KROCKER LAND RIM
On the fourth day came another change, for in these haunts of the snow
gods and the ice gods the shadow of storm darkens quickly, and if these
deities descend to earth they wrap themselves thickly in shades and
mists and white trailing togas, or else they just blow upon the earth
their coldest breath, killing all human life, lest they be seen of men.
That strange Arctic hush, the misty light over everything, that grayish
white light caused by the reflexion from the ice being cast high into
the air against masses of vapor, that Nansen has described, encompassed
us. A mist, a fog, rose later, or else descended, and Goritz said we
were near land, in which I concurred. Our excitement was intense. Was
the great revelation to be vouchsafed?
The fog of fogs grew, advancing upon us from the four points of the
compass, rising around us from the water like spectres, descending from
the skies in soft, insensible folds, buried in the thickening nebula,
until, we could hardly see an arm’s length in front of the boat. Then a
chill came with it, light breezes from the northwest (“From land,” said
Goritz) and then as if some resistance from the east was roused into
action, another tempest gathered there, rushing ravenously upon us with
a blind rage, with wrack and cloud, with rain and snow, the last
interference of the elements to destroy us, before the secret of the
north was revealed—a senseless protest, for their madness only flung us
swiftly forward to the forbidden coasts.
The “Pluto” plunged and rolled; her rounded, swollen bottom made her an
easy prey to the balloting waves, and unless she could be kept in the
wind her overturn seemed certain with ourselves spilled into the
distracted waters. It was hard to do this, hard to stick to her deck at
all, when every now and then some vicious poke sent her across, and we
would cling like barnacles to rope or rail or stanchion. The tiller was
jerked from Goritz’s hand and its arm dealt him a blow that almost
disabled him. I was pitched headlong on the forward deck and narrowly
escaped rolling overboard; some of the cargo aboveships slipped its
fastenings and was lost, threatening the dislocation of everything. This
danger was too serious, and Hopkins and I did our best to avert it, but
do what we could or might, the load was crumbling away before our eyes,
loosened from its fastenings by the fierce storm. Box after box
disappeared in the gloom. The dogs were hustled into the cabin, whence
their howls and terrified whines issued like the cries of lost souls. We
were now pretty well alarmed, and our predicament strongly resembled the
prelude to complete annihilation.
Suddenly the Professor shouted, “The ice—the ice again!” and the next
instant we were pinned in a pack of formidable blocks that thundered
around us, lodged on our deck, and beat into ruins, as the waves lurched
or hurled them over us, the frail battlement of boxes which contained
our supplies. My heart sank within me. EVERYTHING GONE! Not quite. There
was something left in the cabin, but on that raging waste of waters—?
The question stuck in my throat. In that instant I seemed separated,
sundered from all the others, the concentrated agony of my terror—for
terror black and paralyzing it was—robbed me almost of consciousness.
Almost as in a trance I heard Hopkins cry, “Look! Look!”
Something happened. Actually it was a meteorological phenomenon brought
about by the proximity of mountain masses perhaps; to my mind it seemed
like the visible extension of the hand of God to pluck us from
destruction. Above us appeared a bright spot that was widening rapidly;
the motion within it was apparent, and the velocity of the atmospheric
rotations within it must have been almost incalculable. It was becoming
a monstrous orifice into which poured the abominable chaos that was
overwhelming us; its enormous vortex swallowed up the storm, transferred
in its outrageous coursing from earth to heaven. The deity of Krocker
Land favored our approach. He had rebuked, repelled, dissipated the
tempest.
The scenic shock was really tremendous. The dramatic intensity of the
change, the startling evolution from storm and darkness, blistering
winds, soaked with snow and rain, the earth-driven rolling clouds, black
and gray, tossed over us and engulfing us in blankets of cold wetness
that sent shivering thrills of dread through our bodies, as the waves
mounted and pounced on us like beasts of ravin! And then this
magnificent uplift! Oh, the calm, superhuman glory of it! The shattered
_debris_ of the broken tornado vanishing above us, and—as its myriad
shaped or distorted curtains rose—the sunlit dark mountain peaks, the
bare rocky crags, jeweled with snow, the ice-strewn beaches of Krocker
Land, evolving superbly before our eyes, as if created then, at that
very moment, by the transfiguring finger of the Almighty. Mr. Link, it
was the most sublime spectacle imaginable; for me it was the climax of
my life. I shall never forget its wonder, its power, its amazing
enforcement of the idea of creation.
I don’t think there was much difference between any of us in our
feelings at that moment; its immensity appalled us in a way, and then it
thrilled us. Temperamental details were submerged in the overpowering
sensation. At first perhaps we thought it an apparition, a mirage. It
was unreal. And then when the realization was acknowledged, to put it
bluntly, we gazed in stupid astonishment. We were about four miles away,
when the vision broke, standing on our deck, from which every vestige of
our supplies had been carried off by the ruthless wind and water. I
believe we stood that way for a quarter of an hour, before we quite came
to our senses, with the waves and wind still driving us headlong on that
apocryphal beach. Then we began to take notice and to take precautions.
The shore was partially encumbered with shore ice, and the lashing waves
were throwing upon it other small and large fragments. The coast was
low, sandy, shelving, cut up by a few projecting and sand buried ridges
of rock, which, like spurs, passed back into the interior, and may have
been the outspread roots of the looming ranges beyond and behind them.
Goritz managed to direct the launch upon a flat expanse of sand on which
we landed with a thud that made the timbers creak. I think the Professor
was the first to leap ashore, then Hopkins and myself, and at the last
Goritz, with the painter. The next wave drove the boat further up the
beach. Nothing now could budge her. Somehow we looked then to Goritz for
orders.
“Better get everything out, and take an account of stock. This is good
enough camping ground, until we get our bearings and perhaps a little
better hold on our wits. I hope the Professor’s faunas are expecting
us.”
This oblique hint to the loss of our provisions dampened any ardor we
might have succumbed to, in our enthusiasm over the discovery. We set to
work with a will, and almost without a word. There were some welcome
surprises. The dogs were safe, sound asleep in the cabin, exhausted by
their fright. They became a solicitude, however, because of the
additional mouths to fill, though, in a state of idleness, half rations
would keep them well. But would we need them? Our ammunition and guns
were safe, our oil and stove, alcohol, medical outfit, and six boxes of
canned vegetables, pemmican, biscuit, tea, coffee, chocolate, in all
perhaps three hundred pounds; and our spare clothing, for which we
offered fervent thanks. One sledge was saved from the wreck, and one
bruised and broken kayak. The portable tent was uninjured, and there
remained a serviceable equipment of cans and pots, though for that
matter one can for the preparation of our tea and coffee or chocolate,
and one pot for miscellaneous stews, soups, and what Hopkins called
“_hari-kari_,” were all we needed. The watertight cabin had saved much.
When the review was finished, and we felt cheered over the immediate
prospect, we drew up the “Pluto” on the beach, anchored her, as well as
we could, and converted her into our camp. We were clamorously hungry
and the dogs were raging. The Professor wasted no time, though just now
the allowances were rigorously measured. It might be better when we
caught sight of the Professor’s “concentrated reflexion of the
palearctic and neoarctic faunas.” At the moment a sublime solitude
surrounded us. Yet I had noticed high up on the shoulders of the rock
and in the slight subsidences that like saucers lay at their bases, the
growth of plants, and the quick eye of the Professor had noted it too.
Surely that meant game. I guess we both understood that, for the
Professor worked over his fires and vessels with a boyish profusion of
activity, and was inclined to be lavish in his ingredients (Goritz,
watchful and prudent, stopped him), while something like elation sprang
up within me and an utterly inappropriate yearning to sing and laugh and
dance.
I remembered Mikkelsen’s and Iversen’s joy when they descended from the
cold monotony and whiteness and treachery of the inland ice of Greenland
to the habitable earth with its flowers, and life, and warmth. With
Mikkelsen too vegetation had meant animal life. They seemed inseparable
correlates. In Greenland it had been pygmy willow trees, six inches
high, with trunks an inch thick, and blades of grass, and thick moss,
and beautiful heather, and then—musk ox!
What it was here would be disclosed as soon as the evening meal was
finished. We had all been curiously dumb since we had been thrown
ashore, that is, there had been no reference made to our wonderful
landfall. Perhaps we were speechless from sheer amazement, or some
haunting dread that our return was impossible, or that we were on the
margin, as it were, of bigger marvels. I think the latter feeling made
us almost mute. Our fancies before we left Point Barrow had been
high-strung and the visions wrought in our minds were almost mystical—I
have explained that—but these had very completely vanished during the
last days of turmoil and disaster, when the wonders we expected to
encounter were more likely to have been found in another world than in
this one. Yet you see they really had not vanished, they had shrunk
somewhat, retreating into invisibility in the crevices and holes of the
mind, and now when the stupendous reality confronted us they rushed out
from hiding, huger than ever, smothering us into silence with their
immensity! A new World, what might not be in it? It was Hopkins who
broke the trance that imprisoned us.
“That transformation took the gilt off any lightning-change stunt I ever
have seen and—Of course, Professor, there isn’t any guess coming that
we’ve ARRIVED, that this is Krocker Land?” he said suddenly.
“Not the slightest,” answered the Professor, filling our cups with
chocolate, and in a matter of fact way that was final.
“We have absolutely reached a New Continent. Everything confirms that:
Latitude, longitude, direction from Point Barrow, and the topography. It
isn’t Wrangel or Herschel or Harold or Bennett, or any part of the Franz
Josef Archipelago. That splendid fringe of peaks hides inner valleys
that decline into a central area of warmth, light and Life!”
I really think that we believed him. The glorious extravagance of the
prediction, its superb audacity, its anomalous improbability subjugated
us totally, because our startled expectations would be satisfied with
little else. That was the psychology of it. And Mr. Link, the Professor
was right. LISTEN!
Our position was on a flat, shelving coast, slowly rising to foothills,
beyond which gaunt bare precipices towered apparently to uplands, from
which soared the sharp serrations of a continuous cordillera. It made a
noble picture. Snow covered the higher elevations, it lay in drifts in
the lower chasms, it formed a light covering on the tableland but failed
to approach nearer to the shore, which was a series of sand or rubble
flats, embedding low backs, pointed mounds, and dikes of diabase. Only
at one point was a glacier visible. To the north, almost at the limit of
vision we could see the glittering ribbon high up in the mountains. The
days were shortening, and although the sun remained for most of the time
above the horizon, nightfall was marked by its declination, when a
peculiar tawny golden glow filled the air. The mountains were striped
with light and shade, half roseate, half black as ink; the highlands
were also in gloom, and between both the foothills made a beaded girdle
of whiteness like a necklace of gigantic pearls on the dusky neck of an
Ethiopian.
There was no question of turning back. An unappeasable hunger for
discovery filled us. What lay beyond those pearly pinnacles? WHAT? Our
plans were quickly laid. There was call for expedition, for the Arctic
night was coming, and while sincerely, with three of us, some
inexplicable provision seemed imminent for its replacement, Antoine
Goritz resisted our madness at that point, and told us that if this was
a dead world, nothing but the _dogs_ would save us from death; our
_retreat would have to be over the frozen polar sea_.
The first step was to find game: Seal, walrus, bear, ox, hare, anything.
We divided into two skirmishing parties, Hopkins and I going to the
right, Goritz and the Professor to the left. The dogs were tethered, and
fastened to the launch. The Professor and myself had already collected
some of the plants. How radiant and beautiful they seemed in that still
untrodden asylum, the little green-leaved willows, a saxifrage, the
yellow mountain poppy of Siberia (_Papaver nudicaule_), forget-me-nots,
cloud berry, and in the boggy hollows cottongrass, spreading its wavy
down carpet, while here and there tiny forests of bluebells swung their
campanulate corollas! The cold pure waters of the snows fed these alpine
gardens, and we even detected the hum of insects amid the variegated
patches of delicious bloom. Game? “Well I should smile,” shouted
Hopkins.
Hopkins and I, in splendid spirits, made our way to the upland, a
distance of some five miles, and then through the snow, watching the
slopes of the foothills that made ideal pasturages for the musk ox, if
these “artiodactyls,” as the Professor rather pompously spoke of them,
were here at all. We had not gone far when up a ravine, where narrow
meadows and boulder strewn intervals conducted, between two steep hills,
a cascading stream, breaking from the craggy cliffs beyond, Hopkins
espied a little herd of four cows, two calves, and a bull. Were they
musk oxen? The horns looked different.
Hopkins skipped in glee, and, with his usual recourse to verse
(preferably Lewis Carroll’s), he hoarsely whispered:
“‘What’s this? I pondered. Have I slept
Or can I have been drinking?
But soon a gentler feeling crept
Upon me, and I sat and wept
An hour or so like winking.’
“Erickson, my pop first. I’ll forego the tears. Stalk them up to
windward.”
The animals had not noticed our vicinity, although grazing and leisurely
approaching us. We finally squatted behind a rock, and just a half hour
later, as they reached the edge of the mimic field we fired. Hopkins
stretched out the bull; it sank majestically to its knees, its head
drooped, something like a groan escaped its throat, and it fell
sideways. I was not so fortunate, nor skillful. I wounded one of the
cows, but there was no attempt at escape. The herd pressed together,
stamping a little but almost motionless, as if paralyzed with terror, or
robbed of volition by curiosity. Hopkins let fly again and my wounded
cow glided to the ground. My second shot was fatal, and another helpless
brute succumbed. Then as if stricken with a sudden consciousness of
their danger, the rest of the herd trotted off, spared further
decimation. Our larder would be well replenished, and we both knew now,
with an unshaken conviction, that we were in a land of plenty.
“We should worry!” sniffed Hopkins sententiously. When we reached our
quarry I was amazed to note the peculiar narrowness and elevation of the
horns of the bull, and the dirty gray maculations on the black hair of
the pelage.
“A new species, Spruce,” I exclaimed.
“Well then,” he replied, “here’s where the Professor rings up the
curtain on the textbooks, and—Say Alfred!—as I had first blood, and
bagged the bull, why not hand it out as _Bos hopkinsi_?”
“By all means,” I assented. When we got back, and we did not return
empty handed we found Goritz and the Professor. They looked a little
dispirited but our report put such a pleasant aspect on things that they
quickly recovered. They had found nothing, but that was due to the
pertinacity of the Professor in carrying Goritz off on a tour of
investigation. They had crossed the tableland and had threaded their way
half across the foothills, until they met the frowning crags skirting
the mountain terrain. These were seamed with waterfalls pouring into
some encircling canon below them, which again formed a channel for the
escape of the gathered floods, but whither they went was undetermined.
It was evident that the water of the streams came from the melting
snowbanks lingering higher up on the mountains, and that the region was
one of very heavy precipitation.
Goritz insisted on bringing in the meat, and indeed our mouths watered
for a juicy steak. The dogs were fed, and these insatiable beasts
ravenously devoured the pieces we threw to them, until Goritz, fearing
their consequent lethargy, drove them off half frantic, harnessed them,
and accompanied by me took the sledge to our depot; returned with the
carcasses and skins and ushered in a memorable night, lit by the futile
rivalry of sun and moon.
There was first our supper when the Captain permitted a relaxation of
his restriction, and the Professor plunged into the resources of our
slender commissariat with a most reprehensible _abandon_. I believe we
washed down our steak with _Eulenthaler_, a few bottles of which had
still survived our perils. Then there was the Professor’s ecstasy over
the new species of _Bos_, for such it was, and his delighted acceptance
of Hopkins’ patronymic for its technical name. And then—our Council of
War; war on the Unknown, the Mysteries of this new land, the perils
before us, and those that might await us beyond those slumbering
virginal crests, from whose pinnacles even now the clustering genii of
the realm watched our intrusion with scorn and hatred!
Our debate was a little disputatious. Goritz was quite immovably for
returning that winter, executing as much of a littoral survey as we
could, to return another season with an equipped expedition, trusting to
get back to Barrow, with the dogs, sledge, kayak and launch, and with
meat stores from the _Bos hopkinsi_. The Professor vehemently and
feverishly protested. Here we were on the brink of world-convulsing
wonders. To decline the invitation so miraculously extended to us was
flying in the face of all recorded traditions of exploration. It was an
ignominious flight from insignificant dangers. He knew that beyond that
portentous circle of peaks lay an inverted cone holding within it warmth
and civilization.
I think Goritz felt the appeal, but he was sagacious, a prudent man, and
had no vainglorious desire to appropriate the forthcoming discoveries,
which the Professor gloated over, for himself. He shook his head
energetically. Then Spruce Hopkins, who with myself had only interjected
questions and inquiring comments, and who with me was fascinated by the
Professor’s predictions and promises, suggested a compromise.
“My friends, I’m sort o’ on the outside of this argument, though I guess
my skin will get as much punishment, either way, as any one of you.
Can’t you come to terms on this easy ground? Get up there,” and he waved
his hand towards the serene splendid domes in their terrible beauty far
above us, “and if the land goes _down_, as we might say _hole-wise_,
we’ll stick, but if it goes straight, level, or _up_, why we’ll beat it
home again. That’s sense Goritz, and I guess, Professor, it’s philosophy
too.”
This jocularity relieved the tension superbly, and whether Goritz and
the Professor were quite clear as to how the provision should be
interpreted, Goritz consented to make the attempt to reach “the rim,” as
the Professor called it.
The next days were days of anxious preparation. It was no child’s play
scaling that natural fortress, and within its labyrinth of parapets,
bastions, moats, and demi-lunes, ramparts and ditches what unforeseen
dangers lurked! Our chief concern was our stores; the inroads made upon
them by the storm was serious, and the inconvenience of starving on the
“rim,” in sight of the _promised land_ was disturbing. Our campaign
would consist of making _caches_ of meat on the uplands, taking our
condensed food, tea and coffee on our backs, making forced marches to
the summit, reconnoitering and plunging on ahead, _if unanimous in
that_, or else tumbling back, and setting our faces homeward.
_Homeward_—the word seemed a mockery in that strange and hidden corner
of the earth.
Another thing happened, though not quite unexpected. The wind had
shifted to the west, bringing loose drifting ice and some hulking
floebergs, and the squally twists, the livid streaks in the sky, and the
sun’s sepulchral pallor had indicated some rising uneasiness skyward.
The change came good and plenty later. The wind rose almost to a
tornado, though there was no snow or rain, just a bitter cold searching
wind. It smote the mountains. We could see the sky-rocketing volley of
snow on their sides, and noted too that towards their tops there was no
disturbance, indicating a semi-icy condition of the snow there, perhaps
better, perhaps worse for going. And now in the turning of a hand the
crowding ice packs were back. As far as we could see their humps and
fields spread everlastingly, and the chorus of groans, wheezes, and
queer _hushing_ sounds that they all sent up was astonishing.
Hopkins shot a bear, before the storm attained its top-notch of fury,
which brought much cheerfulness to the camp. I never shall forget it. It
was funny too; it might have been just as tragic. He and I were off to
the west, reconnoitering for a possible easier entrance to the “rim,”
when Hopkins caught my arm nervously, and pointed out over the groaning
packs, and said he saw something moving. I could not see it. We ventured
out a little way on some near shore ice and were behind a slight
pressure ridge, when a shockingly coarse growl issued from the other
side and a moment later a big polar bear surmounted the pile, and laying
both its front paws on the blocks, over which its face rose, most
whimsically recalled the emergence of a preacher in high pulpit. We were
pretty well taken aback, but Hopkins slipped off his usual doggerel,
_sotto voce_ however—while the bear watched us critically—
“My only son was big and fine
And I was proud that he was mine,
He looked through eyes that were divine—
Indeed he was a BEAR.”
And then he raised his rifle and—Bruin wasn’t there. We jumped up on the
ridge, clambered to the top and almost fell into his ursine majesty’s
arms. He had ducked down on seeing the rifle but hadn’t budged from his
position. It looked as if he had met hunters before. Hopkins blazed
away, and I followed. The splendid beast gurgled and fell backward dead.
We had reached the foothills, crossed the uplands, made our caches of
meat, stuffed the dogs and turned them loose—Goritz called it “burning
our ships behind us”—and were creeping along the edge of the narrow deep
chasm or canon which caught the waters from the cliffs, gathering them
in an awful, tempestuous, writhing torrent, that became almost maniacal
in its agony where hidden rocks stopped its course, or where it dropped
into black abysses. We must cross that chasm, climb the cliffs, before
we could begin the ascent of the mountains. The chasm was twenty or
thirty feet wide, the cliffs rose above it, from our level, about one
hundred feet, and below us they descended to the water trough, one
hundred feet more. The problem was to reach the bottom of the chasm,
bridge the raging brace, and then work up the cliffs. It looked like a
fly’s job. And what disclosures the roofs of the cliffs and the
mountains beyond had we could only guess. These difficulties had been
anticipated, in one way; we had strong wire rope, a flexible cable made
of copper wire and skin.
Crawling on hands and knees we were studying the sides of the chasm, and
not infrequently Goritz would suspend himself, held by the rest of us,
over the frightful gulf, to determine where we might safely enter this
_inferno_, with a prospect of spanning the seething, spouting,
vociferous river, and of scaling the black and jagged wall on the other
side. Our search was unavailing. We had explored the bank for more than
a mile. The delay was maddening. Suddenly the Professor, who had been
silent, and had been studying the black and red walls opposite, with
occasional long examinations eastward with the glass, exclaimed:
“We are making a mistake. Our course is up and to the back of the
glacier. These cliffs are sedimentary; they lie on the eruptive
crystallines of the mountains; the river runs west; the glacier has
dammed its course eastward, where it should flow, following the dip of
the slates and sandstones. It cuts the dip, and the glacier has crossed
its path and filled up this singular crevice, which is a fault rift.”
He looked triumphant; Goritz seized the suggestion.
“That’s right,” he shouted, “up the glacier and then—we can use the
dogs!”
We were soon back to the abandoned sledge; some of the dogs had followed
us, the rest were sleeping off their debauch of raw bear’s meat. We
loaded the sledge with meat, from one of our caches, leaving the other
intact, and with awakened hope started at a lively pace over the snow
covered uplands for the distant ice-river. The going was not good for
the snow had drifted somewhat, and was soft and mushy, but the dogs were
in excellent condition, and they really seemed to understand that they
had escaped desertion.
[Illustration:
KROCKER LAND RIM
]
In three hours the glacier was reached. It was a more significant
feature than we had supposed. Where it emerged from the mountain hollow
it was almost obliterated from view by an immense morainal accumulation
which had choked up the river, as the Professor guessed, forming a small
lake, fed also, we discovered, by the underground waters flowing from
the glacier itself. Over this moraine we made our way in a helter
skelter manner because of its unevenness, the scattered rocks bulging up
and intercepting our path with a perverse frequency that drove Hopkins
to improvisation:
“If I had a little dynamite
To put these pebbles out of sight,
I think I’d skip from pure delight
And say my prayers with all my might
As well I know is surely right.
But as it is they make me cuss
And put my temper in a fuss,
So if perdition is my share,
I owe it to this rocky lair.”
There was plenty of snow in places where the sun had as yet failed to
evict it, but everywhere melting and warmth were encountered. The summer
was reigning, and the verdurous garb of green and colored things was
drawn like a veil over the rugged grounds, soothing them into a
transient loveliness. We could see the rivulets from the snowbanks
coursing everywhere, and could hear from the glacier the gurgle, rush,
and tinkle too of hidden rivers, while towards the coast, in the
daytime, the sun revealed a shield of wide-spread waters where the
floods from the melting ice poured over the shore, and cut long, wide
lanes in the rapidly vanishing shore ice.
When we had struggled to the glacier wall we found it an almost
imperceptible rise to its surface, and once there, our faces turned
toward the ice-river to gauge its character. It was badly crevassed, and
although the snow sheeting it over had been heavy, much had disappeared.
Along the sides where the lateral moraine somewhat shielded it the snow
still remained, but the depressions traversing it, sometimes in
herringbone fashion, showed the position of the masked depths, in whose
icy jaws our whole party, sledge and dogs might readily be entombed.
Goritz went first with the dog leader, then came myself at the head of
the team, with Hopkins and the Professor on either side of the
forebraces of the sledge. We were roped together, and the sledge—the
only survivor of its kind from the storm—was heavily loaded. We each
carried about twenty pounds of condensed food, ingeniously harnessed on
our backs. It was an inconsiderable load and might prove serviceable if
the sledge vanished.
At first we advanced gingerly, bridging crevasse after crevasse, but our
confidence increased as the snow flooring, although yielding, repeatedly
proved itself adequate for our support. At one point the sledge smashed
the weakened crust and threatened to drag the dogs backward with it, as
it hung almost vertically into a wide slit, forty or fifty feet deep,
wherein the ice, to our eyes, was an aquamarine mass of jewels. Hopkins
lashed the dogs and they hauled the sledge back again on the snow.
We had reached a turn in the glacier’s track, and a patch of outrageous
confusion. The whole surface seemed shattered, and serac-like monuments,
poised all over, threatened us. We were constantly startled by crashes,
and we moved with alarmed caution, for not only were the holes deep but
they opened into sluiceways of hurrying water quite capable of sucking
any unwary intruder into subterranean tunnels of ice. The dull plangor
of the beating currents arose to us with an ominous warning. The dogs
here became nervous and unmanageable. Again and again we bridged the
chasms with the sledge, and crept one by one over the improvised
crossings, coaxing the dogs to follow. We now did not have the
protection of the friendly banks. Goritz had concluded to ascend the
mountainous ridge before us on the opposite side of the glacier, where
the glacier itself, like a small “_jokull_” terminated, or began, in a
neve loaded cirque.
To do this we were compelled to cross the glacier. After a good deal of
dangerous work, with one or two nearly fatal mishaps, we attained the
central dome of the ice and found here an ideally fashioned space for
resting and feeding. The dogs were restless or sullen from hunger, and
we needed the encouragement of food ourselves. The worst limb of our
trip remained.
But it was a beautiful picture on every side. The day was clear and
warm, and, as we gazed far below at the ice-flecked ocean over the
glacier’s marge, or upward into the rugged bowl, walled with bold
precipices, streaked ever and anon with spouting waterfalls, or higher
still to those mute, imperishable peaks, guarding the secrets of the
wonder-land towards which we were slowly, so slowly, moving, or lastly
at the nearer edges of land on either side, the constricted throat of
the glacier serpent, bountifully sprinkled with a vermeil of audacious
blossoms and tender grass, we felt the thrill of our strange adventure
keenly, and rejoiced in it. But a few minutes later our spirits were
harshly dashed, and despair almost broke our hearts.
It was about two in the afternoon; everything was repacked and we had
resumed our snail-like progress. The path, if it had been marked by a
line, would have been revealed as a maze of loops, necessitating
countermarches and criss-crossings, but its widest indirection, after
hours of work, showed that we were nearing our goal. The flowers on the
cliff beyond us were now almost individually visible. They seemed like a
lure to invite us to hasten to their side, when a jolt and tug, that
nearly knocked my legs from under me, and then a recoil that sent me
sprawling among the dogs.
The rope had parted; I saw its end fly upward, even as I saw the tall
form of Goritz with tossing arms sink from sight. My God! Goritz had
fallen into a crevasse and—how the thought lacerated me!—they were
deepest, widest, on this side! Hopkins and the Professor knew it almost
as quickly as myself. We recovered ourselves, and ran forward. Lying
flat, on the rim of what had been a snow bridged crevasse, and held in
position by the other two, I leaned out. Never shall I forget the horror
of my feelings at that moment. Below me caught on an ice arm, which held
him above the seething ice water, still deeper down on the floor of the
gash, was Goritz, those splendid eyes imploringly lifted to mine:
“Quick, Alfred—the rope!” I tore the rope from around me, noosed it,
shouting all the time in a sort of delirium I think, “Hold on Antoine,
you’re safe! Hold on! On! On!” And then, with a glance at Hopkins and
the Professor, whose faces were almost whiter than the snow at our feet,
was on my stomach again, the rope in my hand, and the noose lowered
carefully to my friend. He lay on his side on a shelf of ice; a movement
and he would slip into the tide below him. It was a critical moment, and
yet only with the utmost precautionary slowness and delicacy of
adjustment could the rescue be effected. Goritz knew that, though it
seemed incongruous to watch a man, prostrate, literally on the brink of
destruction, approach the measures of salvation with the deliberation
with which one might crack the shell of his breakfast egg. Slowly—the
seconds seemed ages—he drew the loop to himself, caught one arm in it,
thrust his head through it, and was endeavoring to extricate his other
arm from its chancery beneath him, to engage it too in the friendly
loop, when—I heard the snap—the shelf broke away! I slammed backward,
called to the others to pull, jabbed my spiked shoes into the ice, and
held on. Goritz’s voice came thickly from his imprisonment:
“Haul, Alfred!”
And haul it was; the weight seemed trebled. I knew—the water was hauling
too, but, before Goritz went, it might, for all I cared, drag me to the
same doom. I guess Hopkins and the Professor felt that way, too. It
seemed nip and tuck. Were we all to be pulled into the frigid maelstrom,
to be finally ejected into the Arctic sea in the rush of the sub-glacial
river? Somehow thinking this way put steel into our muscles and defiance
in my heart, and—we pulled Antoine Goritz back to life at least, and his
reception on the top of that glacier was as fervent, if a little less
boisterous and showy, as if he had been met by the king in an audience
room at Copenhagen. He was drenched and cold, had a wrenched shoulder
but I took his place ahead now, and he dried off with exercise, after
the fashion of Arctic navigators. And a bowl of tea that the Professor
bewitched with a little of our last bottle of whisky helped matters.
We had left the glacier; that icy track was far below us, and distance
contracting and closing all its wicked seams revealed it as a blazing
white ribbon, negligently thrown over the shoulders of the still, black
rocks. It looked well. The aneroid registered 6000 feet. The snow was
awful in spots, and we rolled into holes unsuspectedly saturated with
water. Our snowshoes were indispensable, but the dogs were almost
useless, floundering and helpless in the drifts. Our dog meat was
rapidly diminishing, and, if the cruel dilemma must come, rather than to
exhaust our supplies on them we would be compelled to kill them.
We were pushing along what bore the appearance of a _col_ or pass
between two majestic peaks, wrapped in ermine to their highest points,
ermine that in the day glittered magnificently, rayed and starred with
innumerable irises, and that in the lesser illumination of the night was
immobile and dead, a monstrous winding sheet over a dead world.
A terrifying snow storm held us up for two days. The air was so dense
with the falling crystals that we felt encased. It was a singular
sensation. The Professor, who had been incubating some ideas (we always
looked forward with expectancy to his first utterance after a spell of
prolonged silence), launched the amazing paradox, during this storm, and
while we, in the most detached manner awaited its conclusion in our snug
tent, that we were approaching a warmer, snowless, and rainy zone. It
was Hopkins who first recovered his powers of utterance after this
promulgation.
“Professor, as a sedative to the distracted mind, you’ve got everything
else winded. And for novelty, well, Barnum and Bailey’s best advertiser
couldn’t begin to get the collocation of superlatives necessary to give
a hint of your surprising guesses.”
“It is not difficult to understand,” resumed the Professor urbanely,
with that calm manner of shelving the unconventional Yankee which always
enraptured Hopkins; “the wind has been westerly, the excessive
precipitation shows it was a moist wind, a wind heavily laden with
suspended water, that moisture was dropped out as snow _here_, but west
of us it must have escaped expulsion. Why? Because it was not cold
enough to condense it as snow. I think, though, it fell _as rain_. We
shall see.”
“And,” he added a moment later, “on my theory of a polar depression that
would be so.”
We went to sleep on that, and the depth of our slumbers had some
complimentary significance for the Professor’s prediction.
After the storm, the sky failed to clear, and a wind sprang up from the
north that rapidly increased in violence, hurling the snow in torrents,
blinding, cutting us and foundering the wretched dogs, who lay down in
their tracks repeatedly, or snarled up together in vicious fights. But
Goritz was inexorable. He insisted on pushing ahead. His reason was
just. We were now near the turning point; we had surmounted KROCKER LAND
RIM. Should we go on or turn back? If it was to be back we had many
things to think of, and not much time to waste, with our larder growing
smaller each day and the prospect of half-rations ahead. Goritz had a
tender heart and I know he wanted to get the dogs back, too.
Luckily the snow furnished better going, the wind ceased, our hearts
leaped again, and the stern solemnity of that alpine land strangely
elated us. At night now, the sun almost sank below the horizon, but its
decline was the signal for the noiseless evocation of half lights and
shadows, spectral tints, pale ghosts of mist curling over the endless
desert of snow, a retinue of chiaroscuros that glided hither, thither,
never quiet, yet never restless. And far south we thought we saw the
crystal light of half eclipsed auroras. It all entranced me. I often
stole outside our tent to watch the voiceless drama of the night, and
often Goritz stood beside me. And now—poor fellow—”
(The speaker paused in his story, a sob choked his voice; then it was
over and he continued.)
The Professor was right; the snowdrifts thinned away to bare ground. It
was warmer, at first some ten degrees, then more, and the land
descended. Had not Goritz lost? Should we not, according to the protocol
of our agreement, search the new land? Goritz was unconvinced and
inclined to temporize. Yes, the land was lower, perhaps; it was warmer,
but how did we know it would keep so; a small decline here might change
into an ascent further away; we were on a tableland, but another axis of
elevation might arise from it, and remember in these solitudes there was
not much life, no game, and our stores would in ten days be exhausted,
not counting the dogs, some of whom must now be sacrificed for the
others.
This had the appearance of tergiversation. The Professor was vehement, I
and Hopkins leaned in his favor, but I think all of us would have
succumbed to Goritz’s wish and certainly to his command—the sweetest,
bravest, most generous soul I have ever known! At length, at Hopkins’
suggestion, we compromised again on a reconnaissance.
It was a pivotal point. We were in a sandy plain, with much bare rock,
and soily places now greenish with moss or lichen. The surprising
feature was the sudden onsets of rain with the east winds. It was rather
misty all the time, and the fogs made it abysmally cheerless. It was
easy to see that this excessive moisture formed the fathomless snows
among the mountains we had ploughed over.
On the day of the reconnaissance we all separated. Goritz went north,
the Professor, pertinacious in his convictions, went due west, with the
aneroid, Hopkins and myself southward. Our reports were to be made at
the conference at night. We reassembled, all except Goritz turning up at
the tent at almost the same time. Hopkins said that for stone breaking,
the country he had walked over was the most promising he had ever
encountered. He couldn’t imagine a better place for a penal
establishment. A reservation like it alongside of New York City would
raise the moral standard of that city almost as high as anyone would
like to go. He thought perhaps we’d better turn back.
The Professor disheartedly admitted that the land after sinking rose
abruptly, and that there might be another _axis of elevation_—the
Professor pronounced the technical observation with evident disgust. The
fogs grew so dense it was impossible to determine. He concluded
dolefully that, as much had been accomplished, it might be well for self
preservation to return.
I corroborated Hopkins, and also suggested a return. We had been talking
informally, sharing our observations, but their detailed presentation
awaited Goritz’s presence. And where was he? We had been back an hour,
and our hunger remonstrated bitterly against his tardiness. Still
another hour passed, and nature refused to tolerate a further deference
to custom or respect. We ate our evening rations—already they were being
shortened—concluding to go out on a search for Goritz, if he did not
soon come in. Another hour hurried by, and yet no Goritz. We began to be
alarmed, and yet that seemed absurd. What harm could come to a man in
that flat land? And to a man of Goritz’s strength and resources? Hardly
had we thus reassured ourselves when the tent flap was pushed aside, and
there stood Antoine Goritz, with one hand behind his back.
His melodious voice was raised, his eyes shone, his frame seemed
expanded with excitement, his face was flushed, and the disengaged hand
opened and shut convulsively.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “_we shall go on_. _Krocker Land is inhabited_,
and—it is a LAND OF GOLD!”
He paused, stepped forward, and laid on our soap-box table a broad belt
of gold plates, engraved, and united by a gold buckle, beautifully
embossed.
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