BACK TO LAND AGAIN
We had now reached the neighborhood of the "Big Lead" which had held us
in check so many days on the upward journey and which had nearly cost
the lives of my entire party in 1906. I anticipated trouble, therefore,
in the march of April 20-21, and I was not disappointed. Although the
"Big Lead" was frozen over we found that Bartlett on his return had lost
the main trail here and did not find it again. For the rest of the ice
journey, therefore, we were compelled to follow the single trail made by
Bartlett instead of our well beaten outward trail. I could not complain.
We had kept the beaten road back to within some fifty miles of the land.
For me this was the most uncomfortable march of the entire trip. It was
made following a sleepless night in a cold igloo. For all that my
clothes were wet with perspiration, my jaw and head throbbed and burned
incessantly, though toward the end of the march I began to feel the
effects of the quinine I had taken, and not long after we reached the
captain's igloo the worst of the symptoms had departed. But it was hard
drilling that day, and our troubles were in no way lessened by the fact
that the dogs seemed utterly without energy or spirit.
The beautiful weather which had accompanied us for several days still
continued on the next day. It was really a surprising stretch of
splendid weather. We marched six hours, then stopped for luncheon, and
then drilled along for six hours more. Repeatedly we passed fresh tracks
of bear and hare, together with numerous fox tracks. Save for these, the
march was uneventful, with the exception of two narrow leads which we
crossed over thin young ice. All that day the sun was hot and blinding
to an almost intolerable degree. It would have been practically
impossible to travel with the sun in our faces, so fierce were its rays.
Yet all this day the temperature ranged between 18° and 30° below zero.
The last day's journey before we reached shore began at 5 P.M. in that
same brilliant, clear, calm weather. A short distance from camp we
encountered an impracticable lead which the captain's trail crossed. In
one fruitless attempt to pass it we got one of our teams in the water.
Ultimately the lead swung to the east, and we found the captain's trail,
took it up, and worked around the end of the lead.
[Illustration: APPROACHING THE PEAKS OF CAPE COLUMBIA OVER THE SURFACE
OF THE "GLACIAL FRINGE"]
Only a short distance further on we got our first glimpse of the edge of
the glacial fringe ahead of us and stopped our march long enough to take
some photographs. Before midnight that night the whole party had reached
the glacial fringe of Grant Land. We had now left the ice of the polar
sea and were practically on _terra firma_. When the last sledge came to
the almost vertical edge of the glacier's fringe I thought my Eskimos
had gone crazy. They yelled and called and danced until they fell from
utter exhaustion. As Ootah sank down on his sledge he remarked in
Eskimo: "The devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife or we
should never have come back so easily." We stopped long enough for a
leisurely luncheon with tea _ad libitum_ and then pressed on until Cape
Columbia was reached.
[Illustration: CRANE CITY AT CAPE COLUMBIA, ON THE RETURN]
It was almost exactly six o'clock on the morning of April 23 when we
reached the igloo of "Crane City" at Cape Columbia and the work was
done. Here I wrote these words in my diary:
"My life work is accomplished. The thing which it was intended from the
beginning that I should do, the thing which I believed could be done,
and that I could do, I have done. I have got the North Pole out of my
system after twenty-three years of effort, hard work, disappointments,
hardships, privations, more or less suffering, and some risks. I have
won the last great geographical prize, the North Pole, for the credit of
the United States. This work is the finish, the cap and climax of nearly
four hundred years of effort, loss of life, and expenditure of fortunes
by the civilized nations of the world, and it has been accomplished in a
way that is thoroughly American. I am content."
[Illustration: BACK ON THE "GLACIAL FRINGE"
(Land Ice of Grant Land Near Cape Columbia, April 23, 1909)]
Our return from the Pole was accomplished in sixteen marches, and the
entire journey from land to the Pole and back again occupied fifty-three
days, or forty-three marches. It had been, as a result of our experience
and perfected clothing and equipment, an amazingly comfortable return as
compared with previous ones, but a little difference in the weather
would have given us a different story to tell. There was no one in our
party who was not delighted to have passed the treacherous lead and
those wide expanses of young thin ice where a gale would have put an
open sea between us and the land and rendered our safe return hazardous,
to say the least.
In all probability no member of that little party will ever forget our
sleep at Cape Columbia. We slept gloriously for practically two days,
our brief waking intervals being occupied exclusively with eating and
with drying our clothes.
Then for the ship. Our dogs, like ourselves, had not been hungry when we
arrived, but simply lifeless with fatigue. They were different animals
now, and the better ones among them stepped out with tightly curled
tails and uplifted heads, their iron legs treading the snow with
piston-like regularity and their black muzzles every now and then
sniffing the welcome scent of the land.
[Illustration: EGINGWAH BEFORE STARTING ON THE SLEDGE TRIP]
[Illustration: EGINGWAH AFTER THE RETURN FROM THE TRIP]
[Illustration: OOTAH BEFORE STARTING ON THE SLEDGE TRIP]
[Illustration: OOTAH AFTER THE RETURN FROM THE SLEDGE TRIP]
(The Portraits at the Left Were Made by Flashlight on the _Roosevelt_
Before the Journey.
Those on the Right Were Taken Immediately After the Return)
We reached Cape Hecla in one march of forty-five miles and the
_Roosevelt_ in another of equal length. My heart thrilled as, rounding
the point of the cape, I saw the little black ship lying there in its
icy berth with sturdy nose pointing straight to the Pole.
And I thought of that other time three years before when, dragging our
gaunt bodies round Cape Rawson on our way from the Greenland coast, I
thought the _Roosevelt's_ slender spars piercing the brilliant arctic
sunlight as fair a sight as ever I had seen. As we approached the ship I
saw Bartlett going over the rail. He came out along the ice-foot to meet
me, and something in his face told me he had bad news even before he
spoke.
"Have you heard about poor Marvin?" he asked.
"No," I answered.
Then he told me that Marvin had been drowned at the "Big Lead," coming
back to Cape Columbia. The news staggered me, killing all the joy I had
felt at the sight of the ship and her captain. It was indeed a bitter
flavor in the cup of our success. It was hard to realize at first that
the man who had worked at my side through so many weary months under
conditions of peril and privation, to whose efforts and example so much
of the success of the expedition had been due, would never stand beside
me again. The manner of his death even will never be precisely known. No
human eye was upon him when he broke through the treacherous young ice
that had but recently closed over a streak of open water. He was the
only white man in the supporting party of which he was in command and
with which he was returning to the land at the time he met his death. As
was customary, on breaking camp he had gone out ahead of the Eskimos,
leaving the natives to break camp, harness the dogs, and follow. When he
came to the "Big Lead," the recent ice of which was safe and secure at
the edges, it is probable that, hurrying on, he did not notice the
gradual thinning of the ice toward the center of the lead until it was
too late and he was in the water. The Eskimos were too far in the rear
to hear his calls for help, and in that ice-cold water the end must have
come very quickly. He who had never shrunk from loneliness in the
performance of his duty had at last met death alone.
Coming along over the trail in his footsteps, the Eskimos of his
party came to the spot where the broken ice gave them the first hint of
the accident. One of the Eskimos said that the back of Marvin's fur
jacket was still visible at the top of the water, while the condition of
the ice at the edge seemed to indicate that Marvin had made repeated
efforts to drag himself from the water, but that the ice was so thin
that it had crumbled and broken beneath his weight, plunging him again
into the icy water. He must have been dead some time before the Eskimos
came up. It was, of course, impossible for them to rescue the body,
since there was no way of their getting near it. Of course they knew
what had happened to Marvin; but with childish superstition peculiar to
their race they camped there for a while on the possibility that he
might come back. But after a time, when he did not come back, Kudlooktoo
and "Harrigan" became frightened. They realized that Marvin was really
drowned and they were in dread of his spirit. So they threw from the
sledge everything they could find belonging to him, that the spirit, if
it came back that way, might find these personal belongings and not
pursue the men. Then they hurried for the land as fast as they could go.
Quiet in manner, wiry in build, clear of eye, with an atmosphere of
earnestness about him, Ross G. Marvin had been an invaluable member of
the expedition. Through the long hot weeks preceding the sailing of the
_Roosevelt_, he worked indefatigably looking after the assembling and
delivery of the countless essential items of our outfit, until he,
Bartlett, and myself were nearly exhausted. On the northern voyage he
was always willing and ready, whether for taking an observation on deck
or stowing cargo in the hold. When the Eskimos came aboard, his good
humor, his quiet directness, and his physical competence gained him at
once their friendship and respect. From the very first he was able to
manage these odd people with uncommon success.
Later, when face to face with the stern problems of life and work in the
arctic regions, he met them quietly, uncomplainingly, and with a steady,
level persistence that could have but one result, and I soon came to
know Ross Marvin as a man who would accomplish the task assigned to him,
whatever it might be. The tidal and meteorological observations of the
expedition were his particular charge, while, during the long dark
winter night, his mathematical training enabled him to be of great
assistance in working out problems of march formation, transportation
and supplies, and arrangements of the supporting parties. In the spring
sledge campaign of 1906 he commanded a separate division. When the great
storm swept the polar sea and scattered my parties hopelessly in a chaos
of shattered ice, Marvin's division, like my own farther north, was
driven eastward and came down upon the Greenland coast, whence he
brought his men safely back to the ship. From this expedition he
returned trained in arctic details and thoroughly conversant with the
underlying principles of all successful work in northern regions, so
that when he went north with us in 1908, he went as a veteran who could
absolutely be depended upon in an emergency.
[Illustration: MEMORIAL ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF PROFESSOR ROSS G.
MARVIN, AT CAPE SHERIDAN]
The bones of Ross G. Marvin lie farther north than those of any other
human being. On the northern shore of Grant Land we erected a cairn of
stones, and upon its summit we placed a rude tablet inscribed: "In
Memory of Ross G. Marvin of Cornell University, Aged 34. Drowned April
10, 1909, forty-five miles north of C. Columbia, returning from 86° 38´
N. Lat." This cenotaph looks from that bleak shore northward toward the
spot where Marvin met his death. His name heads that glorious roll-call
of arctic heroes among whom are Willoughby, Franklin, Sontag, Hall,
Lockwood, and others who died in the field, and it must be some
consolation to those who grieve for him that his name is inseparably
connected with the winning of that last great trophy for which, through
nearly four centuries, men of every civilized nation have suffered and
struggled and died.
The Eskimos of whom Marvin was in command at the time he lost his life
fortunately overlooked, in throwing Marvin's things upon the ice, a
little canvas packet on the up-standers of the sledge containing a few
of his notes, among them what is probably the last thing he ever wrote.
It is so typical of the man's intelligent devotion to his duty that it
is here appended as he wrote it. It will be seen that it was written on
the very day that I last saw him alive, that day upon which he turned
back to the south from his farthest north.
"March 25, 1909. This is to certify that I turned
back from this point with the third supporting
party, Commander Peary advancing with nine men in
the party, seven sledges with the standard loads,
and sixty dogs. Men and dogs are in first class
condition. The captain, with the fourth and last
supporting party, expects to turn back at the end
of five more marches. Determined our latitude by
observations on March 22, and again to-day, March
25. A copy of the observations and computations is
herewith enclosed. Results of observations were as
follows: Latitude at noon, March 22, 85° 48´
north. Latitude at noon, March 25, 86° 38´ north.
Distance made good in three marches, fifty minutes
of latitude, an average of sixteen and two-thirds
nautical miles per march. The weather is fine,
going good and improving each day.
"ROSS G. MARVIN,
"_College of Civil Engineering_,
_Cornell University_."
With a sad heart I went to my cabin on the _Roosevelt_. Notwithstanding
the good fortune with which we had accomplished the return, the death of
Marvin emphasized the danger to which we had all been subjected, for
there was not one of us but had been in the water of a lead at some time
during the journey.
Despite the mental depression that resulted from this terrible news
about poor Marvin, for twenty-four hours after my return I felt
physically as fit as ever and ready to hit the trail again if necessary.
But at the end of twenty-four hours the reaction came, and it came with
a bump. It was, of course, the inevitable result of complete change of
diet and atmosphere, and the substitution of inaction in place of
incessant effort. I had no energy or ambition for anything. Scarcely
could I stop sleeping long enough to eat, or eating long enough to
sleep. My ravenous appetite was not the result of hunger or short
rations, for we had all had plenty to eat on the return from the Pole.
It was merely because none of the ship's food seemed to have the
satisfying effect of pemmican, and I could not seem to hold enough to
satisfy my appetite. However, I knew better than to gorge myself and
compromised by eating not much at a time, but at frequent intervals.
Oddly enough, this time there was no swelling of the feet or ankles and
in three or four days we all began to feel like ourselves. Anyone who
looks at the contrasted pictures of the Eskimos, taken before and after
the sledge trip, will realize, perhaps, something of the physical strain
of a journey to the Pole and back, and will read into the day-by-day
narrative of our progress all the details of soul-racking labor and
exhaustion which at the time we had been obliged stoically to consider
as a part of the day's work, in order to win our goal.
One of the first things done after reaching the ship and bringing our
sleep up to date was to reward the Eskimos who had served us so
faithfully. They were all fitted out with rifles, shotguns, cartridges,
shells, reloading tools, hatchets, knives, and so on, and they behaved
like so many children who had just received a boundless supply of toys.
Among the things I have given them at various times, none are more
important than the telescopes, which enable them to distinguish game in
the distance. The four who stood with me at the Pole were to receive
whale-boats, tents, and other treasures when I dropped them at their
home settlements along the Greenland coast on the southward journey of
the _Roosevelt_.