We left the track in an air-line course for the dark mystery out of
which the noise came. To-ti-o took the lead. As we neared the noise,
all but two dogs of his sledge were cut loose. The sledge overturned, I
under it. As Koo-loo-ting-wah came along, he freed all his dogs. I
passed him my new take-down Winchester.
Hurrying after To-ti-o, he had advanced only a few steps when To-ti-o
fired. Koo-loo-ting-wah, noting an effort of the bear to rise, fired the
new rifle.
A flash of fire lit the darkness. Koo-loo-ting-wah rushed to me, asking
for the folding lantern. The smokeless powder had broken the new gun.
To-ti-o had no more cartridges. The bear, however, was quiet. We
advanced, lances in hand.
The dogs danced wildly about the bear, but he managed to throw out his
feet with sufficient force to keep the canine fangs disengaged. The
other Eskimos now came, with rushing dogs in advance. To-ti-o dashed
forward and delivered the lance under the bear's shoulder. The bear was
his. He thereby not only gained the prize for the expedition, but, by
the addition of the bear to his game list, completed his retinue of
accomplishments whereby he could claim the full privileges of manhood.
Among other things, it gave him the right to marry. He had already
secured a bride of twelve, but, without this bear conquest, the match
would not have been permanent. He danced with the romantic joy of a
young lover. We drove the dogs off from the victim with lashes, and fell
to and skinned and dressed the carcass. A taste was given to each dog.
The balance was placed on the sledges. Soon we were to camp, waiting for
the sled loads of bear meat.
[Illustration: THE HELPERS--NORTHERNMOST MAN AND HIS WIFE]
[Illustration: A MECCA OF MUSK OX ALONG EUREKA SOUND
A NATIVE HELPER
AH-WE-LAH'S PROSPECTIVE WIFE]
On the day following we started to hunt caribou. The sky was beautifully
clear; the glacial wind was lost as we left the ice. The party scattered
among numerous old bergs of the glacier. Koo-loo-ting-wah accompanied
me. We aimed to rise to a small tableland from which I might make a
study of the surroundings.
We had not gone inland more than a mile when we saw numerous fresh
caribou tracks. Following these, we moved along a steep slope to the
tableland above at an altitude of about one thousand feet. We peeped
over the crest. Below us were two reindeer digging under the snow for
food. The light was good, and they were in gun range. An Eskimo,
however, gets very near his game before he chances a shot, so, winding
about under the crest of a cliff or a snow-covered shelf of rocks, we
got to their range and fired.
The creatures fell. They were nearly white, young, and possessed long
fur and thick skins, which we needed badly for sleeping bags. With
pocket knives, the natives skinned the animals and divided the meat in
three packs while I examined the surroundings.
Part of the face of Humboldt Glacier, which extends sixty miles north,
was clearly visible in cliffs of a dark blue color. The interior ice ran
in waves like the surface of stormy seas, perfectly free of snow, with
many crevasses. An odd purplish-blue light upon it was reflected to the
skies, resembling to some extent a water sky. The snow of the sea ice
below was of a delicate lilac. Otherwise, sky and land were flooded with
the usual dominant purple of the Arctic twilight.
This glacier, the largest in Arctic America, had at one time extended
very much farther south. All the islands, including Brook's, had at one
time been under its grinding influence. As a picture it was a charming
study in purple and blue, but the temperature was too low and the light
too nearly spent to venture a further investigation.
The Eskimos fixed for me an extremely light pack. This was comfortably
placed on my back, with a bundle of thongs over the forehead. The
natives took their huge bundles, and, together, we started for camp. At
every rest we cut off slices of caribou tallow. I was surprised to find
that I had acquired a taste for a new delicacy. At camp we found the
natives, all in good humor, awaiting us beside heaps of meat and skins.
All had been successful in securing from one to two animals each in
regions nearer by. In a further search they had failed to find promising
tracks, so we proposed to return on the morrow, hoping to meet bears en
route.
With the stupor of the gluttony of reindeer meat and the fatigue of the
long chase, we slept late. Awaking, we partook each of a cup of tea, and
packed and loaded the meat. Drawing heavy loads, the dogs gladly leaped
forward. The twilight flush already suffused the sky with incandescence.
Against the southeastern sky, glowing with rose, the great glaciers of
Humboldt loomed in walls of violet, while the sea displayed many shades
of rose and lilac, according to the direction of the light on the slope
of the drifts.
Knowing that their noses pointed to a land of walrus, the dogs kept up a
lively pace. Not a breath of air was stirring. The temperature was -42 deg..
Aiming to make Annoatok in two marches, we ran behind the sledges to
save dog energy as much as possible. The cold enforced vigorous
exercise. But, weighted down by furs, the comfort of the sledges was
often sought to escape the tortures of perspiration. The source of light
slowly shifted along shadowed mountains under the frozen sea. Our path
glowed with electric, multi-colored splendor.
By degrees, the rose-colored sky assumed the hue of old gold, the violet
embroideries of clouds changed to purple. The gold, in running bands,
darkened; the purple thickened. Soon new celestial torches lighted the
changing sheen of the snows. Into the dome of heaven swam stars of
burning intensity, each of which rivalled the sun in a miniature way. In
this new illumination the twilight fires lost flame and color. Cold
white incandescence electrically suffused the frigid sky.
I strode onward, in that white, blazing air, the joy and beauty of it
enthralling my soul. I felt as though I were walking in a world of
heatless fire, a half supernatural realm such as that wherein reigned
the gods of ancient peoples. I felt as an old Norseman must have felt
when the glory of Valhalla burst upon him. For a long time I was
unconscious of the fatigue which was growing upon me. Finally, overcome
by the long forced march, I sank on my sled. The Eskimos, chanting
songs, loomed ahead, their forms magnified in the unearthly light.
Slowly a subtle change appeared along the horizon. Silent and impressed,
I watched the changing scenes and evolving lights as if all were some
divine and awe-inspiring stage arranged by God for some heroic drama of
man.
New and warm with shimmering veils of color, attended by four radiant
satellites, the golden face of the moon rose majestically over the
sparkling pinnacles of the Greenland glaciers. Below, the lovely
planet-deflected images formed rainbow curves like rubied necklaces
about her invisible neck. As the moon ascended in a spiral course the
rose hues paled, the white light from the stars softened to a rich,
creamy glow.
We continued our course, the Eskimos singing, the dogs occasionally
barking. Hours passed. Then we all suddenly became silent. The last, the
supreme, glory of the North flamed over earth and frozen sea. The divine
fingers of the aurora,[8] that unseen and intangible thing of flame, who
comes from her mysterious throne to smile upon a benighted world, began
to touch the sky with glittering, quivering lines of glowing silver.
With skeins of running, liquid fire she wove over the sky a shimmering
panorama of blazing beauty. Forms of fire, indistinct and unhuman, took
shape and vanished. From horizon to zenith, cascades of milk-colored
fire ascended and fell, as must the magical fountains of heaven.
In the glory of this other-world light I felt the insignificance of
self, a human unit; and, withal I became more intensely conscious than
ever of the transfiguring influence of the sublime ideal to which I had
set myself. I exulted in the thrill of an indomitable determination,
that determination of human beings to essay great things--that human
purpose which, throughout history, has resulted in the great deeds, the
great art, of the world, and which lifts men above themselves.
Spiritually intoxicated, I rode onward. The aurora faded. But its glow
remained in my soul.
We arrived at camp late on November 1.
[Illustration]
THE MOONLIGHT QUEST OF THE WALRUS
DESPERATE AND DANGEROUS HUNTING, IN ORDER TO SECURE ADEQUATE SUPPLIES
FOR THE POLAR DASH--A THRILLING AND ADVENTUROUS RACE IS MADE OVER FROZEN
SEAS AND ICY MOUNTAINS TO THE WALRUS GROUNDS--TERRIFIC EXPLOSION OF THE
ICE ON WHICH THE PARTY HUNTS--SUCCESS IN SECURING OVER SEVEN SLED-LOADS
OF BLUBBER MAKES THE POLE SEEM NEARER--AN ARCTIC TRAGEDY
VIII
FIVE HUNDRED MILES THROUGH NIGHT AND STORM
The early days of November were devoted to routine work about Annoatok.
Meat was gathered and dried in strips by Francke; a full force of men
were put to the work of devising equipment; the women were making
clothing and dressing skins; and then a traveling party was organized to
go south to gather an additional harvest of meat and skins and furs. For
this purpose we planned to take advantage of the November moon. Thus, in
the first week of the month, we were ready for a five-hundred-mile run
to the southern villages and to the night-hunting grounds for walrus.
A crack of whips explosively cut the taut, cold air. The raucous, weird
and hungry howl of the wolf-dogs replied: "_Ah-u-oo, Ah-u-oo,
Ah-u-oo!_" rolled over the ice; "_Huk-huk!_" the Eskimos shouted. There
was a sudden tightening of the traces of our seven sledges; fifty lithe,
strong bodies leaped forward; and, holding the upstanders, the rear
upright framework of the native sledges, I and my six companions were
off. In a few moments the igloos of the village, with lights shining
through windows where animal membranes served as glass, had sped by us.
The cheering of the natives behind was soon lost in the grind of our
sledges on the irregular ice and the joyous, unrestrained barking of the
leaping, tearing, restless dog-teams.
To the south of us, a misty orange flush suffused the dun-colored sky.
The sun, which we had not seen for an entire month, now late in November
far below the horizon, sent to us the dim radiance of a far-away smile.
After its setting it had, about noon time of each day, set the sky
faintly aglow, this radiance decreasing until it was lost in the
brightness of the midday moon. Rising above the horizon, a suspended
lamp of frosty, pearl-colored glass, the moon for ten days of
twenty-four hours, each month, encircled about us, now lost behind
ice-sheeted mountains, again subdued under colored films of frost
clouds, but always relieving the night of its gloom, and permitting,
when the wind was not too turbulent, outside activity.
A wonderful animal is the sea-horse, or whale-horse, as the Icelanders
and Dutch (from whom we have borrowed "walrus") call it. In the summer
its life is easy and its time is spent in almost perpetual sunny dreams,
but in winter it would be difficult to conceive of a harder existence
than its own. Finding food in shallow Polar seas, it comes to permanent
open water, or to the crevasses of an active pack for breath. With but a
few minutes' rest on a storm-swept surface, it explores, without other
relief for weeks, the double-night darkness of unknown depths under the
frozen sea. At last, when no longer able to move its huge web feet, it
rises on the ice or seeks ice-locked waters for a needed rest. In
winter, the thump of its ponderous head keeps the young ice from closing
its breathing place. If on ice, its thick skin, its blanket of blubber,
and an automatic shiver, keep its blood from hardening. This is man's
opportunity to secure meat and fuel, but the quest involves a task to
which no unaided paleface is equal. The night hunt of the walrus is
Eskimo sport, but it is nevertheless sport of a most engaging and
exciting order.
So that I might not be compelled to start on my dash stintedly equipped,
we now prepared for such an adventure by moonlight. Before this time
there had not been sufficient atmospheric stability and ice continuity
to promise comparative safety. My heart exulted as I heard the crack of
the whips in the electric air and felt the earth rush giddily under my
feet as I leaped behind the speeding teams. The fever of the quest was
in my veins; its very danger lent an indescribable thrill, for success
now meant more to me than perhaps hunting had ever meant to any man.
Not long after we started, darkness descended. The moon slowly passed
behind an impenetrable curtain of inky clouds; the orange glow of the
sun faded; and we were surrounded on every side by a blackness so thick
that it was almost palpable.
As I now recall that mad race I marvel how we escaped smashing sledges,
breaking our limbs, crushing our heads. We tumbled and jumped in a
frantic race over the broken, irregular pack-ice from Annoatok to Cape
Alexander, a distance of thirty miles as the raven moves, but more than
forty miles as we follow the sledge trail. Here the ice became thin; we
felt cold mist rising from open water; and now and then, in an
occasional breaking of the darkness, we could discern vast sheets or
snaky leads of open sea ahead of us.
To reach the southern waters where the walrus were to be found, we now
had to seek an overland route, which would take us over the frozen
Greenland mountains and lead us through the murky clouds, a route of
twisting detours, gashed glaciers, upturned barriers of rock and ice,
swept by blinding winds, unmarked by any trail, and which writhed
painfully beyond us for forty-seven miles.
Arriving at the limit of traversable sea-ice, we now paused before
sloping cliffs of glacial land-ice which we had to climb. Picture to
yourself a vast glacier rising precipitously, like a gigantic wall,
thousands of feet above you, and creeping tortuously up its glassy,
purple face, if such that surface could be called, formed by the piling
of one glacial formation upon the other in the descent through the
valleys, a twisting, retreating road of jagged ice strata, of earth and
stone, blocked here and there by apparently impassable impediments,
pausing at almost unscalable, frozen cliffs, and at times no wider than
a few yards. Imagine yourself pausing, as we suddenly did, and viewing
the perilous ascent, the only way open to us, revealed in the passing
glimmer of the pale, circling moon, despair, fear and hope tugging at
your heart. Whipped across the sky by the lashing winds, the torn
clouds, passing the face of the moon, cast magnified and grotesquely
gesticulating shadows on the glistening face of the icy Gibraltar before
us. Some of these misty shapes seemed to threaten, others shook their
rag-like arms, beckoning forward. Upon the face of the towering,
perpendicular ice-wall, great hummocks like the gnarled black limbs of a
huge tree twisted upwards.
I realized that the frightful ascent must be made. The goal of my single
aim suddenly robbed the climb of its terrors. I dropped my whip. Six
other whips cracked through the air. Koo-loo-ting-wah said, "_Kah-Kah!_"
(Come, come!) But Sotia said, "_Iodaria-Iodaria!_" (Impossible,
impossible!) The dogs emitted shrill howls. Holding the rear upstanders
of the sledges, we helped to push them forward.
Before us, the fifty dogs climbed like cats through narrow apertures of
the ice, or took long leaps over the serried battlements that barred our
way. We stumbled after, sometimes we fell. Again we had to lift the
sledges after the dogs.
From the top of the glacier a furious wind brushed us backwards. We felt
the steaming breath of the laboring dogs in our faces. My heart thumped
painfully. Now and then the moon disappeared; we followed the unfailing
instinct of the animals. I realized that a misstep might plunge me to a
horrible death in the ice abysm below. With a howl of joy from drivers,
the dogs finally leaped to the naked surface of the wind-swept glacier.
Panting in indescribable relief, we followed. But the worst part of the
journey lay before us. The sable clouds, like the curtain of some
cyclopean stage, seemed suddenly drawn aside as if by an invisible hand.
Upon the illimitable stretch of ice rising before us like the slopes of
a glass mountain, the full rays of the moon poured liquid silver. Only
in dreams had such a scene as this been revealed to me--in dreams of the
enchanted North--which did not now equal reality. The spectacle filled
me with both awed delight and a sense of terror.
Beyond the fan-shaped teams of dogs the eyes ran over fields of
night-blackened blue, gashed and broken by bottomless canyons which
twisted like purple serpents in every direction. Vast expanses of smooth
surface, polished by the constant winds, reflected the glow of the moon
and gleamed like isles of silver in a motionless, deep, sapphire sea;
but all was covered with the air of night. In the moonlight, the jagged
irregular contours of the broken ice became touched with a burning gilt.
A constant effect like running quicksilver played about us as the moon
sailed around the heavens.
Above us the ice pinnacles were lost in the clouds, huge billowy masses
that were blown in the wind troublously, like the heavy black tresses of
some Titan woman. I thrilled with the beauty of the magical spectacle,
yet, when I viewed the perilous pathway, I felt the grip of terror again
at my heart.
I was aroused from my brief reverie by the familiar "_Huk-huk! Ah-gah!
Ah-gah!_" of the Eskimos, and placing our hands upon the sledges, we
leaped forward into the purple-gashed sea, with its blinding sheets of
silver. I seemed carried through a world such as the old Norsemen sang
of in the sagas.
Of a sudden, as though extinguished, the moonlight faded, huge shadows
leaped onto the ice before us, frenziedly waved their arms and melted
into the pitch-black darkness which descended. I had read imaginative
tales of wanderings in the nether region of the dead, but only now did I
have a faint glimmering of the terror (with its certain, exultant
intoxication) which lost souls must feel when they wander in a darkness
beset with invisible horrors.
Over the ice, cut with innumerable chasms and neck-breaking
irregularities, we rushed in the dark. The wind moaned down from the
despairing cloud-enfolded heights above; it tore through the bottomless
gullies on every side with a hungry roar. Beads of perspiration rolled
down my face and froze into icicles on my chin and furs. The temperature
was 48 deg. below zero.
Occasionally we stopped a moment to gasp for breath. I could hear the
panting of my companions, the labor of the dogs. A few seconds' inaction
was followed by convulsive shivering; the pain of stopping was more
excruciating than that of climbing. In the darkness, the calls of the
invisible Eskimos to the dogs seemed like the weird appeals of
disembodied things. I felt each moment the imminent danger of a
frightful death; yet the dogs with their marvelous intuition, twisting
this way and that, and sometimes retreating, sensed the open leads ahead
and rushed forward safely.
At times I felt the yawning depth of ice canyons immediately by my
side--that a step might plunge me into the depths. Desperately I held
on to the sledges, and was dragged along. Such an experience might well
turn the hair of the most expert Alpinist white in one night; yet I did
not have time to dwell fully upon the dangers, and I was carried over a
trip more perilous than, later, proved the actual journey on sea-ice to
the Pole.
Occasionally the moon peered forth from its clouds and brightened the
gloom. In its light the ice fields swam dizzily by us, as a landscape
seen from the window of a train; the open gashed gullies writhed like
snakes, pinnacles dancing like silver spears. By alternate running and
riding we managed to keep from freezing and sweating. We finally reached
an altitude of inland ice exceeding two thousand feet. Silver fog crept
under our feet. We were traveling now in a world of clouds.
We paced twelve miles at a rapid speed. In the light of the moon-burned
clouds which rolled about our heads, I could see the forms of my
companions only indistinctly. The dogs ahead were veiled in the argent,
tremulous mists; the ice sped under me; I was no longer conscious of an
earthly footing; I might have been soaring in space.
We began to descend. Suddenly the dogs started in leaps to fly through
the air. Our sleds were jerked into clouds of cutting snow. We jabbed
our feet into the drift to check the mad speed. On each side we saw a
huge mountain, seemingly thousands of feet above us, but ahead was
nothing but the void of empty space. Soon the sledges shot beyond the
dogs. We threw ourselves off to check the momentum. With dog
intelligence and savage strength judiciously expended, we reached the
sea level by flying flights over dangerous slopes, and, like cats, we
landed on nimble feet in Sontag Bay.
A bivouac was arranged under a dome of snow-blocks, and exhausted by the
mad journey, a sleep of twenty-four hours was indulged in.
Now, for a time, our task was easier. A course was set along the land,
southward. Each of the native settlements was visited. The season's
gossip was exchanged. Presents went into each household, and a return of
furs and useful products filled our sledges. Thus the time was occupied
in profitable visits during the feeble light of the November moon. With
the December moon we returned northward to Ser-wah-ding-wah.
Then our struggle began anew for the walrus grounds. The Polar drift,
forcing through Smith Sound, left an open space of water about ten miles
south of Cape Alexander. This disturbed area was our destination. It was
marked by a dark cloud, a "water-sky"--against the pearly glow of the
southern heavens. The ice surface was smooth. We did not encounter the
crushed heaps of ice of the northern route, but there were frequent
crevasses which, though cemented with new ice, gave us considerable
anxiety, for I realized that if a northwesterly storm should suddenly
strike the pack we might be carried helplessly adrift.
The urgency of our mission to secure dog food, however, left no
alternative. It was better to brave death now, I thought, than to perish
from scant supplies on the Polar trip. We had not gone far before the
ever-keen canine noses detected bear tracks on the ice. These we shot
over the pack surface in true battle spirit. As the bears were evidently
bound for the same hunting grounds, this course was accepted as good
enough for us. Although the trail was laid in a circuitous route, it
avoided the most difficult pressure angles. We traveled until late in
the day. The moon was low, and the dark purple hue of the night
blackened the snows.
Of a sudden we paused. From a distance came a low call of walrus bulls.
The bass, nasal bellow was muffled by the low temperature, and did not
thump the ear drums with the force of the cry in sunny summer. My six
companions shouted with glee, and became almost hysterical with
excitement. The dogs, hearing the call, howled and jumped to jerk the
sledges. We dropped our whips, and they responded with all their brute
force in one bound. It was difficult to hold to the sledges as we shot
over the blackening snows.
The ice-fields became smaller as we advanced; dangerous thin ice
intervened; but the owl-eyes of the Eskimos knew just where to find safe
ice. The sounds increased as we approached. We descended from the
snow-covered ice to thin, black ice and for a time I felt as if we were
flying over the open surface of the deep. With a low call, the dogs were
stopped. They were detached from the sledges and tied to holes drilled
with a knife in ice boulders.