marks, seen in the half-dark of the snow, filled us with a wild
resurgence of hope for life. On the evening of March 20 we prepared
cautiously for the coming of the bear.
A snowhouse was built, somewhat stronger than usual; before it a shelf
was arranged with blocks of snow, and on this shelf attractive bits of
skin were arranged to imitate the dark outline of a recumbent seal. Over
this was placed a looped line, through which the head and neck must go
in order to get the bait. Other loops were arranged to entangle the
feet. All the lines were securely fastened to solid ice. Peepholes were
cut in all sides of the house, and a rear port was cut, from which we
might escape or make an attack. Our lances and knives were now carefully
sharpened. When all was ready, one of us remained on watch while the
others sought a needed sleep. We had not long to wait. Soon a crackling
sound on the snows gave the battle call, and with a little black nose
extended from a long neck, a vicious creature advanced.
Through our little eye-opening and to our empty stomach he appeared
gigantic. Apparently as hungry as we were, he came in straight reaches
for the bait. The run port was opened. Ah-we-lah and E-tuk-i-shook
emerged, one with a lance, the other with a spiked harpoon shaft. Our
lance, our looped line, our bow and arrow, I knew, however, would be
futile.
During the previous summer, when I foresaw a time of famine, I had taken
my four last cartridges and hid them in my clothing. Of the existence of
these, the two boys knew nothing. These were to be used at the last
stage of hunger, to kill something--or ourselves. That desperate time
had not arrived till now.
The bear approached in slow, measured steps, smelling the ground where
the skin lay.
I jerked the line. The loop tightened about the bear's neck. At the same
moment the lance and the spike were driven into the growling creature.
A fierce struggle ensued. I withdrew one of the precious cartridges from
my pocket, placed it in my gun, and gave the gun to Ah-we-lah, who took
aim and fired. When the smoke cleared, the bleeding bear lay on the
ground.
We skinned the animal, and devoured the warm, steaming flesh. Strength
revived. Here were food and fuel in abundance. We were saved! With the
success of this encounter, we could sit down and live comfortably for a
month; and before that time should elapse seals would seek the ice for
sun baths, and when seals arrived, the acquisition of food for the march
to Greenland would be easy.
But we did not sit down. Greenland was in sight; and, to an Eskimo,
Greenland, with all of its icy discomforts, has attractions not promised
in heaven. In this belief, as in most others, I was Eskimo by this time.
With very little delay, the stomach was spread with chops, and we
stretched to a gluttonous sleep, only to awake with appetites that
permitted of prolonged stuffing. It was a matter of economy to fill up
and thus make the sled load lighter. When more eating was impossible we
began to move for home shores, dragging a sled overloaded with the
life-saving prize.
A life of trouble, however, lay before us. Successive storms, mountains
of jammed ice, and deep snow, interrupted our progress and lengthened
the course over circuitous wastes of snowdrifts and blackened our
horizon. When, after a prodigious effort, Cape Sabine was reached, our
food supply was again exhausted.[18]
Here an old seal was found. It had been caught a year before and cached
by Pan-ic-pa, the father of E-tuk-i-shook. With it was found a rude
drawing spotted with sooty tears. This told the story of a loving
father's fruitless search for his son and friends. The seal meat had the
aroma of Limburger cheese, and age had changed its flavor; but, with no
other food possible, our palates were easily satisfied. In an oil-soaked
bag was found about a pound of salt. We ate this as sugar, for no salt
had passed over our withered tongues for over a year.
The skin, blubber and meat were devoured with a relish. Every eatable
part of the animal was packed on the sled as we left the American shore.
Smith Sound was free of ice, and open water extended sixty miles
northward. A long detour was necessary to reach the opposite shores, but
the Greenland shores were temptingly near. With light hearts and
cheering premonitions of home, we pushed along Bache Peninsula to a
point near Cape Louis Napoleon. The horizon was now cleared of trouble.
The ascending sun had dispelled the winter gloom of the land. Leaping
streams cut through crystal gorges. The ice moved; the sea began to
breathe. The snows sparkled with the promise of double days and midnight
suns.
Life's buds had opened to full blossom. On the opposite shores, which
now seemed near, Nature's incubators had long worked overtime to start
the little ones of the wilds. Tiny bears danced to their mothers' call;
baby seals sunned in downy pelts. Little foxes were squinting at school
in learning the art of sight. In the wave of germinating joys our
suppressed nocturnal passions rose with surprise anew. We were raised to
an Arctic paradise.
As it lay in prospect, Greenland had the charm of Eden. There were the
homes of my savage companions. It was a stepping-stone to my home, still
very far off. It was a land where man has a fighting chance for his
life.
In reality, we were now in the most desperate throes of the grip of
famine which we had encountered during all of our hard experience.
Greenland was but thirty miles away. But we were separated from it by
impossible open water--a hopeless stormy deep. To this moment I do not
know why we did not sit down and allow the blood to cool with famine and
cold. We had no good reason to hope that we could cross, but again
hope--"the stuff that goes to make dreams"--kept our eyes open.
We started. We were as thin as it is possible for men to be. The scraps
of meat, viscera, and skin of the seal, buried for a year, was now our
sole diet. We traveled the first two days northward over savage uplifts
of hummocks and deep snows, tripping and stumbling over blocks of ice
like wounded animals. Then we reached good, smooth ice, but open water
forced us northward, ever northward from the cheering cliffs under which
our Greenland homes and abundant supplies were located. No longer
necessary to lift the feet, we dragged the ice-sheeted boots step after
step over smooth young ice. This eased our tired, withered legs, and
long distances were covered. The days were prolonged, the decayed seal
food ran low, water was almost impossible. Life no longer seemed worth
living. We had eaten the strips of meat and frozen seal cautiously. We
had eaten other things--our very boots and leather lashings as a last
resort.
So weak that we had to climb on hands and knees, we reached the top of
an iceberg, and from there saw Annoatok. Natives, who had thought us
long dead, rushed out to greet us. There I met Mr. Harry Whitney. As I
held his hand, the cheer of a long-forgotten world came over me. With
him I went to my house, only to find that during my absence it had been
confiscated. A sudden bitterness rose within which it was difficult to
hide. A warm meal dispelled this for a time.
In due time I told Whitney: "I have reached the Pole."
Uttering this for the first time in English, it came upon me that I was
saying a remarkable thing. Yet Mr. Whitney showed no great surprise, and
his quiet congratulation confirmed what was in my mind--that I had
accomplished no extraordinary or unbelievable thing; for to me the Polar
experience was not in the least remarkable, considered with our later
adventures.
Mr. Whitney, as is now well known, was a sportsman from New Haven,
Connecticut, who had been spending some months hunting in the North. He
had made Annoatok the base of his operations, and had been spending the
winter in the house which I had built of packing-boxes.
The world now seemed brighter. The most potent factor in this change was
food--and more food--a bath and another bath--and clean clothes. Mr.
Whitney offered me unreservedly the hospitality of my own camp. He
instructed Pritchard to prepare meal after meal of every possible dish
that our empty stomachs had craved for a year. The Eskimo boys were
invited to share it.
Between meals, or perhaps we had better call meals courses (for it was a
continuous all-night performance--interrupted by baths and breathing
spells to prevent spasms of the jaws)--between courses, then, there were
washes with real soap and real cleansing warm water, the first that we
had felt for fourteen months. Mr. Whitney helped to scrape my angular
anatomy, and he volunteered the information that I was the dirtiest man
he ever saw.
From Mr. Whitney I learned that Mr. Peary had reached Annoatok about the
middle of August, 1908, and had placed a boatswain named Murphy,
assisted by William Pritchard, a cabin boy on the _Roosevelt_, in charge
of my stores, which he had seized. Murphy was anything but tactful and
considerate; and in addition to taking charge of my goods, had been
using them in trading as money to pay for furs to satisfy Mr. Peary's
hunger for commercial gain. Murphy went south in pursuit of furs after
my arrival.
For the first few days I was too weak to inquire into the theft of my
camp and supplies. Furthermore, with a full stomach, and Mr. Whitney as
a warm friend at hand, I was indifferent. I was not now in any great
need. For by using the natural resources of the land, as I had done
before, it was possible to force a way back to civilization from here
with the aid of my Eskimo friends.
Little by little, however, the story of that very strange "Relief
Station for Dr. Cook" was unraveled, and I tell it here with no ulterior
notion of bitterness against Mr. Peary. I forgave him for the practical
theft of my supplies; but this is a very important part of the
controversy which followed, a controversy which can be understood only
by a plain statement of the incidents which led up to and beyond this
so-called "Relief Station for Dr. Cook," which was a relief only in the
sense that I was relieved of a priceless store of supplies.
When Mr. Peary heard of the execution of my plans to try for the Pole in
1907, and before he left on his last expedition, he accused me of
various violations of what he chose to call "Polar Ethics." No
application had been filed by me to seek the Pole. Now I was accused of
stealing his route, his Pole, and his people. This train of accusations
was given to the press, and with the greatest possible publicity. A part
of this was included in an official complaint to the International
Bureau of Polar Research at Brussels.
Now, what are Polar ethics? There is no separate code for the Arctic.
The laws which govern men's bearing towards each other in New York are
good in any part of the world. One cannot be a democrat in civilized
eyes and an autocrat in the savage world. One cannot cry, "Stop thief!"
and then steal the thief's booty. If you are a member of the brotherhood
of humanity in one place, you must be in another. In short, he who is a
gentleman in every sense of the word needs no memory for ethics. It is
only the modern political reformer who has need of the cloak of the
hypocrisy of ethics to hide his own misdeeds. An explorer should not
stoop to this.
Who had the power to grant a license to seek the Pole? If you wish to
invade the forbidden regions of Thibet, or the interior of Siberia, a
permit is necessary from the governments interested. But the Pole is a
place no nation owned, by right of discovery, occupation, or otherwise.
If pushing a ship up the North Atlantic waters to the limit of
navigation was a trespass on Mr. Peary's preserve, then I am bound to
plead guilty. But ships had gone that way for a hundred years before Mr.
Peary developed a Polar claim. If I am guilty, then he is guilty of
stealing the routes of Davis, Kane, Greely and a number of others. But
as I view the situation, a modern explorer should take a certain pride
in the advantages afforded by his worthy predecessors. I take a certain
historic delight in having followed the routes of the early pathfinders
to a more remote destination. This indebtedness and this honor I do now,
as heretofore, acknowledge. The charge that I stole Mr. Peary's route is
incorrect. For, from the limit of navigation on the Greenland side, my
track was forced over a land which, although under Mr. Peary's eyes for
twenty years, was explored by Sverdrup, who got the same unbrotherly
treatment from Mr. Peary which he has shown to every explorer who has
had the misfortune to come within the circle he has drawn about an
imaginary private preserve.
The charge of borrowing Peary's ideas, by which is meant the selection
of food and supplies and the adoption of certain methods of travel, is
equally unfounded. For Mr. Peary's weakest chain is his absolute lack of
system, order, preparation or originality. This is commented upon by the
men of every one of his previous expeditions. Mr. Peary early charged
that my system of work and my methods of travel were borrowed from him.
This was not true; but when he later, in a desperate effort to say
unkind things, said that my system--the system borrowed from
himself--was inefficient, the charge becomes laughable. As to the
Pole--if Mr. Peary has a prior lien on it--it is there still. We did not
take it away. We simply left our footprints there.
Now as to the charge of using Mr. Peary's supplies and his people--by
assuming a private preserve of all the reachable Polar wilderness of
this section, he might put up a plausible claim to it as a private
hunting ground. If this claim is good, then I am guilty of trespass. But
it was only done to satisfy the pangs of hunger.
This claim of the ownership of the animals of the unclaimed North might
be put with plausible excuses to The Hague Tribunal. But it is a claim
no serious person would consider. The same claim of ownership, however,
cannot be said of human life.
The Eskimos are a free and independent people. They acknowledge no
chiefs among themselves and submit to no outside dictators. They are
likely to call an incoming stranger "nalegaksook," which the vanity of
the early travelers interpreted as the "great chief." But the intended
interpretation is "he who has much to barter" or "the great trader."
This is what they call Mr. Peary. The same compliment is given to other
traders, whalers or travelers with whom they do business. Despite his
claims Mr. Peary has been regarded as no more of a benefactor than any
other explorer.
After delivering, early in 1907, an unreasonable and uncalled for
attack, Mr. Peary, two months after the Pole had been reached by me,
went North with two ships, with all the advantage that unlimited funds
and influential friends could give. At about the same time my companion,
Rudolph Francke, started south under my instructions, and he locked my
box-house at Annoatok wherein were stored supplies sufficient for two
years or more.
The key was entrusted to a trustworthy Eskimo. Under his protection this
precious life-saving supply was safe for an indefinite time. With it no
relief expedition or help from the outside world was necessary.
Francke had a hard time as he pushed southward, with boat and sledge.
Moving supplies to the limit of his carrying capacity, he fought bravely
against storms, broken ice and thundering seas. The route proved all but
impossible, but at last his destination at North Star was reached, only
for him to find that he was too late for the whalers he had expected.
Impossible to return to our northern camp at that time, and having used
all of his civilized food en route, he was now compelled to accept the
hospitality of the natives, in their unhygienic dungeons. For food there
was nothing but the semi-putrid meat and blubber eaten by the Eskimos.
After a long and desperate task by boat and sled he returned to Etah but
he was absolutely unable to proceed farther. Francke's health failed
rapidly and when, as he thought, the time had arrived to lay down and
quit life, a big prosperous looking ship came into the harbor. He had
not tasted civilized food for months, and longed, as only a sick, hungry
man can, for coffee and bread.
Almost too weak to arise from his couch of stones, he mustered up enough
strength to stumble over the rails of that ship of plenty. After
gathering sufficient breath to speak, he asked for bread and coffee. It
was breakfast time. No answer came to that appeal. He was put off the
ship. He went back to his cheerless cave and prayed that death might
close his eyes to further trouble. Somewhat later, when it was learned
that there was a house and a large store of supplies at Annoatok, and
that the man had in his possession furs and ivory valued at $10,000,
there was a change of heart in Mr. Peary. Francke was called on board,
was given bread and coffee and whiskey. Too weak to resist, he was
bullied and frightened, and forced under duress to sign papers which he
did not understand. To get home to him meant life; to remain meant
death. And the ship before him was thus his only chance for life. Under
the circumstances he would naturally have put his name to any paper
placed under his feeble eyes. But the law of no land would enforce such
a document.
In this way Mr. Peary compelled him to turn over $10,000 worth of furs
and ivory, besides my station and supplies, worth at least $35,000,
which were not his to turn over. The prized ivory tusks and furs were
immediately seized and sent back on the returning ship.
One of the narwhal tusks, worth to me at least $1,000, was polished and
sent as Peary's trophy to President Roosevelt. Under the circumstances
has not the President been made the recipient of stolen goods?
When Francke, as a passenger, returned on the Peary supply ship, _Erik_,
a bill of one hundred dollars was presented for his passage. This bill
was presumably the bill for the full cost of his return. But the
priceless furs and ivory trophies were confiscated without a murmur of
conscious wrongdoing. This is what happened as the ship went south.
Now let us follow the ship _Roosevelt_ in its piratic career northward.
With Mr. Peary as chief it got to Etah. From there instructions were
given to seize my house and supplies. This was done over the signature
of Mr. Peary to a paper which started out with the following shameless
hypocrisy:
"This is a relief station for Dr. Cook."
According to Mr. Whitney even Captain Bartlett quivered with indignation
at the blushing audacity of this steal. The stores were said to be
abandoned. The men, with Peary's orders, went to Koo-loo-ting-wah and
forced from him the key with which to open the carefully guarded stores.
The house was reconstructed.
Murphy, a rough Newfoundland bruiser, who had been accustomed to kick
sailors, was placed in charge with autocratic powers. Murphy could
neither read nor write, but he was given a long letter of instruction to
make a trading station of my home and to use my supplies.
Now if Mr. Peary required my supplies for legitimate exploration I
should have been glad to give him my last bread; but to use my things to
satisfy his greed for commercial gain was, when I learned it, bitter
medicine.
Because Murphy could not write, Pritchard was left with him to read the
piratic instructions once each week. Pritchard was also to keep account
of the furs bought and the prices paid--mostly in my coin. Murphy soon
forbade the reading of the instructions, and also stopped the
stock-taking and bookkeeping. The hypocrisy of the thing seemed to pinch
even Murphy's narrow brain.
This same deliberate Murphy, accustomed to life in barracks, held the
whip for a year over the head of Harry Whitney, a man of culture and
millions. Money, however, was of no use there. Audacity and self-assumed
power, it seems, ruled as it did in times of old when buccaneers
deprived their victims of gold, and walked them off a plank into the
briny deep.
Murphy and Pritchard, the paid traders, fixed themselves cosily in my
camp. Mr. Whitney had been invited as a guest to stay and hunt for his
own pleasure. The party lived for a year at my expense, but the lot of
Whitney was very hard as an invited guest, a privilege for which I was
told he had paid Mr. Peary two thousand dollars or more. His decision to
stay had come only after a disappointment in a lack of success of
hunting during the summer season. He was, therefore, ill-provided for
the usual Polar hardships. With no food, and no adequate clothing of his
own, he was dependent on the dictates of Murphy to supply him. As time
went on, the night with its awful cold advanced. Murphy gathered in all
the furs and absolutely prohibited Whitney from getting suitable furs
for winter clothing. He, therefore, shivered throughout the long winter
in his sheepskin shooting outfit. Several times he was at the point of a
hand-to-hand encounter with Murphy, but with young Pritchard as a friend
and gentlemanly instincts to soften his manner, he grit his teeth and
swallowed the insults.
His ambition for a hunting trip was frustrated because it interfered
with Murphy's plans for trading in skins. The worst and most brutal
treatment was the almost inconceivable cruelty of his not allowing Mr.
Whitney enough food for a period of months, not even of my supplies,
although this food was used eventually to feed useless dogs.
All of this happened under Mr. Peary's authority, and under the coarse,
swaggering Murphy, whom Mr. Peary, in his book, calls "a thoroughly
trustworthy man!" Mr. Peary's later contention, in a hypocritical effort
to clear himself (see "The North Pole," page 76) that he placed Murphy
in charge "to prevent the Eskimos from looting the supplies and
equipment left there by Dr. Cook," is a mean, petty and unworthy slur
upon a brave, loyal people, among whom thievery is a thing unknown.
Unknown, yes, save when white men without honor, without respect for
property or the ethics of humanity, which the Eskimos instinctively
have, invade their region and rob them and fellow explorers with the
brazenness of middle-aged buccaneers.
ANNOATOK TO UPERNAVIK
ELEVEN HUNDRED MILES SOUTHWARD OVER SEA AND LAND--AT ETAH--OVERLAND TO
THE WALRUS GROUNDS--ESKIMO COMEDIES AND TRAGEDIES--A RECORD RUN OVER
MELVILLE BAY--FIRST NEWS FROM PASSING SHIPS--THE ECLIPSE OF THE
SUN--SOUTHWARD BY STEAMER GODTHAAB
XXX
ALONG DANISH GREENLAND
A few interesting days were spent with Mr. Whitney at Annoatok. The
Eskimos, in the meantime, had all gone south to the walrus hunting
grounds at Nuerke. Koo-loo-ting-wah came along with a big team of dogs.
Here was an opportunity to attempt to reach the Danish settlements--for
to get home quickly was now my all-absorbing aim. Koo-loo-ting-wah was
in my service. He was guarding my supplies in 1908 when the ship
_Roosevelt_ had come along. He had been compelled to give up the key to
my box-house. He had been engaged to place supplies for us and search
the American shores for our rescue. Peary, making a pretended "Relief
Station," forced Koo-loo-ting-wah from his position as guardian of my
supplies, and forbade him to engage in any effort to search for us, and
absolutely prohibited him and everybody else, including Murphy,
Prichard and Whitney, from engaging in any kind of succor at a time when
help was of consequence. Koo-loo-ting-wah was liberally paid to abandon
my interests (by Mr. Peary's orders, from my supplies), but, like
Bartlett and Whitney and Prichard later, he condemned Mr. Peary for his
unfair acts. When asked to join me in the long journey to Upernavik, he
said, "_Peari an-nutu_" (Peary will be mad.) Koo-loo-ting-wah was now in
Peary's service at my expense, and I insisted that he enter my service,
which he did. Then we began our preparations for the southern trip.
Accompanied by Whitney, I went to Etah, and for this part of the journey
Murphy grudgingly gave me a scant food supply for a week, for which I
gave him a memorandum. This memorandum was afterwards published by Mr.
Peary as a receipt, so displayed as to convey the idea that all the
stolen supplies had been replaced.