and knives, each one of us advanced at some distance from his neighbor.
Soon, lines of mist told of dangerous breaks, and the ice was carefully
tested with the spiked shaft before venturing farther. I was behind
Koo-loo-ting-wah's sledge. While he was creeping up to the water's edge,
there came the rush of a spouting breath so near that we seemed to feel
the crystal spray. I took his place and pushed the sledge along.
Taking the harpoon, with stealthy strides Koo-loo-ting-wah moved to the
water's edge and waited for the next spout. We heard other spouts in
various directions, and in the dark water, slightly lighted by the
declining moon, we saw other dark spots of spray. Suddenly a burst of
steam startled me. It was near the ice where Koo-loo-ting-wah lay. I was
about to shout, but the Eskimo turned, held up his hand and whispered
"_Ouit-ou._" (Wait.)
Then, very slowly, he lowered his body, spread out his form on the ice,
and startlingly imitated the walrus call. His voice preternaturally
bellowed through the night. Out of the inky water, a walrus lifted its
head. I saw its long, white, spiral, ivory tusk and two phosphorescent
eyes. Koo-loo-ting-wah did not stir. I shivered with cold and
impatience. Why did he not strike? Our prey seemed within our hands. I
uttered an exclamation of vexed disappointment when, with a splash, the
head disappeared, leaving on the water a line of algae fire.
For several minutes I stood gazing seaward. Far away on the black ocean,
to my amazement, I saw lights appearing like distant lighthouse signals,
or the mast lanterns on passing ships. They flashed and suddenly faded,
these strange will-o'-the wisps of the Arctic sea. In a moment I
realized that the lights were caused by distant icebergs crashing
against one another. On the bergs as on the surface of the sea, as it
happened now, were coatings of a teeming germ life, the same which
causes phosphorescence in the trail of an ocean ship. The effect was
indescribably weird.
Suddenly I jumped backward, appalled by a noise that reverberated
shudderingly under the ice on which I stood. The ice shook as if with an
earthquake. I hastily retreated, but Koo-loo-ting-wah, lying by the
water's edge, never stirred. A dead man could not have been less
responsive. While I was wondering as to the cause of the upheaval, the
ice, within a few feet of Koo-loo-ting-wah, was suddenly torn asunder as
if by a submarine explosion. Koo-loo-ting-wah leaped into the air and
descended apparently toward the distending space of turbulent open
water. I saw him raise his arm and deliver a harpoon with amazing
dexterity; at the same instant I had seen also the white tusk and
phosphorescent eyes of a walrus appear for a moment in the black water
and then sink.
The harpoon had gone home; the line was run out; a spiked lance shaft
was driven into the ice through a loop in the end of the line, and the
line was thus fastened. We knew the wounded beast would have to rise for
air. With rifle and lance ready, we waited, intending, each time a spout
of water arose, to drive holes into the tough armor of skin until the
beast's vitals were tapped. By feeling the line, I could sense the
struggles of the wild creature below in the depths of the sea. Then the
line would slacken, a spout of steam would rise from the water,
Koo-loo-ting-wah would drive a spear, I a shot from my gun. The air
would become oppressive with the creature's frightful bellowing. Then
would come an interval of silence.
For about two hours we kept up the battle. Then the line slackened,
Koo-loo-ting-wah called the others, and together we drew the huge
carcass, steaming with blood, to the surface of the ice. Smelling the
odorous wet blood, the dogs exultantly howled.
Falling upon the animal, the natives, trained in the art, with sharp
knives had soon dressed the thick meat and blubber from the bones and
lashed the weltering mass on a sledge. This done, with quick despatch,
they separated, dashed along the edge of the ice, casting harpoons
whenever the small geysers appeared on the water. We were in excellent
luck. One walrus after another was dragged lumberingly on the ice, and
in the course of several hours the seven sledges were heavily loaded
with the precious supplies which would now enable me, liberally
equipped, to start Poleward. We gave our dogs a light meal, and started
landward, leaving great piles of walrus meat behind us on the ice.
Although we were tired on reaching land, we began to build several
snow-houses in which to sleep. Not far away was an Eskimo village.
Summoning the natives to help us bring in the spoils of the hunt which
had been left on the ice, we first indulged in a gluttonous feast of
uncooked meat, in which the dogs ravenously joined. The meat tasted like
train-oil. The work of bringing in the meat and blubber and caching it
for subsequent gathering was hardly finished when, from the ominous,
glacial-covered highlands, a winter blast suddenly began to come with
terrific and increasing fury.
Blinding gusts of snow whipped the frozen earth. The wind shrieked
fiendishly. Above its roar, not three hours after our last trip on the
ice, a resounding, crashing noise rose above the storm. Braving the
blasts, I went outside the igloo. Through the darkness I could see white
curvatures of piling sea-ice. I could hear the rush and crashing of huge
floes and glaciers being carried seaward. Had we waited another day, had
we been out on the ice seeking walrus just twenty-four hours after our
successful hunt, we should have been carried away in the sudden roaring
gale, and hopelessly perished in the wind-swept deep.
During the night, or hours usually allotted to rest, the noise continued
unabated. I failed to sleep. Now and then, a crashing noise shivered
through the storm. An igloo from the nearby settlement was swept into
the sea. During the gale many of the natives who had retired with their
clothes hung out to dry, awoke to find that the wind had robbed them of
their valuable winter furs.
Some time along in the course of the night, I heard outside excited
Eskimos shouting. There was terror in the voices. Arising and dressing
hastily, I rushed into the teeth of the storm. Not far away were a
number of natives rushing along the land some twenty feet beneath which
the sea lapped the land-ice with furious tongues. They had cast lines
into the sea and were shouting, it seemed, to someone who was struggling
in the hopeless, frigid tumult of water.
I soon learned of the dreadful catastrophe. Ky-un-a, an old and cautious
native, awakened by the storm a brief while before, after dressing
himself, ventured outside his stone house to secure articles which he
had left there. As was learned later, he had just tied his sledge to a
rock when a gust of wind resistlessly rushed seaward, lifted the aged
man from his feet, and dropped him into the sea. Through the storm, his
dreadful cries attracted his companions. Some who were now tugging at
the lines, were barely covered with fur rugs which they had thrown about
them, and their limbs were partly bare. Now and then, a blinding gust of
wind, filled with freezing snow crystals, almost lifted us from our
feet. The sea lapped its tongues sickeningly below us.
Finally a limp body, ice-sheeted, dripping with water, yet clinging with
its mummied frozen hands to the line, was hauled up on the ice. Ky-un-a,
unconscious, was carried to his house about five hundred feet away.
There, after wrapping him in furs, in a brave effort to save his life,
the natives cut open his fur garments. The fur, frozen solid by the
frigid blasts in the brief period which had elapsed since his being
lifted from the water, took with it, in parting from his body, long
patches of skin, leaving the quivering raw flesh exposed as though by a
burn. For three days the aged man lay dying, suffering excruciating
tortures, the victim of merely a common accident, which at any time may
happen to anyone of these Spartan people. I shall never forget the
harrowing moans of the suffering man piercing the storm. Perhaps it had
been merciful to let him perish in the sea.
Ky-un-a's old home was some forty miles distant. To it, that he might
die there, he desired to go. On the fourth day after the accident, he
was placed in a litter, covered with warm furs, and borne over the
smooth icefields. I shall never forget that dismal and solemn
procession. A benign calm prevailed over land and sea. The orange glow
of a luxurious moon set the ice coldly aflame. Long shadows, like
spectral mourners, robed in purple, loomed before the tiny procession.
Now and then, as they dwindled in the distance, I saw them, like black
dots, crossing areas of polished ice which glowed like mirror lakes of
silver. From the distance, softly shuddered the decreasing moans of the
dying man; then there was silence. I marvelled again upon the lure of
this eerily, weirdly beautiful land, where, always imminent, death can
be so terrible.
[Illustration]
MIDNIGHT AND MID-WINTER
THE EQUIPMENT AND ITS PROBLEMS--NEW ART IN THE MAKING OF SLEDGES
COMBINING LIGHTNESS--PROGRESS OF THE PREPARATIONS--CHRISTMAS, WITH
ITS GLAD TIDINGS AND AUGURIES FOR SUCCESS IN QUEST OF THE POLE
IX
THE COMING OF THE ESKIMO STORK
In planning for the Polar dash I appreciated fully the vital importance
of sledges. These, I realized, must possess, to an ultimate degree, the
combined strength of steel with the lightness and elasticity of the
strongest wood. The sledge must neither be flimsy nor bulky; nor should
it be heavy or rigid. After a careful study of the art of
sledge-traveling from the earliest time to the present day, after years
of sledging and sledge observation in Greenland, the Antarctic and
Alaska, I came to the conclusion that success was dependent, not upon
any one type of sledge, but upon local fitness.
All natives of the frigid wilds have devised sledges, traveling and camp
equipment to fit their local needs. The collective lessons of ages are
to be read in this development of primitive sledge traveling. If these
wild people had been provided with the best material from which to work
out their hard problems of life, then it is probable that their methods
could not be improved. But neither the Indian nor the Eskimo was ever in
possession of either the tools or the raw material to fit their
inventive genius for making the best equipment. Therefore, I had studied
first the accumulated results of the sledge of primitive man and from
this tried to construct a sledge with its accessories in which were
included the advantages of up-to-date mechanics with the use of the most
durable material which a search of the entire globe had afforded me.[9]
The McClintock sledges, made of bent wood with wide runners, had been
adopted by nearly all explorers, under different names and with
considerable modifications, for fifty years. This sledge is still the
best type for deep soft snow conditions, for which it was originally
intended. But such snow is not often found on the ice of the Polar sea.
The native sledge which Peary copied, although well adapted to local use
along the ice-foot and the land-adhering pack, is not the best sledge
for a trans-boreal run. This is because it is too heavy and too easily
broken, and breakable in such a way that it cannot be quickly repaired.
For the Arctic pack, a sledge must be of a moderate length, with
considerable width. Narrow runners offer less friction and generally
give sufficient bearing surface. The other qualities vital to quick
movement and durability are lightness, elasticity and interchangeability
of parts. All of these conditions I planned to meet in a new pattern of
sledge which should combine the durability of the Eskimo sledges and the
lightness of the Yukon sledge of Alaska.
The making of a suitable sledge caused me a good deal of concern. Before
leaving New York I had taken the precaution of selecting an abundance of
the best hickory wood in approximately correct sizes for sledge
construction. Suitable tools had also been provided. Now, as the long
winter with its months of darkness curtailed the time of outside
movement, the box-house was refitted as a workshop. From eight to ten
men were at the benches, eight hours each day, shaping and bending
runners, fitting and lashing interchangeable cross bars and posts, and
riveting the iron shoes. Thus the sledge parts were manufactured to
possess the same facilities to fit not only all other sledges, but also
other parts of the same sledge. If, therefore, part of a sledge should
be broken, other parts of a discarded sledge could offer repair sections
easily.
The general construction of this new sledge is easily understood from
the various photographs presented. All joints were made elastic by
seal-thong lashings. The sledges were twelve feet long and thirty inches
wide; the runners had a width of an inch and an eighth. Each part and
each completed sledge was thoroughly tested before it was finally loaded
for the long run. For dog harness, the Greenland Eskimo pattern was
adopted. But canine habits are such that when rations are reduced to
minimum limits the leather strips disappear as food. To obviate this
disaster, the shoulder straps were made of folds of strong canvas, while
the traces were cut from cotton log line.
A boat is an important adjunct to every sledge expedition which hopes to
venture far from its base of operations. It is a matter of necessity,
even when following a coast line, as was shown by the mishap of Mylius
Erickson, for if he had had a boat he would himself have returned to
tell the story of the Danish Expedition to East Greenland.
Need for a boat comes with the changing conditions of the advancing
season. Things must be carried for several months for a chance use in
the last stages of the return. But since food supplies are necessarily
limited, delay is fatal, and therefore, when open water prevents
advance, a boat is so vitally necessary as to become a life preserver.
Foolish indeed is the explorer who pays slight attention to this
important problem.
The transportation of a boat, however, offers many serious difficulties.
Nansen introduced the kayak, and most explorers since have followed his
example. The Eskimo canoe serves the purpose very well, but to carry it
for three months without hopeless destruction requires so tremendous an
amount of energy as to make the task practically impossible.
Sectional boats, aluminum boats, skin floats and other devices had been
tried, but to all there is the same fatal objection on a Polar trip, of
impossible transportation. But it seems odd that the ordinary folding
canvas boat has not been pressed into this service.
We found such a canoe boat to fit the situation exactly, and selected a
twelve-foot Eureka-shaped boat with wooden frame. The slats, spreaders
and floor-pieces were utilized as parts of sledges. The canvas cover
served as a floor cloth for our sleeping bags. Thus the boat did useful
service for a hundred days and never seemed needlessly cumbersome. When
the craft was finally spread for use as a boat, in it we carried the
sledge, in it we sought game for food, and in it or under it we camped.
Without it we could never have returned.
Even more vital than the choice of sledges, more vital than anything
else, I knew, in such a trip as I proposed, is the care of the stomach.
From the published accounts of Arctic traveling it is impossible to
learn a fitting ration, and I hasten to add that I well realized that
our own experience may not solve the problem for future expeditions. The
gastronomic need differs with every man. It differs with every
expedition, and it is radically different with every nation. Thus, when
De Gerlache, with good intentions, forced Norwegian food into French
stomachs, he learned that there is a nationality in gastronomics. Nor is
it safe to listen to scientific advice, for the stomach is arbitrary,
and stands as autocrat over every human sense and passion and will not
easily yield to dictates.
In this respect, as in others, I was helped very much by the natives.
The Eskimo is ever hungry, but his taste is normal. Things of doubtful
value in nutrition form no part in his dietary. Animal food, consisting
of meat and fat, is entirely satisfactory as a steady diet without other
adjuncts. His food requires neither salt nor sugar, nor is cooking a
matter of necessity.
Quantity is important, but quality applies only to the relative
proportion of fat. With this key to gastronomics, pemmican was selected
as the staple food, and it would also serve equally well for the dogs.
We had an ample supply of pemmican, which was made of pounded dried
beef, sprinkled with a few raisins and some currants, and slightly
sweetened with sugar. This mixture was cemented together with heated
beef tallow and run into tin cans containing six pounds each.
This combination was invented by the American Indian, and the supply for
this expedition was made by Armour of Chicago after a formula furnished
by Captain Evelyn B. Baldwin. Pemmican had been used before as part of
the long list of foodstuffs for Arctic expeditions, but with us there
was the important difference that it was to be almost entirely the whole
bill of fare when away from game haunts. The palate surprises in our
store were few.
By the time Christmas approached I had reason indeed for rejoicing.
Although this happy season meant little to me as a holiday of
gift-giving and feasting, it came with auguries for success in the thing
my heart most dearly desired, and compared to which earth had nothing
more alluring to give.
Our equipment was now about complete. In the box house were tiers of new
sledges, rows of boxes and piles of bags filled with clothing, canned
supplies, dried meat, and sets of strong dog harness. The food, fuel
and camp equipment for the Polar dash were ready. Everything had been
thoroughly tested and put aside for a final examination. Elated by our
success, and filled with gratitude to the faithful natives, I declared a
week of holidays, with rejoicing and feasting. Feasting was at this time
especially desirable, for we had now to fatten up for the anticipated
race.
Christmas day in the Arctic does not dawn with the glow which children
in waking early to seek their bedecked tree, view outside their windows
in more southern lands. Both Christmas day and Christmas night are
black. Only the stars keep their endless watch in the cold skies.
Standing outside my igloo on the happy night, I gazed at the Pole Star,
the guardian of the goal I sought, and I remembered with a thrill the
story of that mysterious star the Wise Men had followed, of the wonders
to which it led them, and I felt an awed reverence for the Power that
set these unfaltering beacons above the earth and had written in their
golden traces, with a burning pen, veiled and unrevealed destinies which
men for ages have tried to learn.
I retired to sleep with thoughts of home. I thought of my children, and
the bated expectancy with which they were now going to bed, of their
hopefulness of the morrow, and the unbounded joy they would have in
gifts to which I could not contribute. I think tears that night wet my
pillow of furs. But I would give them, if I did not fail, the gift of a
father's achievement, of which, with a glow, I felt they should be
proud.
The next morning the natives arrived at the box house early. It had
been cleared of seamstresses and workmen the day before, and put in
comparatively spick and span order. I had told the natives they were to
feed to repletion during the week of holiday, an injunction to the
keeping of which they did not need much urging.
Early Christmas morning, men and women began working overtime on the two
festive meals which were to begin that day and continue daily.
About this time, the most important duty of our working force had been
to uncover caches and dig up piles of frozen meat and blubber. Of this,
which possesses the flavor and odor of Limburger cheese, and also the
advantage, if such it be, of intoxicating them, the natives are
particularly fond. While a woman held a native torch of moss dipped in
oils and pierced with a stick, the men, by means of iron bars and picks,
dug up boulders of meat just as coal is forced from mines.
A weird spectacle was this, the soft light of the blubber lamp dancing
on the spotless snows, the soot-covered faces of the natives grinning
while they worked. The blubber was taken close to their igloos and
placed on raised platforms of snow, so as to be out of reach of the
dogs. Of this meat and blubber, which was served raw, partially thawed,
cooked and also frozen, the natives partook during most of their waking
hours. They enjoyed it, indeed, as much as turkey was being relished in
my far-away home.
Moreover they had, what was an important delicacy, native ice cream.
This would not, of course, please the palate of those accustomed to the
American delicacy, but to the Eskimo maiden it possesses all the lure
of creams, sherberts or ice cream sodas. With us, sugar in the process
of digestion turns into fat, and fat into body fuel. The Eskimo, having
no sugar, yearns for fat, and it comes with the taste of sweets.
The making of native ice cream is quite a task. I watched the process of
making it Christmas day with amused interest. The native women must have
a mixture of oils from the seal, walrus and narwhal. Walrus and seal
blubber is frozen, cut into strips, and pounded with great force so as
to break the fat cells. This mass is now placed in a stone pot and
heated to the temperature of the igloo, when the oil slowly separates
from the fibrous pork-like mass. Now, tallow from the suet of the
reindeer or musk ox is secured, cut into blocks and given by the good
housewife to her daughters, who sit in the igloo industriously chewing
it until the fat cells are crushed. This masticated mass is placed in a
long stone pot over the oil flame, and the tallow reduced from it is run
into the fishy oil of the walrus or seal previously prepared.
This forms the body of native ice cream. For flavoring, the housewife
has now a variety from which to select. This usually consists of bits of
cooked meat, moss flowers and grass. Anticipating the absence of moss
and grass in the winter, the natives, during the hunting season, take
from the stomachs of reindeer and musk oxen which are shot, masses of
partly digested grass which is preserved for winter use. This, which has
been frozen, is now chipped in fragments, thawed, and, with bits of
cooked meats, is added to the mixed fats. It all forms a paste the color
of pistache, with occasional spots like crushed fruit.
The mixture is lowered to the floor of the igloo, which, in winter, is
always below the freezing point, and into it is stirred snow water. The
churned composite gradually brightens and freezes as it is beaten. When
completed, it looks very much like ice cream, but it has the flavor of
cod liver oil, with a similar odor. Nevertheless, it has nutritive
qualities vastly superior to our ice cream, and stomach pains rarely
follow an engorgement.
With much glee, the natives finished their Christmas repast with this
so-called delicacy. For myself a tremendous feast was prepared,
consisting of food left by the yacht and the choicest meat from the
caches. My menu consisted of green turtle soup, dried vegetables, caviar
on toast, olives, Alaskan salmon, crystallized potatoes, reindeer steak,
buttered rice, French peas, apricots, raisins, corn bread, Huntley and
Palmer biscuits, cheese and coffee.
As I sat eating, I thought with much humor of the curious combinations
of caviar and reindeer steak, of the absurd contradiction in eating
green turtle soup beyond the Arctic circle. I ate heartily, with more
gusto than I ever partook of delicious food in the Waldorf Astoria in my
far-away home city. After dinner I took a long stroll on snow shoes. As
I looked at the star-lamps swung in heaven, I thought of Broadway, with
its purple-pale strings of lights, and its laughing merry-makers on this
festive evening.
I did not, I confess, feel lonely. I seemed to be getting something so
much more wholesome, so much more genuine from the vast expanse of snow
and the unhidden heavens which, in New York, are seldom seen. Returning
to the box-house, I ended Christmas evening with Edgar Allen Poe and
Shakespeare as companions.