the drift of the old ice. As the heavy central pack is pressed against
the unyielding land pack the small ice is ground to splinters, and even
heavy floes are crushed. This reduced mass of small ice is pasted and
cemented along the shores of the Big Lead, leaving a broad band of
troublesome surface as a serious barrier to sled travel. It seems quite
probable that this lead, or a condition similar to it, extends entirely
around the Polar sea as a buffer between the land and the middle pack.
In exploring the shore line, a partially bridged place was found about a
mile from camp, but the young ice was too elastic for a safe track. The
temperature, however, fell rapidly with the setting sun, and the wind
was just strong enough to sweep off the heated vapors. I knew better
atmospheric condition could not be afforded quickly to thicken the young
ice.
Returning to camp that night, we surprised our stomachs by a little
frozen musk ox tenderloin and tallow, the greatest delicacy in our
possession. Then we retired. Ice was our pillow. Ice was our bed. A dome
of snow above us held off the descending liquid air of frost. Outside
the wind moaned. Shudderingly, the deep howl of the dogs rolled over the
ice. Lying on the sheeted deep, beneath my ears I heard the noise of the
moving, grinding, crashing pack. It sounded terrifyingly like a distant
thunder of guns. I could not sleep. Sick anxiety filled me. Could we
cross the dreadful river on the morrow? Would the ice freeze? Or might
the black space not hopelessly widen during the night? I lay awake,
shivering with cold. I felt within me the blank loneliness of the
thousands of desolate miles about me.
One hundred miles of the unknown had been covered; five hundred miles of
the journey from our winter camp were behind us. Beyond, to the goal,
lay four hundred unknown miles. Nothing dearly desired of man ever
seemed so far away.
[Illustration: ESKIMO TORCH]
CROSSING MOVING SEAS OF ICE
CROSSING THE LEAD--THE THIN ICE HEAVES LIKE A SHEET OF RUBBER--CREEPING
FORWARD CAUTIOUSLY, THE TWO DANGEROUS MILES ARE COVERED--BOUNDING
PROGRESS MADE OVER IMPROVING ICE--THE FIRST HURRICANE--DOGS BURIED AND
FROZEN INTO MASSES IN DRIFTS OF SNOW--THE ICE PARTS THROUGH THE
IGLOO--WAKING TO FIND ONE'S SELF FALLING INTO THE COLD SEA.
XV
THE FIRST STEPS OVER THE GRINDING CENTRAL PACK
Ill at ease and shivering, we rose from our crystal berths on March 23
and peeped out of a pole-punched porthole. A feeble glow of mystic color
came from everywhere at once. Outside, toward a sky of dull purple,
columns of steam-like vapor rose from open ice water, resembling vapors
from huge boiling cauldrons. We sank with chattering teeth to our
cheerless beds and quivered with the ghostly unreality of this great
vibrating unknown.
Long before the suppressed incandescent night changed to the prism
sparkle of day we were out seeking a way over the miles of insecure
young ice separating us from the central pack. On our snowshoes, with an
easy tread, spread feet and with long life lines tied to each other, we
ventured to the opposite shores of that dangerous spread of young ice.
Beyond, the central pack glittered in moving lines and color, like
quicksilver shot with rainbow hues.
The Big Lead was mottled and tawny colored, like the skin of a great
constrictor. As we stood and looked over its broad expanse to the solid
floes, two miles off, there came premonitions to me of impending danger.
Would the ice bear us? If it broke, and the life line was not quickly
jerked, our fate would almost certainly be sure death. Sontag, the
astronomer of Dr. Hay's Expedition, thus lost his life. Many others have
in like manner gone to the bottomless deep. On two occasions during the
previous winter I had thus gone through, but the life line had saved me.
What would be our fate here? But, whatever the luck, we must cross. I
knew delay was fatal, for at any time a very light wind or a change in
the drift might break the new ice and delay us long enough to set the
doom of failure upon our entire venture.
Every precaution was taken to safeguard our lives. The most important
problem was to distribute the weight so that all of it would not be
brought to bear on a small area. We separated our dog teams from the
sleds, holding to long lines which were fastened about our bodies and
also to the sleds. The sleds were hitched to each other by another long
line.
With bated breath and my heart thumping, I advanced at the end of a long
line which was attached to the first sled, and picked my way through the
crushed and difficult ice along shore. With the life-saving line
fastened to each one of us, we were insured against possible dangers as
well as forethought could provide. Running from sled to sled, from dog
to dog, and man to man, it would afford a pulling chance for life should
anyone break through the ice. It seemed unlikely that the ice along the
entire chain would break at once, but its cracking under the step of one
of us seemed probable.
I knew, as I gently placed my foot upon the thin yellowish surface, that
at any moment I might sink into an icy grave. Yet a spirit of bravado
thrilled my heart. I felt the grip of danger, and also that thrill of
exultation which accompanies its terror.
Gently testing the ice before me with the end of my axe, with spread
legs, on snowshoes, with long, sliding steps, I slowly advanced.
A dangerous cracking sound pealed in every direction under my feet. The
Eskimos followed. With every tread the thin sheet ice perceptibly sank
under me, and waved, in small billows, like a sheet of rubber.
Stealthily, as though we were trying to filch some victory, we crept
forward. We rocked on the heaving ice as a boat on waves of water. Now
and then we stepped upon sheets of thicker ice, and hastily went forward
with secure footing. None of us spoke during the dangerous crossing. I
heard distinctly the panting of the dogs and the patter of their feet.
We covered the two miles safely, yet our snail-like progress seemed to
cover many anxious years.
I cannot describe the exultation which filled me when the crossing was
accomplished. It seemed as though my goal itself were stretching toward
me. I experienced a sense of unbounded victory. I could have cheered
with joy. Intoxicated with it, I and my companions leaped forward, new
cheer quickening our steps. The dangers to come seemed less formidable
now, and as we journeyed onward it was the mastering of these, as did
our accomplishment in crossing the Big Lead, which gave us a daily
incentive to continue our way and ever to apply brain and muscle to the
subduing of even greater difficulties with zest.
It was in doing this that the real thrill, the real victory--the only
thrill and victory, indeed--of reaching the North Pole lay. The
attaining of this mythical spot did not then, and does not now, seem in
itself to mean anything; I did not then, and do not now, consider it the
treasure-house of any great scientific secrets. The only thing to be
gained from reaching the Pole, the triumph of it, the lesson in the
accomplishment, is that man, by brain power and muscle energy, can
subdue the most terrific forces of a blind nature if he is determined
enough, courageous enough, and undauntedly persistent despite failure.
On my journey northward I felt the ever constant presence of those who
had died in trying to reach the goal before me. There were times when I
felt a startling nearness to them--a sense like that one has of the
proximity of living beings in an adjoining room. I felt the goad of
their hopes within me; I felt the steps of their dead feet whenever my
feet touched the ice. I felt their unfailing determination revive me
when I was tempted to turn back in the days of inhuman suffering that
were to come. I felt that I, the last man to essay this goal, must for
them justify humanity; that I must crown three centuries of human effort
with success.
With the perilous Big Lead behind us, a bounding course was set to
reach the eighty-fifth parallel on the ninety-seventh meridian. What
little movement was noted on the ice had been easterly. To allow for
this drift we aimed to keep a line slightly west of the Pole.
We bounded northward joyously. Under our speeding feet the ice
reverberated and rumbled with the echo of far-away splitting and
crashing.
The sun sank into a haze like mother-of-pearl. Our pathway glowed with
purple and orange. We paused only when the pale purple blue of night
darkened the pack.
Starting forward in the afternoon of March 24, we crossed many small
floes with low-pressure lines separated by narrow belts of new ice. Our
speed increased. At times we could hardly keep pace with our dogs. The
temperature rose to forty-one below zero. The western sky cleared
slightly. Along the horizon remained misty appearances resembling land.
This low-lying fog continued during our entire second hundred miles over
the Polar basin. Under it we daily expected to see new land.
But Nature did not satisfy our curiosity for a long time. Both Ah-we-lah
and E-tuk-i-shook were sure of a constant nearness to land. Because of
the native panic out of its reassuring sight, I encouraged this belief,
as I did concerning every other possible sign of land further northward.
I knew that only by encouraging a delusion of nearness to land could I
urge them ever farther in the face of the hardships that must inevitably
come.
An altitude of the sun at noon on March 24 gave our position as latitude
83 deg. 31'. The longitude was estimated at 96 deg. 27'. The land clouds of
Grant Land were still visible. The low bank of mist in the west
occasionally brightened. For a while I believed this to be an indication
of Crocker Land.
Until midday I took observations and endeavored to study the appearances
of land. Our dogs sniffed the air as if scenting game. After a diligent
search, one seal blow-hole was located, and later we saw an old bear
track. No algae or other small life was detected in the water between the
ice crevices. At the Big Lead a few algae had been gathered. But here the
sea seemed sterile. Signs of seal and bear, however, were encouraging to
us as possible future food supply. In returning, I calculated the season
would be more advanced, and it was possible that life might move
northward, thus permitting an extension of the time allowance of our
rations.
Although the heat of the sun was barely felt, its rays began to pierce
our eyes with painful effects. Reflected from the spotless surface of
the storm-driven snows, the bright light could not long be endured
without some protection, even by the Eskimos. Now came the time to test
a simple expedient that had occurred to me at Annoatok. Amber-colored
goggles, darkened or smoked glasses and ordinary automobile goggles had
all been tried with indifferent results. They failed for one reason or
another, mostly because of an insufficient range of vision or because of
a faulty construction that made it impossible to proceed more than a few
minutes without removing the accumulated condensation within them. At
Annoatok I had made amber-colored goggles from the glass of my
photographic supplies. By adjusting them I soon found they were a
priceless discovery. They entirely eliminated one of the greatest
torments of Arctic travel.
While effectually screening the active rays that would have injured the
eye, these amber glasses at the same time possessed the inestimable
advantage of not interfering with the range of vision.
Relieved of the snow glare, the eye was better enabled to see distant
objects than through field glasses. It is frequently extremely difficult
to detect icy surface irregularities on cloudy days. The amber glass
dispelled this trouble perfectly, enabling the eye to search carefully
every nook and crevice through the vague incandescence which blinds the
observer in hazy weather. The glasses did not reduce the _quantity_ of
light, as do smoked glasses, but the _quality_; the actinic rays, which
do the greatest harm, were eliminated. We were not only relieved of the
pain and fatigue of eye strain, but the color imparted a touch of cheer
and warmth to our chilled blue horizon. The usual snow goggles add to
the ugly gray-blue of the frozen seas, which alone sends frosty waves
through the nervous fibers.
So thoroughly delighted were we with these goggles that later we wore
them even in igloos while asleep, with the double object of screening
the strong light which passes through the eyelids and of keeping the
forehead warm.
On our march in the early part of the afternoon of the 24th the weather
proved good. The ice, though newly crevassed, improved as we advanced.
The late start spread our day's work close to the chill of midnight.
When we started the wind blew kindly. With glad hearts we forged
forward without delays. On the ice I heard the soft patter of swift dog
feet and the dashing, cutting progress of the sleds. As a scene viewed
from a carousel, the field of ice swept around me in our dizzy, twisting
progress. We swept resistlessly onward for twenty-three miles. As we had
taken a zigzag course to follow smooth ice, I therefore recorded only
eighteen miles to our credit.
The night was beautiful. The sun sank into a purple haze. Soon, in the
magic of the atmosphere, appeared three suns of prismatic colors. These
settled slowly into the frozen sea and disappeared behind that
persistent haze of obscuring mist which always rests over the pack when
the sun is low. During the night a narrow band of orange was flung like
a ribbon across the northern skies. The pack surface glowed with varying
shades of violet, lilac and pale purplish blue. Many such splendid
sights are to be constantly seen in the Arctic. Although I reveled in it
now, the time was soon to come when weariness and hunger numbed my
faculties into a dreary torpor in which the splendor was not seen.
Signs appeared of a gale from the west before we were quite ready to
camp. Little sooty clouds with ragged edges suddenly began to cover the
sky, scurrying at an alarming pace. Beyond us a huge smoky volume of
cloud blackened the pearly glitter.
Suitable camping ice was sought. In the course of an hour we built an
igloo. We made the structure stronger than usual on account of the
threatening storm. We constructed double tiers of snow blocks to the
windward. A little water was thrown over the top to cement the blocks.
We fastened the dogs to the lee of hummocks. The sleds were securely
lashed and fastened to the ice.
We expected a hurricane, and had not to wait to taste its fury. Before
we were at rest in our bags the wind lashed the snows with a force
inconceivable. With rushing drift, the air thickened. Dogs and sleds in
a few minutes were buried under banks of snow and great drifts encircled
the igloo. The cemented blocks of our dome withstood the sweep of the
blast well. Yet, now and then, small holes were burrowed through the
snow wall by the sharp wind. Drift entered and covered us. I lay awake
for hours. I felt the terrible oppression of that raging, life-sucking
vampire force sweeping over the desolate world. Disembodied things--the
souls of those, perhaps, who had perished here--seemed frenziedly
calling me in the wind. I felt under me the surge of the sweeping, awful
sea. I felt the desolation of this stormy world within my shuddering
soul; but, withal, I throbbed with a determination to assert the
supremacy of living man over these blind, insensate forces; to prove
that the living brain and palpitating muscle of a finite though
conscious creature could vanquish a hostile Nature which creates to
kill. I burned to justify those who had died here; to fulfill by proxy
their hopes; to set their calling souls at rest. The storm waked in me
an angry, challenging determination.
Early in the morning of the 25th the storm ceased as suddenly as it had
come. A stillness followed which was appalling. It seemed as if the
storm had heard my thoughts and paused to contemplate some more dreadful
onslaught. The dogs began to howl desperately, as if attacked by a
bear. We rushed out of our igloo, seeking guns. There was no approaching
creature. It was, however, a signal of serious distress that we had
heard. The dogs were in acute misery. The storm-driven snows had buried
and bound them in unyielding ice. They had partly uncovered themselves.
United by trace and harness, they were imprisoned in frozen masses. Few
of them could even rise and stretch. They were in severe torment.
We hurriedly freed their traces and beat the cemented snows from their
furs with sticks. Released, they leaped about gladly, their cries,
curling tails and pointed noses telling of gratitude. While we danced
about, stretching our limbs and rubbing our hands to get up circulation,
the sun rose over the northern blue, flushing the newly driven snows
with warm tones. The temperature during the storm had risen to only 26 deg.
below, but soon the thermometer sank rapidly below 40 deg.. The west was
still smoky and the weather did not seem quite settled. As it was still
too early to start, we again slipped into the bags and sought quiet
slumber.
As yet the dreadful insomnia which was to rob me of rest on my journey
had not come, and I slept with the blissful soundness of a child. I must
have been asleep several hours, when, of a sudden, I opened my eyes.
Terror gripped my heart. Loud explosive noises reverberated under my
head. It seemed as though bombs were torn asunder in the depths of the
cold sea beneath me. I lay still, wondering if I were dreaming. The
sounds echoingly died away. Looking about the igloo, I detected nothing
unusual. I saw Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook staring at me with wide-open
frightened eyes. I arose and peeped through the eye port. The fields of
ice without reflected the warm light of the rising sun in running waves
of tawny color. The ice was undisturbed. An unearthly quiet prevailed.
Concluding that the ice was merely cracking under the sudden change of
temperature, in quite the usual harmless manner, I turned over again,
reassuring my companions, and promptly fell asleep.
Out of the blankness of sleep I suddenly wakened again. Half-dazed, I
heard beneath me a series of echoing, thundering noises. I felt the ice
floor on which I lay quivering. I experienced the sudden giddiness one
feels on a tossing ship at sea. In the flash of a second I saw Ah-we-lah
leap to his feet. In the same dizzy instant I saw the dome of the
snowhouse open above me; I caught a vision of the gold-streaked sky. My
instinct at the moment was to leap. I think I tried to rise, when
suddenly everything seemed lifted from under me; I experienced the
suffocating sense of falling, and next, with a spasm of indescribable
horror, felt about my body a terrific tightening pressure like that of a
chilled and closing shell of steel, driving the life and breath from me.
In an instant it was clear what had happened. A crevasse had suddenly
opened through our igloo, directly under the spot whereon I slept; and
I, a helpless creature in a sleeping bag, with tumbling snow blocks and
ice and snow crashing about and crushing me, with the temperature 48 deg.
below zero, was floundering in the opening sea!
LAND DISCOVERED
FIGHTING PROGRESS THROUGH CUTTING COLD AND TERRIFIC STORMS--LIFE BECOMES
A MONOTONOUS ROUTINE OF HARDSHIP--THE POLE INSPIRES WITH ITS RESISTLESS
LURE--NEW LAND DISCOVERED BEYOND THE EIGHTY-FOURTH PARALLEL--MORE THAN
TWO HUNDRED MILES FROM SVARTEVOEG--THE FIRST SIX HUNDRED MILES COVERED
XVI
THREE HUNDRED MILES TO THE APEX OF THE WORLD
I think I was about to swoon when I felt hands beneath my armpits and
heard laughter in my ears. With an adroitness such as only these natives
possess, my two companions were dragging me from the water. And while I
lay panting on the ice, recovering from my fright, I saw them
expeditiously rescue our possessions.
It seemed that all this happened so quickly that I had really been in
the water only a few moments. My two companions saw the humor of the
episode and laughed heartily. Although I had been in the water only a
brief time, a sheet of ice surrounded my sleeping bag. Fortunately,
however, the reindeer skin was found to be quite dry when the ice was
beaten off. The experience, while momentarily terrifying, was
instructive, for it taught us the danger of spreading ice, especially
in calms following storms.
Gratitude filled my heart. I fully realized how narrow had been the
escape of all of us. Had we slept a few seconds longer we should all
have disappeared in the opening crevasse. The hungry Northland would
again have claimed its human sacrifice.
The ice about was much disturbed. Numerous black lines of water opened
on every side; from these oozed jets of frosty, smoke-colored vapor. The
difference between the temperature of the sea and that of the air was
76 deg.. With this contrast, the open spots of ice-water appeared to be
boiling.
Anxious to move along, away from the troubled angle of ice, our usual
breakfast was simplified. Melting some snow, we drank the icy liquid as
an eye-opener, and began our ration of a half-pound boulder of pemmican.
But with cold fingers, blue lips and no possible shelter, the stuff was
unusually hard. To warm up, we prepared the sleds. Under our lashes the
dogs jumped into harness with a bound. The pemmican, which we really
found too hard to eat, had to be first broken into pieces with an axe.
We ground it slowly with our molars as we trudged along. Our teeth
chattered while the stomach was thus being fired with durable fuel.
As we advanced the ice improved to some extent. With a little search
safe crossings were found over new crevices. A strong westerly wind blew
piercingly cold.
Good progress was made, but we did not forget at any time that we were
invading the forbidden domains of a new polar environment.
Henceforth, one day was to be much like another. Beyond the
eighty-third parallel life is devoid of any pleasure. The intense
objective impressions of cold and hunger assailing the body rob even the
mind of inspiration and exhilaration. Even the best day of sun and
gentle wind offers no balm.
One awakes realizing the wind has abated and sees the cheerless sun
veering about the side of the ice shelter. One kicks the victim upon
whom, that morning, duty has fixed the misfortune to be up first--for we
tried to be equals in sharing the burdens of life. And upon him to whose
lot falls this hardship there is a loss of two hours' repose. He chops
ice, fills the kettles, lights the fire, and probably freezes his
fingers in doing so. Then he wiggles back into his bag, warms his icy
hands on the bare skin of his own stomach; or, if he is in a two-man
bag, and the other fellow is awake, Arctic courtesy permits the icy
hands on the stomach of his bedfellow.
In due time the blood runs to the hand and he sets about tidying up the
camp. First, the hood of his own bag. It is loaded with icicles and
frost, the result of the freezing of his breath while asleep. He brushes
off the ice and snow. The ice has settled in the kettles in the
meantime. More ice must be chopped and put into the kettle. The chances
are that he now breaks a commandment and steals what to us is a great
luxury--a long drink of water to ease his parched throat. Because of the
need of fuel economy, limit is placed on drinks.
Then the fire needs attention; the flame is imperfect and the gas hole
needs cleaning. He thoughtlessly grips the little bit of metal to the
end of which the priming needle is attached. That metal is so cold that
it burns, and he leaves a piece of his skin on it. Then the breakfast
ration of pemmican must be divided. It is not frozen, for it contains no
water. But it is hard. The stuff looks like granite. Heat would melt
it--but there is no fuel to spare. The two slumberers are given a thump,
and their eyes open to the stone-like pemmican. Between yawns the teeth
are set to grind the pemmican. The water boils, the tea is tossed in it
and the kettle is removed.
We rise on elbows, still in the bags, to enjoy the one heavenly treat of
our lives, the cup of tea which warms the hand and the stomach at once.
Then we dress. It is remarkable how cold compels speed in dressing.