ONLY ONE DAY FROM THE POLE
With every passing day even the Eskimos were becoming more eager and
interested, notwithstanding the fatigue of the long marches. As we
stopped to make camp, they would climb to some pinnacle of ice and
strain their eyes to the north, wondering if the Pole was in sight, for
they were now certain that we should get there this time.
We slept only a few hours the next night, hitting the trail again a
little before midnight between the 3d and 4th of April. The weather and
the going were even better than the day before. The surface of the ice,
except as interrupted by infrequent pressure ridges, was as level as the
glacial fringe from Hecla to Cape Columbia, and harder. I rejoiced at
the thought that if the weather held good I should be able to get in my
five marches before noon of the 6th.
Again we traveled for ten hours straight ahead, the dogs often on the
trot and occasionally on the run, and in those ten hours we reeled off
at least twenty-five miles. I had a slight accident that day, a sledge
runner having passed over the side of my right foot as I stumbled while
running beside a team; but the hurt was not severe enough to keep me
from traveling.
Near the end of the day we crossed a lead about one hundred yards wide,
on young ice so thin that, as I ran ahead to guide the dogs, I was
obliged to slide my feet and travel wide, bear style, in order to
distribute my weight, while the men let the sledges and dogs come over
by themselves, gliding across where they could. The last two men came
over on all fours.
I watched them from the other side with my heart in my mouth--watched
the ice bending under the weight of the sledges and the men. As one of
the sledges neared the north side, a runner cut clear through the ice,
and I expected every moment that the whole thing, dogs and all, would go
through the ice and down to the bottom. But it did not.
This dash reminded me of that day, nearly three years before, when in
order to save our lives we had taken desperate chances in recrossing the
"Big Lead" on ice similar to this--ice that buckled under us and through
which my toe cut several times as I slid my long snowshoes over it. A
man who should wait for the ice to be really safe would stand small
chance of getting far in these latitudes. Traveling on the polar ice,
one takes all kinds of chances. Often a man has the choice between the
possibility of drowning by going on or starving to death by standing
still, and challenges fate with the briefer and less painful chance.
That night we were all pretty tired, but satisfied with our progress so
far. We were almost inside of the 89th parallel, and I wrote in my
diary: "Give me three more days of this weather!" The temperature at the
beginning of the march had been minus 40°. That night I put all the
poorest dogs in one team and began to eliminate and feed them to the
others, as it became necessary.
We stopped for only a short sleep, and early in the evening of the same
day, the 4th, we struck on again. The temperature was then minus 35°,
the going was the same, but the sledges always haul more easily when the
temperature rises, and the dogs were on the trot much of the time.
Toward the end of the march we came upon a lead running north and south,
and as the young ice was thick enough to support the teams, we traveled
on it for two hours, the dogs galloping along and reeling off the miles
in a way that delighted my heart. The light air which had blown from the
south during the first few hours of the march veered to the east and
grew keener as the hours wore on.
I had not dared to hope for such progress as we were making. Still the
biting cold would have been impossible to face by anyone not fortified
by an inflexible purpose. The bitter wind burned our faces so that they
cracked, and long after we got into camp each day they pained us so that
we could hardly go to sleep. The Eskimos complained much, and at every
camp fixed their fur clothing about their faces, waists, knees, and
wrists. They also complained of their noses, which I had never known
them to do before. The air was as keen and bitter as frozen steel.
At the next camp I had another of the dogs killed. It was now exactly
six weeks since we left the _Roosevelt_, and I felt as if the goal were
in sight. I intended the next day, weather and ice permitting, to make a
long march, "boil the kettle" midway, and then go on again without
sleep, trying to make up the five miles which we had lost on the 3d of
April.
During the daily march my mind and body were too busy with the problem
of covering as many miles of distance as possible to permit me to enjoy
the beauty of the frozen wilderness through which we tramped. But at the
end of the day's march, while the igloos were being built, I usually had
a few minutes in which to look about me and to realize the
picturesqueness of our situation--we, the only living things in a
trackless, colorless, inhospitable desert of ice. Nothing but the
hostile ice, and far more hostile icy water, lay between our remote
place on the world's map and the utmost tips of the lands of Mother
Earth.
I knew of course that there was always a _possibility_ that we might
still end our lives up there, and that our conquest of the unknown
spaces and silences of the polar void might remain forever unknown to
the world which we had left behind. But it was hard to realize this.
That hope which is said to spring eternal in the human breast always
buoyed me up with the belief that, as a matter of course, we should be
able to return along the white road by which we had come.
Sometimes I would climb to the top of a pinnacle of ice to the north of
our camp and strain my eyes into the whiteness which lay beyond, trying
to imagine myself already at the Pole. We had come so far, and the
capricious ice had placed so few obstructions in our path, that now I
dared to loose my fancy, to entertain the image which my will had
heretofore forbidden to my imagination--the image of ourselves at the
goal.
We had been very fortunate with the leads so far, but I was in constant
and increasing dread lest we should encounter an impassable one toward
the very end. With every successive march, my fear of such impassable
leads had increased. At every pressure ridge I found myself hurrying
breathlessly forward, fearing there might be a lead just beyond it, and
when I arrived at the summit I would catch my breath with relief--only
to find myself hurrying on in the same way at the next ridge.
At our camp on the 5th of April I gave the party a little more sleep
than at the previous ones, as we were all pretty well played out and in
need of rest. I took a latitude sight, and this indicated our position
to be 89° 25´, or thirty-five miles from the Pole; but I determined to
make the next camp in time for a noon observation, if the sun should be
visible.
[Illustration: CUTTING BLOCKS OF SNOW FOR IGLOOS AT NEXT TO LAST CAMP,
89° 25´ NORTH
(At This Camp It Was Difficult to Find Enough Snow for the Igloos)]
Before midnight on the 5th we were again on the trail. The weather was
overcast, and there was the same gray and shadowless light as on the
march after Marvin had turned back. The sky was a colorless pall
gradually deepening to almost black at the horizon, and the ice was a
ghastly and chalky white, like that of the Greenland ice-cap--just the
colors which an imaginative artist would paint as a polar ice-scape. How
different it seemed from the glittering fields, canopied with blue and
lit by the sun and full moon, over which we had been traveling for the
last four days.
The going was even better than before. There was hardly any snow on the
hard granular surface of the old floes, and the sapphire blue lakes were
larger than ever. The temperature had risen to minus 15°, which,
reducing the friction of the sledges, gave the dogs the appearance of
having caught the high spirits of the party. Some of them even tossed
their heads and barked and yelped as they traveled.
Notwithstanding the grayness of the day, and the melancholy aspect of
the surrounding world, by some strange shift of feeling the fear of the
leads had fallen from me completely. I now felt that success was
certain, and, notwithstanding the physical exhaustion of the forced
marches of the last five days, I went tirelessly on and on, the Eskimos
following almost automatically, though I knew that they must feel the
weariness which my excited brain made me incapable of feeling.
When we had covered, as I estimated, a good fifteen miles, we halted,
made tea, ate lunch, and rested the dogs. Then we went on for another
estimated fifteen miles. In twelve hours' actual traveling time we made
thirty miles. Many laymen have wondered why we were able to travel
faster after the sending back of each of the supporting parties,
especially after the last one. To any man experienced in the handling of
troops this will need no explanation. The larger the party and the
greater the number of sledges, the greater is the chance of breakages or
delay for one reason or another. A large party cannot be forced as
rapidly as a small party.
[Illustration: THE HALT FOR LUNCH IN LAST FORCED MARCH, 89° 25´ TO 89°
57´, SHOWING ALCOHOL STOVES IN SNOW SHELTER
Left to Right: Henson, Egingwah, Ootah, Seegloo, Ooqueah]
Take a regiment, for instance. The regiment could not make as good an
average daily march for a number of forced marches as could a picked
company of that regiment. The picked company could not make as good an
average march for a number of forced marches as could a picked file of
men from that particular company; and this file could not make the same
average for a certain number of forced marches that the fastest traveler
in the whole regiment could make.
So that, with my party reduced to five picked men, every man, dog, and
sledge under my individual eye, myself in the lead, and all recognizing
that the moment had now come to let ourselves out for all there was in
us, we naturally bettered our previous speed.
When Bartlett left us the sledges had been practically rebuilt, all the
best dogs were in our pack, and we all understood that we must attain
our object and get back as quickly as we possibly could. The weather was
in our favor. The average march for the whole journey from the land to
the Pole was over fifteen miles. We had repeatedly made marches of
twenty miles. Our average for five marches from the point where the last
supporting party turned back was about twenty-six miles.