With bad judgment Meyer, who was an under-officer, left Tyson's hut and joined the seamen—mostly Germans like himself. As a result of the growing demoralization, incursions were made on the food by unknown persons, and when Tyson was one day sick a seaman made the issues and then decided to retain this duty. There had been complaint that Tyson was too stingy in his issues, and the new issuing officer gave with freer hand in accord with the wishes of the heedless few.
Tyson was then driven to leave his lonely hut for the igloo wherein lived Ebierbing and his worthy wife Tookoolito (Hannah) and their young adopted daughter. This hut was the very centre of activity on the floe. Apart from the time needful for cooking, Tookoolito busied herself either in deftly mending the torn and sadly worn skin garments of her husband and of Tyson, or in making some article that would add to the general comfort and be of daily use. Thus the party was divided into two camps, one of care and production, the other of amusement and consumption. Ebierbing kept the field daily, and his success as a hunter proved to be the salvation of the party. Hans did what he could, it is true, but he was either less skilful or less fortunate than his native companion. The crew did almost nothing save to cook the food given them. They scarcely took exercise and filled in their time with endless discussions as to the future or with a pack of cards made out of heavy paper. Tyson controlled the Eskimos alone, and gave advice to the men only as occasion urgently demanded.
The winter month of December passed badly, with increasing darkness, severer cold, and despondent feelings. The poor natives, hearing so much desperate talk, unfortunately gained the notion that in the last extremity, which then seemed to be at hand, they would be sacrificed, and much uneasiness was felt by Tyson who strove to reassure them. Two wretchedly thin foxes, giving about three ounces of fresh meat to each man, was the only game up to Christmas, and nothing was encouraging except the steady drift to the south.
The captain felt it best to give a starvation feast on Christmas, and so added to the usual ration the last remaining delicacies—a bit of frozen ham, a few spoonfuls of dried apples, and a swallow or two of seal blood saved in a frozen condition. The knowledge that the sun was returning, of southing being made by drift, and chances of game increasing were conditions of hope that made it an almost cheerful holiday.
Actually they were in desperate straits of hunger, for Tyson relates that in his igloo they ate greedily the refuse of the cooking-lamp oil. Tookoolito turned into food and cooked pieces of dried seal-skin which had been set aside for repairing their clothing. Of this Tyson says: "It was so very tough it made my jaws ache to chew it."
Day after day, in storm and in calm, faithful Ebierbing kept the field, always hoping for success on the morrow. After thirty-six days of unsuccess he killed a seal in the open sea. Shot through the brain, the seal floated until he could be reached by that wonderful skin boat of the Eskimos—the kayak. Then land shot up into view to the southwestward, and all felt that they were saved.
The new year of 1873 opened in dreary form, with no game, and a dinner of two mouldy biscuit with seal entrails and blubber served frozen, as their fuel was gone. The improvident seamen had not only burned one boat, but even the boards under their sleeping-robes. Compelled at last by dire need, they now made a lamp from an old can and began to cook Eskimo-fashion. Most of the time the seamen passed idly in their igloo, quarrelling and disputing. In their ill-clad, half-starved condition they suffered terribly from the severe and prolonged cold of January, during which the mercury was often frozen, with occasional temperatures seventy degrees below freezing. Hopes of relief were high when a bear was found near, and then came a feeling of despair when the animal escaped after injuring badly the two remaining dogs.
Affairs then went from bad to worse, and the utter disruption of the party was imminent, although Tyson used to the utmost his powers of command over the natives and of persuasion with the seamen. An unruly and mutinous member of the crew invaded Tyson's igloo, roundly abused the captain, and even threatened him with personal violence, well knowing that he was unarmed. The evil effects of such conduct was so plain to all that the culprit was forced by public opinion to make an apology for his actions and thus in a manner to strengthen Tyson's hands in the future.
After an absence of eighty-three days the sun returned on January 19, which gave new courage to the natives and increased chances of game. When they killed a seal after many days of hunting, the starving seamen, almost crazy at the sight of food, dragged the animal into their own igloo and gave to the hunters only a small and unfair part of the meat and blubber. With difficulty Tyson was able to mollify the offended natives, by whom this injustice was the more felt as Tobias, one of Hans's babies, was quite sick and could not eat pemmican.
February opened with ten days of fruitless hunting, when Hans fortunately saw a seal thrust his head up through young ice far from the floe. Would he come again? Could he kill him at that distance, and was it possible to bring him in? While asking himself these questions, with his eyes intent on the air-hole, the nose and then the head of the seal rose slowly into view. On this shot might depend their lives, and with the care and slowness of the Inuit hunter, half-starved Hans, with steady hand and unerring aim, sent a bullet through the brain of the seal, paralyzing him and thus keeping the air in the seal's lungs and floating his body. As the thin new ice would not bear a man, Tyson solved the difficulty by putting Hans in his kayak and pushing him forward as far as could be done. With his paddle braced against rough bits of the floe and by squirming his body, Hans finally reached the seal, fastened a line to it, and worked his way back in the kayak.
With food failing again and the revival of the selfish spirit of every man for himself, Tyson's lot was hard and he knew not what would happen from day to day. Always quiet and cool, he spoke only when there was need, and never with harsh tones or angry words. He did not waste his force on matters of minor importance—an attitude that carried weight in the end.
When almost in despair there came seal after seal, and scores of arctic dovekies, or little auks in winter plumage. Though each of the birds gave but four ounces of meat, they were welcomed both as a change of diet and as harbingers of coming spring. The seamen then listened to Tyson's advice and decided to eke out life on one meal a day, owing to the fast-vanishing stock of bread and pemmican.
Cape Mercy, in about 65° north latitude, was now in sight though forty miles distant. Some of the men were ready to heartlessly abandon the natives, owing to the smallness of the sole remaining boat, but Tyson said tactfully that all could go (not must go) when the water was ice-free. Preparations were made, the tent enlarged from spare canvas, the ammunition divided, etc., but ice conditions grew worse instead of better.
March opened with a violent storm, which kept all in their igloos save the indefatigable hunters. Then Ebierbing shot a monster harp seal about nine feet long, the largest that Tyson had ever seen, which gave about seven hundred pounds of its rich, nutritious meat and blubber. So delirious were the quite starved seamen that they rushed at the body, carved out pieces and ate them raw, soon being so frightfully besmeared with blood that they looked like ravenous brutes devouring their prey. The heedless men, who turned to Tyson in all cases of dire distress, now ignored his advice not to eat the liver of the seal, and paid for their imprudence by fits of sickness, fortunately not fatal.
With a persistent, fatuitous belief that they would drift to Disco, the seamen were first aroused to the extreme seriousness of their situation by a most violent gale of sixty hours in which they barely escaped death. As has been said, their igloos were built near the centre of an enormous floe nearly a hundred feet in thickness and fifteen miles in circumference. When the storm began the sea seemed covered by floes of similar size and of equally unbreakable ice. The party again failed to have in mind the many insecure and dangerous icebergs which dotted the ice-plain that covered the sea. Throughout the first night the cracking and breaking of the floes sounded like the firing of heavy artillery and the explosion of high-powered shells. Under stress of anxiety the men passed the second night dressed and ready for the worst.
The howling of the gale, the snow-filled air making everything invisible, the recurring roar of the sea, the sound of splitting floes within a few yards of the igloos, and the awful moaning of the moving pack around them, with the steady grinding of colliding bergs, made it a night of horrors. With the gale ended they found themselves saved almost as by miracle, for though their igloos were safe in the centre of a tiny fragment of the great floe, its area was less than a hundred square yards. Surrounding them were hundreds of icebergs and huge floes of all sizes and shapes inextricably entangled and disrupted. Yesterday they could walk miles on their own floe, now they were confined to a floe-fragment.
Dangerous as was the gale it brought about their safety, for the open pack made seal-hunting more productive. The twenty-three seals which were killed during the succeeding two weeks gave needful food, revived their courage, and renewed their strength. Tyson then arranged to save for emergencies their little remaining bread and pemmican. As they were now off the entrance to Hudson Strait, on the breeding grounds of the seal, their safety as regards food seemed to be assured. But another gale brought fresh and unlooked-for disaster, for while they collided with a large iceberg without destruction they were driven far to the eastward, into the open ocean, where their floe was by itself away from the main ice, with only water in sight.
Tyson knew that separation from the icebergs and floes meant speedy death, and as soon as the sea calmed, April 1, he ordered the party to prepare for the abandonment of the floe. Many objected to leaving their comfortable igloos, with plenty of meat, to seek ice so far to the west that it could not be seen, but they finally obeyed Tyson's orders.
The short-sightedness of the seamen in burning a boat was now evident to all. There were nineteen persons to be crowded into a whale-boat intended for eight. Some of the selfish would have left the natives behind, for taking them meant the leaving behind of nearly all meat and other dead weights. Bread, pemmican, some ammunition, the tent, and sleeping-gear were put in the boat, and with a spirit of loyalty criticised by the seamen, Tyson took on board the desk and records of Captain Hall. If this man lived it would be with honor; if he died it should be with his self-respect. The fearfully overcrowded boat barely escaped swamping several times—saved only through Tyson's skilful seamanship. Some men were so alarmed that in panic they threw overboard seal meat to lighten the boat. Three days of unremitting labor brought them to a floe that seemed solid, which they occupied in face of bad weather.
They had barely put up igloos when an awful gale burst on them, and for four days it was a steady battle against death. Their floe began to crumble under pressure from other bergs, and Ebierbing's hut was carried off as the floe split. Seeking the centre of the ice they built a new igloo, which lasted for the night only. Next day the floe, caught between two giant bergs, burst with a mighty roar, splitting completely in two, the crack running through the floor of the igloo. They were left on a piece of ice so small that they could not make arrangements for all to lie down together. Everything was put into the boat, and all through the night they stood watch, half-and-half, ready to launch her at a moment's notice. Again the floe split while breakfast was being cooked in the tent, the crack running through the tent; the cook escaped but the breakfast fell into the sea. The tent was again pitched alongside the whale-boat. The tent could not shelter all the party, but by turns they got a little sleep.
About midnight there was heard a fearful crash, and, as Hans relates, "The ice which served us as a camping-place parted between the boat on which I slept and the tent. I jumped out to the other side, while that piece on which the boat was placed moved off quickly with Mister Maje [Meyer] who was seated in the boat, and we were separated from it by the water. Our Master [Tyson] asked the sailors to make a boat out of a piece of ice and try to reach it, but they refused. We had never felt so distressed as at this moment, when we had lost our boat. At last I said to my comrade [Ebierbing]: 'We must try to get at it!' Each of us then formed an umiardluk [a bad boat] out of a piece of ice, and in this way passed to the other fragment. As now we were three men we could manage to put the boat into the water. On doing so Mister Maje [Meyer] fell into the sea; Ebierbing pulled him up. Meanwhile the ice had screwed together, and we stood still. At this time night fell, and our companion who had been in the sea, now lying in the boat, was like to freeze to death. I said to my comrade that if he remained so he would really die. When I had spoken we asked him to rise, saying that if he remained he would perish. The first time he rose he tumbled down, but, after having walked a long time, he recovered. At daybreak we discovered our friends close by, and the ice joined together. They came to us and assisted us to drag the boat over to them."
"WE WERE NEARLY CARRIED OFF, BOAT AND ALL, MANY TIMES DURING THIS DREADFUL NIGHT."
From Tyson's "Arctic Experiences."
The crucial trial on the evening of April 20 may best be realized from Tyson's graphic description: "Finally came a tremendous wave, carrying away our tent, skins, and bed-clothing, leaving us destitute. The women and children were already in the boat (Merkut having her tiny baby Charlie Polaris, Inuit-fashion, in the hood of her fur jacket), or the little ones would have been swept into watery graves. All we could do was to try and save the boat. All hands were called to man the boat—to hold on to it with might and main to prevent it being washed away. With our boat warp and strong line of oogjook (seal) thongs we secured the boat to vertical projecting points of ice. Having no grapnels or ice-anchors these fastenings were frequently unloosed and broken, and we had to brace ourselves and hold on with all the strength we had.
"I got the boat over to the edge of our ice where the seas first struck, for toward the farther edge the gathered momentum of the waves would more than master us and the boat would go.... We were nearly carried off, boat and all, many times during this dreadful night. The heaviest seas came at intervals of fifteen to twenty minutes.... There we stood all night long, from 9 P. M. to 7 A. M., enduring what few, if any, have gone through and lived. Tremendous seas would come and lift up the boat bodily, and carry it and us forward almost to the extreme opposite edge of our piece.
"Several times the boat got partly over the edge and was only hauled back by the superhuman strength which a knowledge of the desperate condition its loss would reduce us to gave us. With almost every sea would come an avalanche of ice-blocks in all sizes, from a foot square to the size of a bureau, which, striking our legs and bodies, bowled us off our feet. We were black and blue with bruises for many a day.
"We stood hour after hour, the sea as strong as ever, but we weakening. Before morning we had to make Tookoolito and Merkut [the women] get out and help us hold on too.... That was the greatest fight for life we had yet had. God must have given us strength for the occasion. For twelve hours there was scarcely a sound uttered save the crying of the children and my orders: 'Hold on! Bear down! Put on all your weight!' and the responsive 'ay, ay, sir!' which for once came readily enough."
These awful experiences past, they were rescued ten days later, off the coast of Labrador, by Captain Bartlett of the sealing-steamer Tigress. They had lived on an ice-floe one hundred and ninety-six days and drifted fifteen hundred miles. Through God's providence they were restored to the world in health and without the loss of a life or even of a limb.
His work accomplished, the heroic sailor, Tyson, went back to the every-day things of life without parade or boastings, and in an humble position did well and contentedly the ordinary round of work.
In the difficult and dangerous arctic service herein told Tyson did from day to day what seemed his present duty as best he could without thought of self. Without other ambition than to save the lives of the men, the women, and the children whom Providence had intrusted to his charge, he did not seek but he found fame and good report. Let the youth of our great land note that this is but one of the many cases in our day and generation in which, as Tennyson sings:
"Only action gives life strength."
—Richter.
In 1875 the British arctic expedition steamed northward through Kane Sea in its attempt to reach the north pole. Its commander, Captain George S. Nares, R.N., thought it prudent to insure a safe retreat by establishing a southerly base of operations where one ship should remain. Nares, in the flag-ship Alert, chose the dangerous and exposed winter quarters at Floeberg Beach, an open roadstead of the ice-clad Arctic Ocean at the northern entrance of Robeson Channel. The Discovery, under command of Captain S. F. Stephenson, R.N., was laid up at a sheltered anchorage in Lady Franklin Bay, more than a hundred miles to the southward of the Alert. An attempt to open communication between the two ships by sledge party failed in the autumn of 1875. With the return of the sun in 1876, after an absence of one hundred and fifty days, it became most important to establish communication with the Discovery at the earliest moment. From the Alert there was visible far to the eastward, on clear days, the mountains of northwest Greenland, which Nares wished Stephenson to explore instead of making a sledge trip to the Etah Eskimos to the south as originally planned. The heroic conduct of the officers attempting this journey and their success in saving the life of Petersen are set forth in this tale.
The efficiency of every army and of every navy of the world is known only by the final and supreme test of active service in war, but it is plain that the essential attributes to success—skill, solidarity, and devotion to duty—are acquired in times of peace. Nowhere are greater efforts made to cultivate these admirable qualities than in the royal navy of Great Britain, the most formidable of the world.
Among its chiefs is the second naval lord, whose duties lie especially with the hearts of oak, the men behind the guns, whose courage and skill are the very soul of the service. The second naval lord has in charge the manning and officering of the war-ships; he plans the bringing together at a special place and in a given time the mighty dreadnoughts, the tiny torpedo-boats, the swaying submarines, and the swift destroyers; and he sees that gunnery, marksmanship, and other special training are up to the highest mark. Such a lord should, above all, be a man among men—one inspiring confidence both by knowing when and how times of peril should be met and also through having himself done such service in earlier life.
Such is the life history of Admiral Sir George Le Clerc Egerton, who, passing from a high sea command to duty as the naval aid to his majesty the King, rose a few years since to this lofty station and assumed its important duties. Great as may be the respect and high as can be the admiration of the world for efficient performance of public duties by officials of high station, yet the hearts of sympathetic, tender-hearted men and women are more deeply moved whenever and where-ever they hear a tale of self-sacrifice and of heroic comradeship. Such is the story of this great naval lord, enacted by him as a sub-lieutenant far from the civilized world, on the ice-bound coast of a desolate arctic land, for the safety of an humble dog driver. The nobler the heart the greater is its sense of duty to helpless dependents in deep distress. And more heroic was the work of Lieutenant Egerton, flying his sledge flag, "Tanq je puis (All that I can)," than any done under his stately flag as a naval lord or as admiral of the fleet.
When Captain Nares looked longingly southward from his ship on the Arctic Ocean, wishing in his heart for word of his assistant, he was not blind to the dangers and difficulties of the journey. The preceding September gallant Lieutenant Rawson with strength and courage had pressed on to Cape Rawson. The precipitous cliffs there made a farther journey by land impossible, while the half-open sea was covered with a shifting, ever-moving ice-pack that made the ocean as impassable for a boat as the ice was for a sledge.
Now in late winter the surface of Robeson Channel was covered by a solid, unmoving pack, but the cold was so intense that it could be endured in the field only by men of iron. Day after day the temperature was eighty degrees below the freezing-point, and even when it should moderate the travelling party must be carefully chosen. Rawson was to go as a passenger, for his ship was the Discovery to which he was now to return. Of all available officers Egerton seemed to have physical and mental qualities that promised well. Naturally the dog driver—for they were to travel with a dog-sledge—would have been Eskimo Frederick. In this emergency Niels Christian Petersen offered his services, claiming that his arctic experiences and powers of endurance fitted him for such a journey. A Dane by birth, his years of service in Greenland had made him a skilled dog driver, and experiences with Dr. Hayes in his expedition of 1860 had made him familiar with field service. A vigorous man of forty years, he seemed the best of the three sledgemen for stanch endurance in such ice and weather.
Nares said in his letter of instructions: "In performing this duty in the present cold weather, with the temperature more than seventy-seven degrees below freezing, great caution is necessary." The date of departure was originally fixed for March 4, 1876, the day on which the retiring sun was first clearly seen above the southern hills at 11.30 A. M. The cold was intense, being one hundred and one degrees below the freezing-point. Whiskey placed on the floe froze hard in a few minutes. Egerton's departure was therefore postponed until the prolonged cold ended eight days later.
Meantime it was clear that such awful temperatures would seriously affect the dogs, who were suffering in short exercise marches from the action of the intense cold on the sharp, sand-like snow particles—all separate. Nares relates that in crossing the trails of the dogs near the ship he "noticed, lying on the floe, numerous frozen pellets of blood which always form between the toes of these animals when working during severely cold weather. The heat of the foot causes the snow to ball; this soon changes into ice, and collecting between the toes cuts into the flesh. On board of the Resolute in 1853 we endeavored to fit our dogs with blanket pads on their feet, but these were found to increase the mischief by first becoming damp and then freezing, when the hardened blanket cut into the sinews at the back of the dogs' legs."[16]
On March 12, 1876, Petersen threw forward the long flexible lash of his Eskimo whip, calling sharply to the waiting dogs, and the party dashed off in a temperature of minus thirty degrees. Petersen, Rawson, and Egerton took turns on the sledge, one riding at a time. The others ran behind the sledge, holding fast each to one of the upstanders.[17]
The dogs ran freely with their very light load of fifty-one pounds per animal, for a full load would be about one hundred pounds for each dog. An hour's travel in a cross wind—filled with the fine drift of sand-like snow so common in the arctic—made them all put on their blinkers (face-protectors against the cold, made of carpeting material) to keep their faces from freezing solid. Every care was taken by the watchful Egerton to guard against frost-bites. Each quarter of an hour he stopped the sledge for a moment, when each sledgeman examined the faces of his comrades. Whenever a whitish spot was seen, the warm palm of the bare hand was placed against the frozen flesh which at once thaws.[18]
As closely as possible Egerton followed the favorite line of travel, along the high ice-foot of the bold shore, inside or outside as conditions required. This name is given to the ice-ledge which forms by gradual accretion on the rocks or earth of the shore. As the main sea ice rises and falls with the tides, the ice necessarily breaks near the shore; the inner, fast-adhering ice is known as the ice-foot, the outer ice as the main pack or the floe. The break is in the form of an irregular fissure called the tidal crack. In the period of the spring tides (when the tides have their greatest ranges) the main pack rises at high tide above the ice-foot, and through the tidal crack flows the sea, covering and filling the irregularities of the ice-foot. This overflow freezes, leaving a smooth, level surface particularly favorable for sledge travel until it is broken up by pressure from the moving pack.
Egerton found the ice-foot in good shape for some distance, but now and then was driven to the main floe of Robeson Channel. The ice of the strait was a mass of broken, irregular blocks, often loose in arrangement and sharp in forms. Its surface and the difficulties of travel may be best likened to marching over great blocks of anthracite coal, save that the ice is bluish-white instead of black.
The lieutenant made a short day's march, going early into camp to avoid overworking the unhardened muscles of man and beast—a sound practice followed by wise arctic sledgemen at the beginning of a long journey.
Even in good weather the making of camp is the worst feature of arctic travel. Everything is frozen solid, from the bread to the bacon, from the tent to the sleeping-bags, which become as stiff as a board. Now conditions were worse than usual owing to the increasing violence of the blizzard. With snow-blinded eyes and a high, annoying wind the putting up of the tent was most difficult, but it was finally done. This gave a wind-protected place where the cook could light his lamp, melt his snow for tea, and thaw out the frozen meat.
Meanwhile the two other men unpacked the sledge and removed the articles into the tent. It was found that the driving wind had sifted fine snow into the provision bags, the sleeping-gear, and everything that was at all exposed. It was a necessary but most tedious labor to carefully brush every particle of snow from each article before moving it into the tent. They knew that a neglect so to do would be felt the next morning through coatings of ice over their gear. While the cook was busy the other sledgemen fed and picketed the dogs. If left loose these domesticated wolves might possibly return to their fellows at the ship, where good food and fighting company were to be had. If they remained at the camp a loose dog would swallow down everything in the shape of skin, hide, or food. More than once an arctic "tenderfoot" has wakened to find his means of travel vanished—sledge-thongs and dog harness entirely gone down the capacious throats of his ravenous team. Egerton, alive to the situation, carefully stored harnesses and camp gear in the tent with the provision bags.
So bad was the weather that it took six hours of steady labor to make camp, change foot-gear, cook, eat, and enter their sleeping-bags.
With the night passed on the blizzard, and morning came—clear, calm, and bitter cold. Even in the tent the temperature was forty-two degrees below freezing. Frost-bitten hands, ravenous dogs, slowly melting snow, and the watched pot that never boils made slow the striking of camp. It was five and a half hours after leaving their sleeping-bags before they were getting a spark of warmth into their benumbed limbs by steady travel over the arctic trail. Though it was bitter cold the dogs kept taut their traces and progress was rapid for several hours. From time to time Petersen would sigh, and to Egerton's question, "What is the matter?" answer that it was only a pain that would pass. But Egerton felt anxious, as the Dane fell back now and then, and when he said that the cramps in his stomach were terrible, halt was made in a sheltered spot where the cooking-lamp could be lighted. In a half-hour a bowl of boiling-hot tea was served, the finest known restorative of vigor and warmth in cases of arctic exposure—far surpassing rum, brandy, or any alcoholic stimulant. The Dane ate neither the offered bread nor the bacon, and indeed of the latter Egerton said that it was frozen so solidly that even a well man could not put tooth through the lean parts.
Soon they came to very bad travelling, across steeply inclined snow slopes along the bordering cliffs of the ice-bound sea that they were forced to follow. In one place the trail led to a snow-drift thirty feet across, whose steep seaward face ended on a rocky ledge with a sheer outward fall of about thirty feet. It was clearly impossible to move the sledge across, and, Alpine-glacier fashion, a road was slowly hewn out with pick and axe. In other bad places the loaded sledge plunged headlong from the top of high hummocks into masses of rubble-ice in the intervening valleys. In such work animals are quite useless, for the Eskimo dog pulls hard and steady only under conditions where the sledge moves constantly forward. When once stalled the dog team sits on its haunches, welcoming a rest, and watches events composedly. In such cases the skilled driver untangles the traces, straightens out the team, calls out shrilly, cracks his whip loudly, and, as the dogs spring forward, gives a timely and skilful twist to the upstanders which helps the sledge to a new start. If the sledge does not then move it must be unloaded and the dogs again started, or it must be hauled by man-power to an easier part of the trail.
This exhausting labor fell on the young officers, as Petersen was so sick as to be unable to do his part. Standing around, the Dane began to lose that warmth of vigorous circulation that alone keeps a man alive in arctic cold. When finally the dog driver was seized with fits of spasmodic shivering and his face showed frequent frostings, with bits of seriously frozen flesh, Egerton became greatly alarmed. As they were then making their way through very bad ice, camping at once was impossible. From time to time, however, the officers, quitting the sledge, took the sufferer in hand, and by five or ten minutes of work would get him so thawed out that he could safely go on.
When a good camping-place was reached, though they had travelled only six miles, Egerton at once stopped, hoping that a good night's rest with warm drink and food would bring the Dane around.
The moment that the tent was up Egerton sent Petersen in with directions to change his clothing, get into the sleeping-bag, and make himself comfortable until dinner was ready. Meanwhile the officers unloaded the sledge, picketed the dogs, and cared for the camp gear.
On crawling into the tent Egerton found Petersen groaning, and on examination was shocked to find that he had crawled into the sleeping-bag without changing his clothing. Especially bad was his failure to replace his damp foot-gear by dry socks—a practice of recognized necessity in arctic travel to prevent the feet from freezing at night.
As he was groaning and complaining of much pain, Egerton set to work to relieve him. Finding that both the hands and the feet were severely frost-bitten, the man was made to strip off all his clothing, damp with the sweat of travel, and put on dry undergarments. While Rawson was busy making tea, Egerton set himself to the labor of thawing out the frost and of restoring circulation by chafing the hardened limbs with his bare hands—a long and difficult task. The sick man took a little hot tea, which his stomach would not retain, but a dose of sal volatile (ammonia) with hot rum and water gave temporary relief. A high wind arose and the cold became most bitter, the temperature in the tent falling to fifty-two degrees below the freezing-point. With a cold that would nearly solidify mercury added to their mental troubles, the sufferings of the party were extreme. The hands, face, and feet of the invalid suffered repeated frost-bites, which the devoted officers were hardly able to remove.
Exhausted as they were by the hard and unusual labors of the day, sleeping only by snatches, they took watch and watch to care as best they might for their sick comrade. Suffering extremely themselves from the cold, they spared no efforts to give such personal services as might comfort and benefit him. Again and again they restored circulation to the frozen parts by chafing alternately with their naked hands and by the application of flannel wraps heated by their own bodies. Such a night seemed endless with its cares, its privations, and its anxieties, and unfortunately the continuing gale made it impossible to move when dawn came.
It was with great relief that they learned from the Dane that his cramps had nearly disappeared, after he had taken his breakfast of hot cocoa and soaked biscuit. This gave way to renewed anxiety when a few hours later Petersen was attacked by violent and recurring fits of ague, which they hoped to dispel by wrapping him up closely in all the available robes and flannels.
Egerton no longer thought of going on to the Discovery, as it was now a question whether or not the Dane would perish before he could be got back to the Alert, less than twenty miles distant. While knowing that travel in such a gale would be fatal to one if not to all, it was certain that death would come to the Dane if they remained in the tent with a cold of fifty-six degrees below freezing.
Rawson and Egerton agreed that the only chance of prolonging life lay in building a snow house. Casting about they found conditions unfavorable for a regular hut, and so decided to burrow a refuge hole in a great snow-drift not far from their tent. First they sank a shaft six feet deep to a solid foundation, and thence under-cut a tunnel inward for some distance. At the end of it they hollowed out a space eight feet square and four feet high. This work was intermittently done, as from time to time they had to return to the terrible duty of thawing out and restoring circulation to the limbs of the freezing man. Within six hours, however, they had the shelter done and the Dane removed to it. Both tent and sledge were drawn over the passageways so as to keep the cold air out and the warmth from their bodies within. The cold being still intense, they ran the risk of asphyxiation to insure Petersen's comfort. Closing every crevice through which could come a breath of air, they lighted their cooking-lamp and thus raised the temperature to seven degrees above zero. Fortunately such transpiration of fresh air took place through the snow as saved them from harm.
The day passed in this manner, small quantities of food being taken from time to time by the sick man only to be rejected later. Indeed, the only improvement in his condition seemed to come from those strong and dangerous, though effective, restoratives, rum and ammonia, and these were almost always followed by physical relapses. Answering repeatedly, to inquiries, that he was warm and comfortable, in making him ready for the night they found that his feet were perfectly gelid from the toes to the ankles and that his hands were nearly as benumbed.
Realizing that he was nearly in extremities, Egerton and Rawson renewed their devoted efforts. Each officer took a foot, stripped it naked, and set to work to warm it by rubbing it with their bare hands. When circulation was somewhat restored they applied flannels warmed against their bodies, and replaced them as the used pieces became too cold for service. The hands were similarly restored to warmth after two hours of steady work. When the limbs were wrapped up in thick, dry, and warm coverings they thought that the crisis was over.
During the night Egerton was awakened to find the Dane worse than ever. Quite delirious, he had crawled from his sleeping-bag, began to eat snow, and exposed his uncovered body to the cold. Ague fits attacked him, his breath came in short convulsive gasps, and circulation was almost entirely suspended, even in his body. Then followed the same awful and tedious labor of thawing the man out and of guarding against a repetition of such irrational conduct.
With the coming morn the weather was found to be nearly calm, and to their great surprise the condition of Petersen was somewhat improved.
As it was certain death to remain where they were, Egerton decided to start on the journey to the Alert, seventeen miles distant. Though exceedingly feeble, Petersen thought that he could make the journey, Egerton promptly abandoned everything except tent, sleeping-gear, and food for a single day. Over the first part of the trail—most dangerous for a sledge and very rough—Petersen managed to walk under the stimulation of rum and ammonia. When he fell, prostrate and unconscious, on the icy road and could go no farther, he was put into a sleeping-bag, wrapped in warm robes, and lashed securely to the sledge.
The terrible conditions of the homeward journey must be imagined for they cannot well be described. Once the sledge was precipitated down a crevasse twenty-five feet deep, the sledge turning over and over three times in its descent, hurling the dogs in all directions. With beating hearts the officers scrambled down in haste to Petersen, expecting to find him badly injured, but almost miraculously he had escaped with a few bruises. At another point Egerton, who was driving, stopped the team to clear the harness, a frequent duty, as the antics of the dogs tie up in a sadly tangled knot the seal-thong traces by which the sledge is hauled. With one of its occasional fits of uncontrol, the team started on the jump, and dragged the spirited Egerton, who held fast to the traces, a hundred yards through rough ice-masses before he could gain control.
Whenever a stop was made to clear harness or to pick a way through bad ice, the officers went through the slow and painful duty of thawing out Petersen's limbs. Save a brief stop for hot tea to give warmth to and quench the thirst of the invalid, they travelled ten hours, and when in the last stages of physical exhaustion had the inexpressible happiness of bringing their crippled comrade alive to the Alert.
With a generosity in keeping with his heroic conduct toward Petersen, Egerton ascribed his final success to Rawson's labors, for in his official report he says that high praise is due Lieutenant Rawson "for the great aid derived from his advice and help; without his unremitting exertions and cheerful spirit, my own efforts would have been unavailing to return to the ship with my patient alive."
In these hours of splendid devotion to their disabled comrade these young officers, absolutely disregarding personal considerations, displayed that contempt for external good which Emerson indicates as the true measure of every heroic act.
The second German north polar expedition sailed under Captain Karl Koldewey in 1869, with the intention of landing on the coast of East Greenland, near Sabine Island, whence by winter sledging the explorations of the northern coasts of Greenland and of the north polar basin were to be undertaken. The two ships of the expedition, the Germania and the Hansa, reached by the middle of July the edge of the great ice-pack, which in enormous and generally impenetrable ice-masses streams southward from the Arctic Ocean between Greenland and Spitzbergen. As an accompaniment to this vast ice-field come from the glacier fiords of East Greenland most of the enormous icebergs which are sighted and encountered by transatlantic steamships off the banks of Newfoundland. The ships separating through misunderstanding of a signal, the Germania, a steam-ship, succeeded in working her way through the ice-stream to Sabine Island, where her crew carried out its programme. The Hansa, without steam-power, and so dependent on sails, became entangled in the pack in early August and was never able to escape therefrom. The fate of the Hansa and the experiences of her crew form the subject-matter of this sketch.
Until the Hansa was fast frozen in the pack, on September 9, Captain Hegemann was prepared for any emergency, whether the ship was crushed or if opening lanes of water should permit escape to Sabine Island from which they were only forty miles distant. Completely equipped and victualled boats were kept on deck so that they could be lowered to the ice at any moment.
When the ship was frozen in the captain faced resourcefully the serious question of wintering in the pack. It was known to him that no ship had ever escaped from such wintering in the drifting ice-pack of the Greenland Sea, and indeed the violent and frequently recurring pressures of the ice-field pointed to the early loss of their ship. Life might be possible, but health and comfort could not be had in boats covered with canvas. Cramped quarters, severe cold, damp bedding, and absence of facilities for cooking forbade such an attempt. While others suggested the snow houses of the Eskimo, one fertile mind urged that a living-house be built of coal, which was done.