort of the sledges was often sought to escape the tortures of perspiration. The source of light slowly shifted along shadowed mountains under the frozen sea. Our path glowed with electric, multi-colored splendor.
By degrees, the rose-colored sky assumed the hue of old gold, the violet embroideries of clouds changed to purple. The gold, in running bands, darkened; the purple thickened. Soon new celestial torches lighted the changing sheen of the snows. Into the dome of heaven swam stars of burning intensity, each of which rivalled the sun in a miniature way. In this new illumination the twilight fires lost flame and color. Cold white incandescence electrically suffused the frigid sky.
I strode onward, in that white, blazing air, the joy and beauty of it enthralling my soul. I felt as though I were walking in a world of heatless fire, a half supernatural realm such as that wherein reigned the gods of ancient peoples. I felt as an old Norseman must have felt when the glory of Valhalla burst upon him. For a long time I was unconscious of the fatigue which was growing upon me. Finally, overcome by the long forced march, I sank on my sled. The Eskimos, chanting songs, loomed ahead, their forms magnified in the unearthly light. Slowly a subtle change appeared along the horizon. Silent and impressed, I watched the changing scenes and evolving lights as if all were some divine and awe-inspiring stage arranged by God for some heroic drama of man.
New and warm with shimmering veils of color, attended by four radiant satellites, the golden face of the moon rose majestically over the sparkling pinnacles of the Greenland glaciers. Below, the lovely planet-deflected images formed rainbow curves like rubied necklaces about her invisible neck. As the moon ascended in a spiral course the rose hues paled, the white light from the stars softened to a rich, creamy glow.
We continued our course, the Eskimos singing, the dogs occasionally barking. Hours passed. Then we all suddenly became silent. The last, the supreme, glory of the North flamed over earth and frozen sea. The divine fingers of the aurora,[8] that unseen and intangible thing of flame, who comes from her mysterious throne to smile upon a benighted world, began to touch the sky with glittering, quivering lines of glowing silver. With skeins of running, liquid fire she wove over the sky a shimmering panorama of blazing beauty. Forms of fire, indistinct and unhuman, took shape and vanished. From horizon to zenith, cascades of milk-colored fire ascended and fell, as must the magical fountains of heaven.
In the glory of this other-world light I felt the insignificance of self, a human unit; and, withal I became more intensely conscious than ever of the transfiguring influence of the sublime ideal to which I had set myself. I exulted in the thrill of an indomitable determination, that determination of human beings to essay great things—that human purpose which, throughout history, has resulted in the great deeds, the great art, of the world, and which lifts men above themselves. Spiritually intoxicated, I rode onward. The aurora faded. But its glow remained in my soul.
We arrived at camp late on November 1.
DESPERATE AND DANGEROUS HUNTING, IN ORDER TO SECURE ADEQUATE SUPPLIES FOR THE POLAR DASH—A THRILLING AND ADVENTUROUS RACE IS MADE OVER FROZEN SEAS AND ICY MOUNTAINS TO THE WALRUS GROUNDS—TERRIFIC EXPLOSION OF THE ICE ON WHICH THE PARTY HUNTS—SUCCESS IN SECURING OVER SEVEN SLED-LOADS OF BLUBBER MAKES THE POLE SEEM NEARER—AN ARCTIC TRAGEDY
The early days of November were devoted to routine work about Annoatok. Meat was gathered and dried in strips by Francke; a full force of men were put to the work of devising equipment; the women were making clothing and dressing skins; and then a traveling party was organized to go south to gather an additional harvest of meat and skins and furs. For this purpose we planned to take advantage of the November moon. Thus, in the first week of the month, we were ready for a five-hundred-mile run to the southern villages and to the night-hunting grounds for walrus.
A crack of whips explosively cut the taut, cold air. The raucous, weird and hungry howl of the wolf-dogs replied: "Ah-u-oo, Ah-u-oo, Ah-u-oo!" rolled over the ice; "Huk-huk!" the Eskimos shouted. There was a sudden tightening of the traces of our seven sledges; fifty lithe, strong bodies leaped forward; and, holding the upstanders, the rear upright framework of the native sledges, I and my six companions were off. In a few moments the igloos of the village, with lights shining through windows where animal membranes served as glass, had sped by us. The cheering of the natives behind was soon lost in the grind of our sledges on the irregular ice and the joyous, unrestrained barking of the leaping, tearing, restless dog-teams.
To the south of us, a misty orange flush suffused the dun-colored sky. The sun, which we had not seen for an entire month, now late in November far below the horizon, sent to us the dim radiance of a far-away smile. After its setting it had, about noon time of each day, set the sky faintly aglow, this radiance decreasing until it was lost in the brightness of the midday moon. Rising above the horizon, a suspended lamp of frosty, pearl-colored glass, the moon for ten days of twenty-four hours, each month, encircled about us, now lost behind ice-sheeted mountains, again subdued under colored films of frost clouds, but always relieving the night of its gloom, and permitting, when the wind was not too turbulent, outside activity.
A wonderful animal is the sea-horse, or whale-horse, as the Icelanders and Dutch (from whom we have borrowed "walrus") call it. In the summer its life is easy and its time is spent in almost perpetual sunny dreams, but in winter it would be difficult to conceive of a harder existence than its own. Finding food in shallow Polar seas, it comes to permanent open water, or to the crevasses of an active pack for breath. With but a few minutes' rest on a storm-swept surface, it explores, without other relief for weeks, the double-night darkness of unknown depths under the frozen sea. At last, when no longer able to move its huge web feet, it rises on the ice or seeks ice-locked waters for a needed rest. In winter, the thump of its ponderous head keeps the young ice from closing its breathing place. If on ice, its thick skin, its blanket of blubber, and an automatic shiver, keep its blood from hardening. This is man's opportunity to secure meat and fuel, but the quest involves a task to which no unaided paleface is equal. The night hunt of the walrus is Eskimo sport, but it is nevertheless sport of a most engaging and exciting order.
So that I might not be compelled to start on my dash stintedly equipped, we now prepared for such an adventure by moonlight. Before this time there had not been sufficient atmospheric stability and ice continuity to promise comparative safety. My heart exulted as I heard the crack of the whips in the electric air and felt the earth rush giddily under my feet as I leaped behind the speeding teams. The fever of the quest was in my veins; its very danger lent an indescribable thrill, for success now meant more to me than perhaps hunting had ever meant to any man.
Not long after we started, darkness descended. The moon slowly passed behind an impenetrable curtain of inky clouds; the orange glow of the sun faded; and we were surrounded on every side by a blackness so thick that it was almost palpable.
As I now recall that mad race I marvel how we escaped smashing sledges, breaking our limbs, crushing our heads. We tumbled and jumped in a frantic race over the broken, irregular pack-ice from Annoatok to Cape Alexander, a distance of thirty miles as the raven moves, but more than forty miles as we follow the sledge trail. Here the ice became thin; we felt cold mist rising from open water; and now and then, in an occasional breaking of the darkness, we could discern vast sheets or snaky leads of open sea ahead of us.
To reach the southern waters where the walrus were to be found, we now had to seek an overland route, which would take us over the frozen Greenland mountains and lead us through the murky clouds, a route of twisting detours, gashed glaciers, upturned barriers of rock and ice, swept by blinding winds, unmarked by any trail, and which writhed painfully beyond us for forty-seven miles.
Arriving at the limit of traversable sea-ice, we now paused before sloping cliffs of glacial land-ice which we had to climb. Picture to yourself a vast glacier rising precipitously, like a gigantic wall, thousands of feet above you, and creeping tortuously up its glassy, purple face, if such that surface could be called, formed by the piling of one glacial formation upon the other in the descent through the valleys, a twisting, retreating road of jagged ice strata, of earth and stone, blocked here and there by apparently impassable impediments, pausing at almost unscalable, frozen cliffs, and at times no wider than a few yards. Imagine yourself pausing, as we suddenly did, and viewing the perilous ascent, the only way open to us, revealed in the passing glimmer of the pale, circling moon, despair, fear and hope tugging at your heart. Whipped across the sky by the lashing winds, the torn clouds, passing the face of the moon, cast magnified and grotesquely gesticulating shadows on the glistening face of the icy Gibraltar before us. Some of these misty shapes seemed to threaten, others shook their rag-like arms, beckoning forward. Upon the face of the towering, perpendicular ice-wall, great hummocks like the gnarled black limbs of a huge tree twisted upwards.
I realized that the frightful ascent must be made. The goal of my single aim suddenly robbed the climb of its terrors. I dropped my whip. Six other whips cracked through the air. Koo-loo-ting-wah said, "Kah-Kah!" (Come, come!) But Sotia said, "Iodaria-Iodaria!" (Impossible, impossible!) The dogs emitted shrill howls. Holding the rear upstanders of the sledges, we helped to push them forward.
Before us, the fifty dogs climbed like cats through narrow apertures of the ice, or took long leaps over the serried battlements that barred our way. We stumbled after, sometimes we fell. Again we had to lift the sledges after the dogs.
From the top of the glacier a furious wind brushed us backwards. We felt the steaming breath of the laboring dogs in our faces. My heart thumped painfully. Now and then the moon disappeared; we followed the unfailing instinct of the animals. I realized that a misstep might plunge me to a horrible death in the ice abysm below. With a howl of joy from drivers, the dogs finally leaped to the naked surface of the wind-swept glacier. Panting in indescribable relief, we followed. But the worst part of the journey lay before us. The sable clouds, like the curtain of some cyclopean stage, seemed suddenly drawn aside as if by an invisible hand.
Upon the illimitable stretch of ice rising before us like the slopes of a glass mountain, the full rays of the moon poured liquid silver. Only in dreams had such a scene as this been revealed to me—in dreams of the enchanted North—which did not now equal reality. The spectacle filled me with both awed delight and a sense of terror.
Beyond the fan-shaped teams of dogs the eyes ran over fields of night-blackened blue, gashed and broken by bottomless canyons which twisted like purple serpents in every direction. Vast expanses of smooth surface, polished by the constant winds, reflected the glow of the moon and gleamed like isles of silver in a motionless, deep, sapphire sea; but all was covered with the air of night. In the moonlight, the jagged irregular contours of the broken ice became touched with a burning gilt. A constant effect like running quicksilver played about us as the moon sailed around the heavens.
Above us the ice pinnacles were lost in the clouds, huge billowy masses that were blown in the wind troublously, like the heavy black tresses of some Titan woman. I thrilled with the beauty of the magical spectacle, yet, when I viewed the perilous pathway, I felt the grip of terror again at my heart.
I was aroused from my brief reverie by the familiar "Huk-huk! Ah-gah! Ah-gah!" of the Eskimos, and placing our hands upon the sledges, we leaped forward into the purple-gashed sea, with its blinding sheets of silver. I seemed carried through a world such as the old Norsemen sang of in the sagas.
Of a sudden, as though extinguished, the moonlight faded, huge shadows leaped onto the ice before us, frenziedly waved their arms and melted into the pitch-black darkness which descended. I had read imaginative tales of wanderings in the nether region of the dead, but only now did I have a faint glimmering of the terror (with its certain, exultant intoxication) which lost souls must feel when they wander in a darkness beset with invisible horrors.
Over the ice, cut with innumerable chasms and neck-breaking irregularities, we rushed in the dark. The wind moaned down from the despairing cloud-enfolded heights above; it tore through the bottomless gullies on every side with a hungry roar. Beads of perspiration rolled down my face and froze into icicles on my chin and furs. The temperature was 48° below zero.
Occasionally we stopped a moment to gasp for breath. I could hear the panting of my companions, the labor of the dogs. A few seconds' inaction was followed by convulsive shivering; the pain of stopping was more excruciating than that of climbing. In the darkness, the calls of the invisible Eskimos to the dogs seemed like the weird appeals of disembodied things. I felt each moment the imminent danger of a frightful death; yet the dogs with their marvelous intuition, twisting this way and that, and sometimes retreating, sensed the open leads ahead and rushed forward safely.
At times I felt the yawning depth of ice canyons immediately by my side—that a step might plunge me into the depths. Desperately I held on to the sledges, and was dragged along. Such an experience might well turn the hair of the most expert Alpinist white in one night; yet I did not have time to dwell fully upon the dangers, and I was carried over a trip more perilous than, later, proved the actual journey on sea-ice to the Pole.
Occasionally the moon peered forth from its clouds and brightened the gloom. In its light the ice fields swam dizzily by us, as a landscape seen from the window of a train; the open gashed gullies writhed like snakes, pinnacles dancing like silver spears. By alternate running and riding we managed to keep from freezing and sweating. We finally reached an altitude of inland ice exceeding two thousand feet. Silver fog crept under our feet. We were traveling now in a world of clouds.
We paced twelve miles at a rapid speed. In the light of the moon-burned clouds which rolled about our heads, I could see the forms of my companions only indistinctly. The dogs ahead were veiled in the argent, tremulous mists; the ice sped under me; I was no longer conscious of an earthly footing; I might have been soaring in space.
We began to descend. Suddenly the dogs started in leaps to fly through the air. Our sleds were jerked into clouds of cutting snow. We jabbed our feet into the drift to check the mad speed. On each side we saw a huge mountain, seemingly thousands of feet above us, but ahead was nothing but the void of empty space. Soon the sledges shot beyond the dogs. We threw ourselves off to check the momentum. With dog intelligence and savage strength judiciously expended, we reached the sea level by flying flights over dangerous slopes, and, like cats, we landed on nimble feet in Sontag Bay.
A bivouac was arranged under a dome of snow-blocks, and exhausted by the mad journey, a sleep of twenty-four hours was indulged in.
Now, for a time, our task was easier. A course was set along the land, southward. Each of the native settlements was visited. The season's gossip was exchanged. Presents went into each household, and a return of furs and useful products filled our sledges. Thus the time was occupied in profitable visits during the feeble light of the November moon. With the December moon we returned northward to Ser-wah-ding-wah.
Then our struggle began anew for the walrus grounds. The Polar drift, forcing through Smith Sound, left an open space of water about ten miles south of Cape Alexander. This disturbed area was our destination. It was marked by a dark cloud, a "water-sky"—against the pearly glow of the southern heavens. The ice surface was smooth. We did not encounter the crushed heaps of ice of the northern route, but there were frequent crevasses which, though cemented with new ice, gave us considerable anxiety, for I realized that if a northwesterly storm should suddenly strike the pack we might be carried helplessly adrift.
The urgency of our mission to secure dog food, however, left no alternative. It was better to brave death now, I thought, than to perish from scant supplies on the Polar trip. We had not gone far before the ever-keen canine noses detected bear tracks on the ice. These we shot over the pack surface in true battle spirit. As the bears were evidently bound for the same hunting grounds, this course was accepted as good enough for us. Although the trail was laid in a circuitous route, it avoided the most difficult pressure angles. We traveled until late in the day. The moon was low, and the dark purple hue of the night blackened the snows.
Of a sudden we paused. From a distance came a low call of walrus bulls. The bass, nasal bellow was muffled by the low temperature, and did not thump the ear drums with the force of the cry in sunny summer. My six companions shouted with glee, and became almost hysterical with excitement. The dogs, hearing the call, howled and jumped to jerk the sledges. We dropped our whips, and they responded with all their brute force in one bound. It was difficult to hold to the sledges as we shot over the blackening snows.
The ice-fields became smaller as we advanced; dangerous thin ice intervened; but the owl-eyes of the Eskimos knew just where to find safe ice. The sounds increased as we approached. We descended from the snow-covered ice to thin, black ice and for a time I felt as if we were flying over the open surface of the deep. With a low call, the dogs were stopped. They were detached from the sledges and tied to holes drilled with a knife in ice boulders.
Pushing the sledges upon which rested the harpoon, the lance, the gun and knives, each one of us advanced at some distance from his neighbor. Soon, lines of mist told of dangerous breaks, and the ice was carefully tested with the spiked shaft before venturing farther. I was behind Koo-loo-ting-wah's sledge. While he was creeping up to the water's edge, there came the rush of a spouting breath so near that we seemed to feel the crystal spray. I took his place and pushed the sledge along.
Taking the harpoon, with stealthy strides Koo-loo-ting-wah moved to the water's edge and waited for the next spout. We heard other spouts in various directions, and in the dark water, slightly lighted by the declining moon, we saw other dark spots of spray. Suddenly a burst of steam startled me. It was near the ice where Koo-loo-ting-wah lay. I was about to shout, but the Eskimo turned, held up his hand and whispered "Ouit-ou." (Wait.)
Then, very slowly, he lowered his body, spread out his form on the ice, and startlingly imitated the walrus call. His voice preternaturally bellowed through the night. Out of the inky water, a walrus lifted its head. I saw its long, white, spiral, ivory tusk and two phosphorescent eyes. Koo-loo-ting-wah did not stir. I shivered with cold and impatience. Why did he not strike? Our prey seemed within our hands. I uttered an exclamation of vexed disappointment when, with a splash, the head disappeared, leaving on the water a line of algae fire.
For several minutes I stood gazing seaward. Far away on the black ocean, to my amazement, I saw lights appearing like distant lighthouse signals, or the mast lanterns on passing ships. They flashed and suddenly faded, these strange will-o'-the wisps of the Arctic sea. In a moment I realized that the lights were caused by distant icebergs crashing against one another. On the bergs as on the surface of the sea, as it happened now, were coatings of a teeming germ life, the same which causes phosphorescence in the trail of an ocean ship. The effect was indescribably weird.
Suddenly I jumped backward, appalled by a noise that reverberated shudderingly under the ice on which I stood. The ice shook as if with an earthquake. I hastily retreated, but Koo-loo-ting-wah, lying by the water's edge, never stirred. A dead man could not have been less responsive. While I was wondering as to the cause of the upheaval, the ice, within a few feet of Koo-loo-ting-wah, was suddenly torn asunder as if by a submarine explosion. Koo-loo-ting-wah leaped into the air and descended apparently toward the distending space of turbulent open water. I saw him raise his arm and deliver a harpoon with amazing dexterity; at the same instant I had seen also the white tusk and phosphorescent eyes of a walrus appear for a moment in the black water and then sink.
The harpoon had gone home; the line was run out; a spiked lance shaft was driven into the ice through a loop in the end of the line, and the line was thus fastened. We knew the wounded beast would have to rise for air. With rifle and lance ready, we waited, intending, each time a spout of water arose, to drive holes into the tough armor of skin until the beast's vitals were tapped. By feeling the line, I could sense the struggles of the wild creature below in the depths of the sea. Then the line would slacken, a spout of steam would rise from the water, Koo-loo-ting-wah would drive a spear, I a shot from my gun. The air would become oppressive with the creature's frightful bellowing. Then would come an interval of silence.
For about two hours we kept up the battle. Then the line slackened, Koo-loo-ting-wah called the others, and together we drew the huge carcass, steaming with blood, to the surface of the ice. Smelling the odorous wet blood, the dogs exultantly howled.
Falling upon the animal, the natives, trained in the art, with sharp knives had soon dressed the thick meat and blubber from the bones and lashed the weltering mass on a sledge. This done, with quick despatch, they separated, dashed along the edge of the ice, casting harpoons whenever the small geysers appeared on the water. We were in excellent luck. One walrus after another was dragged lumberingly on the ice, and in the course of several hours the seven sledges were heavily loaded with the precious supplies which would now enable me, liberally equipped, to start Poleward. We gave our dogs a light meal, and started landward, leaving great piles of walrus meat behind us on the ice.
Although we were tired on reaching land, we began to build several snow-houses in which to sleep. Not far away was an Eskimo village. Summoning the natives to help us bring in the spoils of the hunt which had been left on the ice, we first indulged in a gluttonous feast of uncooked meat, in which the dogs ravenously joined. The meat tasted like train-oil. The work of bringing in the meat and blubber and caching it for subsequent gathering was hardly finished when, from the ominous, glacial-covered highlands, a winter blast suddenly began to come with terrific and increasing fury.
Blinding gusts of snow whipped the frozen earth. The wind shrieked fiendishly. Above its roar, not three hours after our last trip on the ice, a resounding, crashing noise rose above the storm. Braving the blasts, I went outside the igloo. Through the darkness I could see white curvatures of piling sea-ice. I could hear the rush and crashing of huge floes and glaciers being carried seaward. Had we waited another day, had we been out on the ice seeking walrus just twenty-four hours after our successful hunt, we should have been carried away in the sudden roaring gale, and hopelessly perished in the wind-swept deep.
During the night, or hours usually allotted to rest, the noise continued unabated. I failed to sleep. Now and then, a crashing noise shivered through the storm. An igloo from the nearby settlement was swept into the sea. During the gale many of the natives who had retired with their clothes hung out to dry, awoke to find that the wind had robbed them of their valuable winter furs.
Some time along in the course of the night, I heard outside excited Eskimos shouting. There was terror in the voices. Arising and dressing hastily, I rushed into the teeth of the storm. Not far away were a number of natives rushing along the land some twenty feet beneath which the sea lapped the land-ice with furious tongues. They had cast lines into the sea and were shouting, it seemed, to someone who was struggling in the hopeless, frigid tumult of water.
I soon learned of the dreadful catastrophe. Ky-un-a, an old and cautious native, awakened by the storm a brief while before, after dressing himself, ventured outside his stone house to secure articles which he had left there. As was learned later, he had just tied his sledge to a rock when a gust of wind resistlessly rushed seaward, lifted the aged man from his feet, and dropped him into the sea. Through the storm, his dreadful cries attracted his companions. Some who were now tugging at the lines, were barely covered with fur rugs which they had thrown about them, and their limbs were partly bare. Now and then, a blinding gust of wind, filled with freezing snow crystals, almost lifted us from our feet. The sea lapped its tongues sickeningly below us.
Finally a limp body, ice-sheeted, dripping with water, yet clinging with its mummied frozen hands to the line, was hauled up on the ice. Ky-un-a, unconscious, was carried to his house about five hundred feet away. There, after wrapping him in furs, in a brave effort to save his life, the natives cut open his fur garments. The fur, frozen solid by the frigid blasts in the brief period which had elapsed since his being lifted from the water, took with it, in parting from his body, long patches of skin, leaving the quivering raw flesh exposed as though by a burn. For three days the aged man lay dying, suffering excruciating tortures, the victim of merely a common accident, which at any time may happen to anyone of these Spartan people. I shall never forget the harrowing moans of the suffering man piercing the storm. Perhaps it had been merciful to let him perish in the sea.
Ky-un-a's old home was some forty miles distant. To it, that he might die there, he desired to go. On the fourth day after the accident, he was placed in a litter, covered with warm furs, and borne over the smooth icefields. I shall never forget that dismal and solemn procession. A benign calm prevailed over land and sea. The orange glow of a luxurious moon set the ice coldly aflame. Long shadows, like spectral mourners, robed in purple, loomed before the tiny procession. Now and then, as they dwindled in the distance, I saw them, like black dots, crossing areas of polished ice which glowed like mirror lakes of silver. From the distance, softly shuddered the decreasing moans of the dying man; then there was silence. I marvelled again upon the lure of this eerily, weirdly beautiful land, where, always imminent, death can be so terrible.
THE EQUIPMENT AND ITS PROBLEMS—NEW ART IN THE MAKING OF SLEDGES COMBINING LIGHTNESS—PROGRESS OF THE PREPARATIONS—CHRISTMAS, WITH ITS GLAD TIDINGS AND AUGURIES FOR SUCCESS IN QUEST OF THE POLE
In planning for the Polar dash I appreciated fully the vital importance of sledges. These, I realized, must possess, to an ultimate degree, the combined strength of steel with the lightness and elasticity of the strongest wood. The sledge must neither be flimsy nor bulky; nor should it be heavy or rigid. After a careful study of the art of sledge-traveling from the earliest time to the present day, after years of sledging and sledge observation in Greenland, the Antarctic and Alaska, I came to the conclusion that success was dependent, not upon any one type of sledge, but upon local fitness.
All natives of the frigid wilds have devised sledges, traveling and camp equipment to fit their local needs. The collective lessons of ages are to be read in this development of primitive sledge traveling. If these wild people had been provided with the best material from which to work out their hard problems of life, then it is probable that their methods could not be improved. But neither the Indian nor the Eskimo was ever in possession of either the tools or the raw material to fit their inventive genius for making the best equipment. Therefore, I had studied first the accumulated results of the sledge of primitive man and from this tried to construct a sledge with its accessories in which were included the advantages of up-to-date mechanics with the use of the most durable material which a search of the entire globe had afforded me.[9]
The McClintock sledges, made of bent wood with wide runners, had been adopted by nearly all explorers, under different names and with considerable modifications, for fifty years. This sledge is still the best type for deep soft snow conditions, for which it was originally intended. But such snow is not often found on the ice of the Polar sea. The native sledge which Peary copied, although well adapted to local use along the ice-foot and the land-adhering pack, is not the best sledge for a trans-boreal run. This is because it is too heavy and too easily broken, and breakable in such a way that it cannot be quickly repaired.
For the Arctic pack, a sledge must be of a moderate length, with considerable width. Narrow runners offer less friction and generally give sufficient bearing surface. The other qualities vital to quick movement and durability are lightness, elasticity and interchangeability of parts. All of these conditions I planned to meet in a new pattern of sledge which should combine the durability of the Eskimo sledges and the lightness of the Yukon sledge of Alaska.
The making of a suitable sledge caused me a good deal of concern. Before leaving New York I had taken the precaution of selecting an abundance of the best hickory wood in approximately correct sizes for sledge construction. Suitable tools had also been provided. Now, as the long winter with its months of darkness curtailed the time of outside movement, the box-house was refitted as a workshop. From eight to ten men were at the benches, eight hours each day, shaping and bending runners, fitting and lashing interchangeable cross bars and posts, and riveting the iron shoes. Thus the sledge parts were manufactured to possess the same facilities to fit not only all other sledges, but also other parts of the same sledge. If, therefore, part of a sledge should be broken, other parts of a discarded sledge could offer repair sections easily.
The general construction of this new sledge is easily understood from the various photographs presented. All joints were made elastic by seal-thong lashings. The sledges were twelve feet long and thirty inches wide; the runners had a width of an inch and an eighth. Each part and each completed sledge was thoroughly tested before it was finally loaded for the long run. For dog harness, the Greenland Eskimo pattern was adopted. But canine habits are such that when rations are reduced to minimum limits the leather strips disappear as food. To obviate this disaster, the shoulder straps were made of folds of strong canvas, while the traces were cut from cotton log line.
A boat is an important adjunct to every sledge expedition which hopes to venture far from its base of operations. It is a matter of necessity, even when following a coast line, as was shown by the mishap of Mylius Erickson, for if he had had a boat he would himself have returned to tell the story of the Danish Expedition to East Greenland.
Need for a boat comes with the changing conditions of the advancing season. Things must be carried for several months for a chance use in the last stages of the return. But since food supplies are necessarily limited, delay is fatal, and therefore, when open water prevents advance, a boat is so vitally necessary as to become a life preserver. Foolish indeed is the explorer who pays slight attention to this important problem.
The transportation of a boat, however, offers many serious difficulties. Nansen introduced the kayak, and most explorers since have followed his example. The Eskimo canoe serves the purpose very well, but to carry it for three months without hopeless destruction requires so tremendous an amount of energy as to make the task practically impossible.
Sectional boats, aluminum boats, skin floats and other devices had been tried, but to all there is the same fatal objection on a Polar trip, of impossible transportation. But it seems odd that the ordinary folding canvas boat has not been pressed into this service.
We found such a canoe boat to fit the situation exactly, and selected a twelve-foot Eureka-shaped boat with wooden frame. The slats, spreaders and floor-pieces were utilized as parts of sledges. The canvas cover served as a floor cloth for our sleeping bags. Thus the boat did useful service for a hundred days and never seemed needlessly cumbersome. When the craft was finally spread for use as a boat, in it we carried the sledge, in it we sought game for food, and in it or under it we camped. Without it we could never have returned.
Even more vital than the choice of sledges, more vital than anything else, I knew, in such a trip as I proposed, is the care of the stomach. From the published accounts of Arctic traveling it is impossible to learn a fitting ration, and I hasten to add that I well realized that our own experience may not solve the problem for future expeditions. The gastronomic need differs with every man. It differs with every expedition, and it is radically different with every nation. Thus, when De Gerlache, with good intentions, forced Norwegian food into French stomachs, he learned that there is a nationality in gastronomics. Nor is it safe to listen to scientific advice, for the stomach is arbitrary, and stands as autocrat over every human sense and passion and will not easily yield to dictates.
In this respect, as in others, I was helped very much by the natives. The Eskimo is ever hungry, but his taste is normal. Things of doubtful value in nutrition form no part in his dietary. Animal food, consisting of meat and fat, is entirely satisfactory as a steady diet without other adjuncts. His food requires neither salt nor sugar, nor is cooking a matter of necessity.
Quantity is important, but quality applies only to the relative proportion of fat. With this key to gastronomics, pemmican was selected as the staple food, and it would also serve equally well for the dogs.
We had an ample supply of pemmican, which was made of pounded dried beef, sprinkled with a few raisins and some currants, and slightly sweetened with sugar. This mixture was cemented together with heated beef tallow and run into tin cans containing six pounds each.
This combination was invented by the American Indian, and the supply for this expedition was made by Armour of Chicago after a formula furnished by Captain Evelyn B. Baldwin. Pemmican had been used before as part of the long list of foodstuffs for Arctic expeditions, but with us there was the important difference that it was to be almost entirely the whole bill of fare when away from game haunts. The palate surprises in our store were few.
By the time Christmas approached I had reason indeed for rejoicing. Although this happy season meant little to me as a holiday of gift-giving and feasting, it came with auguries for success in the thing my heart most dearly desired, and compared to which earth had nothing more alluring to give.
Our equipment was now about complete. In the box house were tiers of new sledges, rows of boxes and piles of bags filled with clothing, canned supplies, dried meat, and sets of strong dog harness. The food, fuel and camp equipment for the Polar dash were ready. Everything had been thoroughly tested and put aside for a final examination. Elated by our success, and filled with gratitude to the faithful natives, I declared a week of holidays, with rejoicing and feasting. Feasting was at this time especially desirable, for we had now to fatten up for the anticipated race.
Christmas day in the Arctic does not dawn with the glow which children in waking early to seek their bedecked tree, view outside their windows in more southern lands. Both Christmas day and Christmas night are black. Only the stars keep their endless watch in the cold skies.
Standing outside my igloo on the happy night, I gazed at the Pole Star, the guardian of the goal I sought, and I remembered with a thrill the story of that mysterious star the Wise Men had followed, of the wonders to which it led them, and I felt an awed reverence for the Power that set these unfaltering beacons above the earth and had written in their golden traces, with a burning pen, veiled and unrevealed destinies which men for ages have tried to learn.
I retired to sleep with thoughts of home. I thought of my children, and the bated expectancy with which they were now going to bed, of their hopefulness of the morrow, and the unbounded joy they would have in gifts to which I could not contribute. I think tears that night wet my pillow of furs. But I would give them, if I did not fail, the gift of a father's achievement, of which, with a glow, I felt they should be proud.
The next morning the natives arrived at the box house early. It had been cleared of seamstresses and workmen the day before, and put in comparatively spick and span order. I had told the natives they were to feed to repletion during the week of holiday, an injunction to the keeping of which they did not need much urging.
Early Christmas morning, men and women began working overtime on the two festive meals which were to begin that day and continue daily.
About this time, the most important duty of our working force had been to uncover caches and dig up piles of frozen meat and blubber. Of this, which possesses the flavor and odor of Limburger cheese, and also the advantage, if such it be, of intoxicating them, the natives are particularly fond. While a woman held a native torch of moss dipped in oils and pierced with a stick, the men, by means of iron bars and picks, dug up boulders of meat just as coal is forced from mines.
A weird spectacle was this, the soft light of the blubber lamp dancing on the spotless snows, the soot-covered faces of the natives grinning while they worked. The blubber was taken close to their igloos and placed on raised platforms of snow, so as to be out of reach of the dogs. Of this meat and blubber, which was served raw, partially thawed, cooked and also frozen, the natives partook during most of their waking hours. They enjoyed it, indeed, as much as turkey was being relished in my far-away home.
Moreover they had, what was an important delicacy, native ice cream. This would not, of course, please the palate of those accustomed to the American delicacy, but to the Eskimo maiden it possesses all the lure of creams, sherberts or ice cream sodas. With us, sugar in the process of digestion turns into fat, and fat into body fuel. The Eskimo, having no sugar, yearns for fat, and it comes with the taste of sweets.
The making of native ice cream is quite a task. I watched the process of making it Christmas day with amused interest. The native women must have a mixture of oils from the seal, walrus and narwhal. Walrus and seal blubber is frozen, cut into strips, and pounded with great force so as to break the fat cells. This mass is now placed in a stone pot and heated to the temperature of the igloo, when the oil slowly separates from the fibrous pork-like mass. Now, tallow from the suet of the reindeer or musk ox is secured, cut into blocks and given by the good housewife to her daughters, who sit in the igloo industriously chewing it until the fat cells are crushed. This masticated mass is placed in a long stone pot over the oil flame, and the tallow reduced from it is run into the fishy oil of the walrus or seal previously prepared.
This forms the body of native ice cream. For flavoring, the housewife has now a variety from which to select. This usually consists of bits of cooked meat, moss flowers and grass. Anticipating the absence of moss and grass in the winter, the natives, during the hunting season, take from the stomachs of reindeer and musk oxen which are shot, masses of partly digested grass which is preserved for winter use. This, which has been frozen, is now chipped in fragments, thawed, and, with bits of cooked meats, is added to the mixed fats. It all forms a paste the color of pistache, with occasional spots like crushed fruit.
The mixture is lowered to the floor of the igloo, which, in winter, is always below the freezing point, and into it is stirred snow water. The churned composite gradually brightens and freezes as it is beaten. When completed, it looks very much like ice cream, but it has the flavor of cod liver oil, with a similar odor. Nevertheless, it has nutritive qualities vastly superior to our ice cream, and stomach pains rarely follow an engorgement.
With much glee, the natives finished their Christmas repast with this so-called delicacy. For myself a tremendous feast was prepared, consisting of food left by the yacht and the choicest meat from the caches. My menu consisted of green turtle soup, dried vegetables, caviar on toast, olives, Alaskan salmon, crystallized potatoes, reindeer steak, buttered rice, French peas, apricots, raisins, corn bread, Huntley and Palmer biscuits, cheese and coffee.
As I sat eating, I thought with much humor of the curious combinations of caviar and reindeer steak, of the absurd contradiction in eating green turtle soup beyond the Arctic circle. I ate heartily, with more gusto than I ever partook of delicious food in the Waldorf Astoria in my far-away home city. After dinner I took a long stroll on snow shoes. As I looked at the star-lamps swung in heaven, I thought of Broadway, with its purple-pale strings of lights, and its laughing merry-makers on this festive evening.
I did not, I confess, feel lonely. I seemed to be getting something so much more wholesome, so much more genuine from the vast expanse of snow and the unhidden heavens which, in New York, are seldom seen. Returning to the box-house, I ended Christmas evening with Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare as companions.
The box-house in which I lived was amply comfortable. It did not possess the luxury of a civilized house, but in the Arctic it was palatial. The interior fittings had changed somewhat from time to time, but now things were arranged in a permanent setting. The little stove was close to the door. The floor measured sixteen feet in length and twelve feet in width. On one side the empty boxes of the wall made a pantry, on the other side were cabinets of tools, and unfinished sledge and camp material.
With a step we rose to the next floor. On each side was a bunk resting on a bench. The bench was used as a bed, a work bench and seat. The long rear bench was utilized as a sewing table for the seamstresses and also for additional seating capacity. In the center was a table arranged around a post which supported the roof. Sliding shelves from the bunks formed table seats. A yacht lamp fixed to the post furnished ample light. There was no other furniture. All of our needs were conveniently placed in the open boxes of the wall.