two errors, frequent in arctic work, had been committed--overloading and
too early a start in periods of extreme cold. Kane had himself noticed
that in extreme cold, say fifty degrees below freezing, "the ice or snow
covering offers great resistance to the sledge-runners. The dry snow in
its finely divided state resembles sand, and the runners creak as they
pass over it." In a temperature of seventy-one degrees below freezing
"we packed the sledge and strapped on the boat to see how she would
drag. Eight men were scarcely able to move her.... Difficulties of
draught must not interfere with my parties." Erroneously attributing the
trouble to the thin runners of his Eskimo sledge, he changed it for one
with broad-gauged sledge-runners, and then added two hundred pounds of
pemmican to the load.
The party started to the north in a temperature of seventy-five degrees
below freezing, and even with extra men in the rue-raddies (canvas
shoulder-belts for dragging the sledge) they were barely able to move
the sledge forward over the smooth, level floes near the brig.
When the sledgemen came to rough ice they promptly dumped both boat and
pemmican, realizing the impossibility of hauling them. Soon they came to
high, uptilted ice-hummocks, separated by precipitous ice-chasms filled
with drifting snow. It then became necessary to divide the load and so
travel three times over the same road.
Meanwhile they seemed to be advancing over a sea of desolation whereon
were utterly lacking the signs of life--few enough even there along the
shore. From the snow-covered floes were entirely absent the tiny traces
of the snowy ptarmigan, the weaving, wandering trails of the arctic fox,
and the sprawling foot-marks of the polar bear. Once, indeed, they saw a
short distance seaward a blow-hole, where lately a seal had come for
needful air, as shown by the thin glassy ice-covering, unbroken for
days.
Suddenly the weather changed, the clear atmosphere giving way to a
frosty fog, which shut out any distant views, and save for their compass
bearings they did not know the direction of their march, nor indeed
whether the frozen sea continued or that land, so desired, was near or
far.
The coming of a northeast blizzard caused frightful sufferings to these
inexperienced arctic sledgemen. Neither wind or snow proof, the tent was
speedily filled with the drifting, sand-like snow, which saturated the
sleeping-gear and nearly stopped the cooking. Travel in such weather
would have been dangerous for strong, active men, but Baker was too sick
even to walk, and so the days were passed in endeavors to keep
themselves warm and bring about a state of comfort. Still they went on
with courage the first fine day, though their progress was very slow,
and there seemed to be no definite hope of reaching land where their
depot of provisions could be cached.
A second blizzard ended the advance of the worn-out, thoroughly
discouraged men. When the weather cleared Brooks, the mate in charge,
found further progress hopeless. "The hummocks in front consist of
pieces of ice from one to two feet thick, having sharp edges and piled
up from ten to fifteen feet high. Single piles sometimes exceeded thirty
feet in height, and at a distance have the appearance of icebergs. We
failed to perceive a single opening in their chain." His wise decision
to return was all that saved any member of the party.
Of the conditions under which the men slept, Sonntag, who was one of the
sledgemen, says: "The evaporation from the bodies of the sleepers became
condensed on the blanket-bags and buffalo-skins, which acquired a lining
of ice as soon as the men emerged from them in the morning, and when
required for use at night these bedclothes were stiffly frozen. The
labor of sledge-hauling was so excessive that, notwithstanding
the severity of the cold, the men were often thrown into profuse
perspiration, and this was soon followed by the clothes being frozen
together so firmly that they were not thawed asunder until the men
entered their sleeping-bags."
Inspired by the fact they that were homeward bound, the men worked with
desperate energy, and camped only when they were ready to drop with
exhaustion. The last part of the march was through deep snow, which
sifted into every crevice of the men's garments, and, melting there from
the heat of the body, saturated their clothing. The most essential rules
for the safety of arctic sledgemen are the careful brushing of all snow
from the garments before entering the tent and the replacing of the
always damp foot-gear with dry socks. Exhausted and unadvised, most of
the men sought refuge from the fearful cold by crawling unbrushed into
their frozen sleeping-bags, without even removing their boots let alone
their socks. That day of the march had been one of awful cold, the
average temperature being more than seventy degrees below freezing, and
the imprudent sledgemen paid that night the exacting penalty of their
rash ignorance. The following morning the situation was hopeless unless
help could be had from the brig. The feet of four of the men were so
badly frozen that they could not even walk, much less drag the sledge.
It was impossible for the four well men to haul their four disabled
shipmates to the _Advance_, thirty miles distant.
At the call for volunteers for the dangerous journey, which must be made
in one march, all four of the well men responded, and astronomer
Sonntag, with two Danes, Ohlsen and Petersen, made the journey. Irish
Tommy, as the crew called Seaman Hickey, rebelled at first because he
was not accepted, but his generous heart reconciled him to remaining
when it was pointed out that his qualities as cook and as handy-man made
him the best person to care for his crippled shipmates.
Kane tells the story of the rescue in language that cannot be improved.
"We were at work cheerfully, sewing on moccasins by the blaze of our
lamps, when, toward midnight, we heard steps and the next minute
Sonntag, Ohlsen, and Petersen came into the cabin, swollen, haggard, and
hardly able to speak. They had left their companions in the ice, risking
their own lives to bring us the news. Brooks, Baker, Wilson, and
Pierre were all lying frozen and disabled. Where? They could not
tell--somewhere in and among the hummocks to the north and east; it was
drifting heavily around them when they parted."
With impaired health, in feeble strength, ignoring the protests of his
officers against such exposure, the heroic Kane waited not a moment, but
decided to take the field and risk his life, if necessary, to rescue his
crippled shipmates.
Kane continues: "Rigging out the _Little Willie_ sledge with a buffalo
cover, a small tent, and a package of pemmican, Ohlsen (who seemed to
have his faculties rather more at command than his associates) was
strapped on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog-skins and eider-down,
and we were off. Our party consisted of myself and nine others. We
carried only the clothes on our backs. The thermometer stood at
seventy-eight degrees below the freezing-point....
"It was not until we had travelled sixteen hours that we began to lose
our way. Our lost companions were somewhere in the area before us,
within a radius of forty miles. For fifty hours without sleep, Ohlsen
fell asleep as soon as we began to move, and now awoke with unequivocal
signs of mental disturbance. He had lost the bearings of the icebergs. I
gave orders to abandon the sledge and disperse in search of foot-marks.
We raised our tent, gave each man a small allowance of pemmican to
carry on his person, and poor Ohlsen, just able to keep his legs, was
liberated.
"The thermometer had fallen to eighty-one degrees below freezing, with
the wind setting in sharply from the northwest. It was out of the
question to halt; it required brisk exercise to keep us from freezing. I
could not even melt ice for water, and any resort to snow for allaying
thirst was followed by bloody lips and tongue; it burnt like caustic.
"We moved on looking for traces as we went. When the men were ordered to
spread themselves, to multiply the chances, they kept closing up
continually. The strange manner in which we were affected I attribute as
much to shattered nerves as to the cold. McGary and Bonsall, who had
stood out our severest marches, were seized with trembling fits and
short breath. In spite of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound
bearing, I fainted twice on the snow.
"We had been out eighteen hours when Hans, our Eskimo hunter, thought he
saw a broad sledge-track which the drift had nearly effaced. We were
some of us doubtful at first whether it was not one of those accidental
rifts which the gales make in the surface snow. But as we traced it on
to the deep snow among the hummocks we were led to footsteps. Following
these with religious care, we at last came in sight of a small American
flag fluttering from a hummock, and lower down a little masonic banner
hanging from a tent-pole hardly above the drift. It was the camp of our
disabled comrades; we reached it after an unbroken march of twenty-one
hours.
"The little tent was nearly covered with snow. I was not among the first
to come up; but when I reached the tent-curtain the men were standing in
single file on each side of it. With more kindness and delicacy of
feeling than is often supposed to belong to sailors, but which is almost
characteristic, they intimated their wish that I should go in alone, and
I crawled in. Coming upon the darkness, as I heard before me the burst
of welcome gladness that came from the four poor fellows stretched on
their backs, and then for the first time the cheer outside, my weakness
and my gratitude together almost overcame me. _They had expected me!
They were sure that I would come!_
"We were now fifteen souls; the thermometer seventy-five degrees below
the freezing-point. Our sole accommodation was a tent barely able to
hold eight persons; more than half of our party were obliged to keep
from freezing by walking outside while the others slept."
For the return journey: "The sick, with their limbs sewed up carefully
in reindeer-skins, were placed upon the bed of buffalo-robes, in a
half-reclining posture; other skins and blankets were thrown above them,
and the whole litter was lashed together so as to allow but a single
opening opposite the mouth for breathing. This necessary work cost us a
great deal of effort, but it was essential to the lives of the
sufferers. After repeating a short prayer we set out on our retreat."
The journey homeward was made under conditions of almost insuperable
difficulty and distress in which lack of sleep played a greater part
than either cold or physical labor, severe as they both were. As the
energy of the sledgemen failed the tent of the field party was pitched,
and McGary left with orders to move forward after a sleep of four hours.
Not sparing himself, Kane went on with one man and reached the half-way
tent, to melt ice and pemmican, in time to save its destruction by a
predatory polar bear. He says: "The tent was uninjured though the bear
had overturned it, tossing the buffalo-robes and pemmican into the snow.
All we recollect is that we had great difficulty in raising the tent. We
crept into our reindeer-bags without speaking, and for the next three
hours slept on in a dreamy but intense slumber. When I awoke my long
beard was a mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffalo-skin; Godfrey had to
cut me out with his jack-knife."
A few hours later the crippled party rejoined Kane and after refreshment
went on toward the ship. Fortunately the weather was fine and the cold
less severe. Yet, says Kane, "Our halts multiplied, and we fell,
half-sleeping, in the snow. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured
on the experiment, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes. I
felt so much benefited that I timed the men in the same way. They sat on
the runners of the sledge, fell asleep instantly, and were forced to
wakefulness when their three minutes were out."
In an utterly exhausted, half-delirious condition, they were met a few
miles from the brig by a dog-sledge bringing restoratives. Of the
outcome of the sledge journey out and back Kane says: "Ohlsen suffered
some time from strabismus and blindness; two others underwent amputation
of parts of the foot without unpleasant consequences; and two died in
spite of all our efforts.
"The rescue party had been out for seventy-two hours. We had halted in
all eight hours, half of our number sleeping at a time. We travelled
between eighty and ninety miles, most of the way dragging a heavy
sledge. The mean temperature of the whole time was seventy-three degrees
below freezing, including the warmest hours of the three days. We had no
water except at our two halts, and were at no time able to intermit
vigorous exercise without freezing."
Such remarkable and successful efforts to rescue their suffering
shipmates cannot fail to excite the admiration of all, if merely as an
astonishing instance of man's physical endurance. Yet on the whole such
feelings are subordinate in the hearts of most men to a sense of
reverence for the spirit that animated Kane and his fellows to sacrifice
their personal comfort and venture their lives for the relief and safety
of their disabled comrades.
HOW WOON WON PROMOTION
"Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught,
A heart with English instinct fraught,
He only knows that _not through him_
Shall England come to shame."
--DOYLE.
This tale recites one of the many stirring experiences of the crew of
her majesty's ship _Investigator_, which, after having been frozen fast
in the ice-floes of Mercy Bay, Banks Land, for two years, was abandoned,
June 3, 1853. Owing to lack of provisions, the men, living on two-thirds
rations for twenty months, were obliged to keep the field for hunting
purposes so as to avoid death by starvation. The incidents herein
related occurred in connection with the chase.
* * * * *
The sun had been entirely absent for ninety-four days, and the coldest
period of the winter was at hand. Even at the warmest moment of the
midwinter month, February, the temperature had barely risen to zero. At
times the mercury froze solid, and the cold was so intense that even the
ship herself seemed to suffer as much as the half-starved, ill-clad men.
The metal bolts and rivets glared at one with their ice-covered ends,
while the wooden tree-nails, timbers, and doors cracked continually
under the twin action of frost and contraction. And so since the New
Year's coming the crew had shielded themselves as best they could from
the utter darkness of the land and the frightful cold of the air. Even
when it was possible hunting was unfruitful of results; the deer had
migrated to the pastures of the milder south, while the hares and small
game had huddled in crannies and nooks for shelter against the wind.
But now a few hours of feeble twilight, steadily increasing in duration
and in brightness, were marked by broad bands of life-giving light at
mid-day in the southern sky. Though the longer days were those of
sharper cold, yet hunger and want early drove the hunters from the ship.
As soon as there was enough glimmering light to make it possible, the
keen-eyed sportsmen started inland to find and follow the trails of such
animals as might yet be in the country. At the same time they were
charged to take the utmost care to make sharp note of prominent
landmarks by which they could safely take up their return march to the
_Investigator_.
The spring hunt may be said to have fairly opened ten days before the
return of the long-absent sun, when a wretchedly gaunt reindeer was
killed on January 28, 1852. For days individual deer had been seen,
evidently returned from the south, where their winter life must have
been a constant struggle against starvation, judging from the slain
animal. While the deer of the previous autumn were always in good flesh,
there was in this case not a bit of fat on any rib. A collection of
mere skin and bones, this deer weighed less than ninety pounds, about
the same as a large wolf or draught-dog.
This early success stimulated to action the hungry hunters, who
thenceforth let no day pass without ranging the distant hills for sign
of deer or musk-ox, anxious for the hunter's perquisites--the longed-for
head and heart of the game.
On February 9 the day broke calm, clear, and unusually bright;
especially attractive because of an hour of sunlight, the sun having
come above the horizon at mid-day four days earlier. Every man who could
get permission was enticed into the field, and great was the furore when
one party brought in a small deer, giving promise of more from the
hunters still in the open. With the passing hours one man after another
reached the ship, while the slowly vanishing twilight became fainter and
fainter. When the darkness of night had come and the officer of the deck
had checked off the hunters, he reported to the captain that two men
were yet absent--Sergeant John Woon and Seaman Charles Anderson, both
excellent men, active-bodied and distinguished as hunters.
Woon was the non-commissioned officer in charge of the detachment of
royal marines, whose standing and popularity were almost as high with
the seamen as with his own corps. Dr. Armstrong says of him: "He proved
himself invaluable, was always a ready volunteer, most correct and
soldier-like in conduct, ever contributed to the hilarity and
cheerfulness of the crew, and was brave and intrepid on every occasion,
which fully tested the man."
Whether on shipboard or on land, Woon never failed to do a lion's share
of the work in hand, and was always the first to cheer and help a tired
comrade. An indefatigable and successful hunter, he was familiar with
the white wolves that so menaced the safety of individuals. On one
occasion, going for a deer shot that day, he killed at a distance of a
hundred yards a gaunt wolf who was greedily devouring the precious
carcass. This monster wolf, with a thick coat of pure, unstained white,
weighed eighty pounds, was three feet four inches high and five feet ten
inches in length.
It was Sergeant Woon also who had distinguished himself in killing,
under thrilling circumstances, two infuriated and charging musk-oxen, as
elsewhere related in the sketch, "Pim's Timely Sledge Journey."
Altogether he was a man quite able to care for himself, though not
coming to the ship with such a reputation for woodcraft, hunting skill,
and physical activity as had Seaman Anderson.
Able Seaman Charles Anderson was a man of powerful build and great
muscular strength, who had made himself a leader among the seamen by his
success in athletic sports, in which he easily excelled any other man on
the ship. A Canadian by birth, his color and his personality disclosed
in his veins deep strains of Indian or other alien blood. Inured to the
hardships and labors of a hunter's life in the Hudson Bay territory,
where he claimed to have been an employee, he displayed in his social
relations the mercurial and attractive qualities which distinguish the
French half-breeds, the famous _coureurs de bois_.
At the evening meal there was more or less chaffing between the marines
and the seamen as to where were Woon and Anderson and what success they
were having in the field. With a trace of that special pride of corps
which goes so far to make the various arms of the military services so
efficient, the seamen said that it was a pity that the absent men were
not together so that Woon's safety might be better assured by the skill
and strength of his friend Anderson. To these jests the royal marines
answered, as was their wont, in kind, enlarging ludicrously by side
remarks and flings on the reputed helplessness of sailors on land,
especially on _deer-back_.
At eight o'clock that night affairs took a different turn, when it was
known that M'Clure and the other officers felt serious alarm over the
continued absence of two hunters who were said to be in the field apart.
The fog had given place to a bright sky, with feeble light and rapidly
falling temperature, so that disaster to one or both was thought to be
probable. The presence and boldness of the prowling bands of ravenous
wolves in the immediate neighborhood of the ship was viewed as one of
the greatest dangers to a single disabled man.
To show the location of the ship and to guide the absentees to it in the
darkness of the night, a mortar was first fired to attract the notice of
the hunters, and then every ten or fifteen minutes a rocket was sent
up, but with the closest attention no one could detect any sound that at
all resembled a human voice. Nothing could be heard save now and then
the ominous howling of wolves, doleful sounds to the anxious crew.
After two disquieting hours of signals by mortar and rockets, with no
responsive answers from the hunters, Captain M'Clure sent out three
search-parties, each headed by an officer. Arranging a code of signals,
both for recall to and for assistance from the ship, they set forth on
an agreed plan in different directions, each party provided with
rockets, blue light, food, wraps, and stimulants. In less than a quarter
of an hour one of the searching-parties met Sergeant Woon coming to the
ship for help. Summoning another squad to join them, they hastened under
the direction of Sergeant Woon to the relief of Anderson, who was
perishing of cold in a snow-drift a scant mile distant.
It appears that Anderson, discovering a herd of deer, had pursued and
wounded one of them, which fled inland away from the ship. Following
fast after the wounded animal, without noting the winding direction of
the trail, he at length not only lost the tracks of the deer but also
found that the country was being covered by a light fog. Climbing the
nearest hill-top, he was panic-stricken to find himself unable to note
either the face of the bright southern sky, the hunters' usual method of
finding their bearings, or to see any landmark that was at all familiar.
He hurried from hill-top to hill-top, exhausting his strength, confusing
his mind, and destroying his faith in his ability to find his homeward
way. In utter despair he sat down in the snow and gave himself up for
lost.
Most fortunately Sergeant Woon had seen no game, and chancing to cross
the trail of Anderson and of the escaping deer, he decided to follow it
up and help the sailor bring in his game. With extreme astonishment he
found Anderson in a state of utter helplessness, already benumbed and
certain soon to perish either from wolves or by freezing. Cold, fear,
and fatigue had caused the seaman to lose not alone his power of action
and of decision, but had almost deprived him of the faculty of speech.
He was in such a demoralized condition--half-delirious, frightened,
fatigued, and frosted--that he could not at first fully realize that his
comrade had come to his assistance and that his ultimate safety was
quite assured.
His utter prostration was only known when Woon asked him to get up and
go home, to which he feebly moaned out, "I am lost," and did not rise
even when the sergeant curtly said: "Get up like a man and you are all
right." Some time passed before either words of cheer or sharp words of
order and abuse had any effect. His patience worn out at last, Woon
seized him roughly, dragged him to his feet, gave him a shove shipward,
and started him on the home trail, but in a few minutes the bewildered
seaman fell down in the deep snow through which he was walking. Not only
was his strength worn out to exhaustion, but to the intense horror of
Woon he was no sooner put on his feet than he fell down in a convulsive
fit, while blood gushed freely from his mouth and nostrils.