OFF ACROSS THE FROZEN SEA AT LAST
The work of the expedition, to which all the former months of detail
were merely preliminary, began with Bartlett's departure from the
_Roosevelt_ on the 15th of February for the final sledge journey toward
the Pole. The preceding summer we had driven the ship through the almost
solid ice of the channels lying between Etah and Cape Sheridan; we had
hunted through the long twilight of the autumn to supply ourselves with
meat; we had lived through the black and melancholy months-long arctic
night, sustaining our spirits with the hope of final success when the
returning light should enable us to attack the problem of our passage
across the ice of the polar sea. Now these things were all behind us,
and the final work was to begin.
It was ten o'clock on the morning of February 22d--Washington's
Birthday--when I finally got away from the ship and started on the
journey toward the Pole. This was one day earlier than I had left the
ship three years before on the same errand. I had with me two of the
younger Eskimos, Arco and Kudlooktoo, two sledges and sixteen dogs. The
weather was thick, the air was filled with a light snow, and the
temperature was 31° below zero.
There was now light enough to travel by at ten o'clock in the morning.
When Bartlett had left the ship a week before, it was still so dark that
he had been obliged to use a lantern in order to follow the trail
northward along the ice-foot.
When I finally got away from the ship, there were in the field, for the
northern work, seven members of the expedition, nineteen Eskimos, one
hundred and forty dogs, and twenty-eight sledges. As already stated, the
six advance divisions were to meet me at Cape Columbia on the last day
of February. These parties, as well as my own, had all followed the
regular trail to Cape Columbia, which had been kept open during the fall
and winter by the hunting parties and supply-trains. This trail followed
the ice-foot along the coast the greater part of the way, only taking to
the land occasionally to cut across a peninsula and thus shorten the
road.
On the last day of February Bartlett and Borup got away to the North
with their divisions, as soon as it was light enough to travel. The
weather still remained clear, calm, and cold. After the pioneer division
had started north, all the remaining sledges were lined up, and I
examined them to see that each had the standard load and full equipment.
On leaving the _Roosevelt_ I had in the field exactly enough dogs to put
twenty teams of seven dogs each on the ice, and had counted on doing
this; but while we were at Cape Columbia the throat distemper broke out
in one team, and six dogs died. This left me only enough for nineteen
teams.
My plans were further disarranged by the disabling of two Eskimos. I had
counted on having a pickax brigade, composed of Marvin, MacMillan, and
Dr. Goodsell, ahead of the main party, improving the road, but found
that two Eskimos would be unfit to go on the ice--one having a frosted
heel, and the other a swollen knee. This depletion in the ranks of
sledge drivers meant that Marvin and MacMillan would each have to drive
a dog team, and that the pickax squad would be reduced to one man--Dr.
Goodsell. As it turned out, this did not make much difference. The going
was not so rough in the beginning as I had anticipated, and most of the
pickax work that was required could be done by the drivers of the
sledges as they reached the difficult places.
When I awoke before light on the morning of March 1st, the wind was
whistling about the igloo. This phenomenon, appearing on the very day of
our start, after so many days of calm, seemed the perversity of hard
luck. I looked through the peep-hole of the igloo and saw that the
weather was still clear, and that the stars were scintillating like
diamonds. The wind was from the east--a direction from which I had never
known it to blow in all my years of experience in that region. This
unusual circumstance, a really remarkable thing, was of course
attributed by my Eskimos to the interference of their arch enemy,
Tornarsuk--in plain English, the devil--with my plans.
After breakfast, with the first glimmer of daylight, we got outside the
igloo and looked about. The wind was whistling wildly around the eastern
end of Independence Bluff; and the ice-fields to the north, as well as
all the lower part of the land, were invisible in that gray haze which,
every experienced arctic traveler knows, means vicious wind. A party
less perfectly clothed than we were would have found conditions very
trying that morning. Some parties would have considered the weather
impossible for traveling, and would have gone back to their igloos.
But, taught by the experience of three years before, I had given the
members of my party instructions to wear their old winter clothing from
the ship to Cape Columbia and while there, and to put on the new outfit
made for the sledge journey when leaving Columbia. Therefore we were all
in our new and perfectly dry fur clothes and could bid defiance to the
wind.
One by one the divisions drew out from the main army of sledges and dog
teams, took up Bartlett's trail over the ice and disappeared to the
northward in the wind haze. This departure of the procession was a
noiseless one, for the freezing east wind carried all sounds away. It
was also invisible after the first few moments--men and dogs being
swallowed up almost immediately in the wind haze and the drifting snow.
I finally brought up the rear with my own division, after getting things
into some semblance of order, and giving the two disabled men left at
Cape Columbia their final instructions to remain quietly in the igloo
there, using certain supplies which were left with them until the first
supporting party returned to Cape Columbia, when they were to go back
with it to the ship.
An hour after I left camp my division had crossed the glacial fringe,
and the last man, sledge, and dog of the Northern party--comprising
altogether twenty-four men, nineteen sledges, and one hundred and
thirty-three dogs--was at last on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, about
latitude 83°.
[Illustration: WORKING THROUGH AN EXPANSE OF ROUGH ICE]
Our start from the land this last time was eight days earlier than the
start three years before, six days of calendar time and two days of
distance, our present latitude being about two marches farther north
than Cape Hecla, our former point of departure.
When we were far enough out on the ice to be away from the shelter of
the land, we got the full force of the violent wind. But it was not in
our faces, and as we had a trail which could be followed, even if with
heads down and eyes half closed, the wind did not impede us or cause us
serious discomfort. Nevertheless, I did not like to dwell upon the
inevitable effect which it would have upon the ice farther out--the
opening of leads across our route.
When we dropped off the edge of the glacial fringe onto the pressure
ridges of the tidal crack already described, in spite of the free use of
our pickaxes and the pickaxes of the pioneer division, which had gone
before, the trail was a most trying one for men, dogs, and sledges,
especially the old Eskimo type of sledge. The new "Peary" sledges, by
reason of their length and shape, rode much more easily and with less
strain than the others. Every one was glad to reach the surface of the
old floes beyond this crazy zone of ice which was several miles in
width. As soon as we struck the old floes the going was much better.
There appeared to be no great depth of snow, only a few inches, and this
had been hammered fairly hard by the winter winds. Still the surface
over which we traveled was very uneven, and in many places was
distinctly trying to the sledges, the wood of which was made brittle by
the low temperature, now in the minus fifties. On the whole, however, I
felt that if we encountered nothing worse than this in the first hundred
miles from the land we should have no serious cause for complaint.
[Illustration: PASSING THROUGH A DEFILE IN ROUGH ICE]
A little farther on, while walking alone behind my division, I met
Kyutah of Marvin's division, hurrying back with empty sledge. He had
smashed his sledge so badly that it seemed better to go back to Cape
Columbia for one of the reserve sledges there than to attempt to repair
the broken one. He was cautioned not to waste a minute and to be sure to
overtake us at our camp that night, and he was soon disappearing into
the wind haze in our rear.
Still farther on I met Kudlooktoo, returning on the same errand, and a
little later came upon some of the other divisions that had been obliged
to stop to repair their sledges which had suffered severely in their
encounters with the rough ice.
Finally I reached the captain's first camp, ten miles out. Here I took
one of the two igloos, and Marvin took the other. The divisions of
Goodsell, MacMillan, and Henson were to build their own igloos this
first night. Bartlett and Borup being in advance, would each build an
igloo at every one of their camps. I, being the oldest man in the party,
was to take one of these, and the order of precedence in which the
divisions of Marvin, MacMillan, Goodsell, and Henson were to occupy the
second of the already constructed igloos had been determined by lot at
Columbia, the first lot falling to Marvin. Later, when Bartlett's
division alone was in the lead, there was only one igloo already built
at each camp on the line of march.
The day twilight, which now lasted about twelve hours, had disappeared
entirely by the time the last sledge reached this first camp. It had
been a trying day for the sledges. The new "Peary" type, by reason of
its shape and greater length, had come off best. Though two of these had
suffered minor damages, none of them had been put out of commission. Two
of the old Eskimo type had been smashed completely, and another nearly
so.
The dogs were soon fed, and each division went for supper and rest to
its own igloo, leaving the rugged surface of the ice to the darkness,
and the howling wind and drift. The march had been a somewhat hard one
for me, because, for the first time in sixteen years, the leg which I
had broken in Greenland, in 1891, had been causing me considerable
trouble.
The door of my igloo had scarcely been closed by a block of snow, when
one of Henson's Eskimos came running over, blue with fright, to tell me
that Tornarsuk was in camp, and that they could not light the alcohol in
their new stove. I did not understand this, as the stoves had all been
tested on board ship and had worked to perfection; but I got out and
went over to Henson's igloo, where it appeared that he had used up a
whole box of matches in unsuccessful efforts to light his stove. Our
stoves were of an entirely new design, using no wicks, and a moment's
examination disclosed the trouble. It was so cold that there was no
vaporization from the alcohol, and it would not light directly as at
higher temperatures. A bit of paper dropped into it and lighted was the
solution, and there was no further trouble.
The failure of even one of our alcohol stoves would have seriously
impaired our chances, as the men of that division could not have boiled
the tea which is absolutely necessary for work in those low
temperatures. Kyutah, the Eskimo who had gone back to land with his
broken sledge, came in during the night, but Kudlooktoo failed to put in
an appearance. Thus the end of our first day over the polar ice found
the expedition one man short.