WE MEET THE ICE AND GET A POLAR BEAR
While we were steaming along off Point Belcher, about seventy-five
miles to the southwest of Point Barrow, I was in the crow’s nest, which
on the _Karluk_ was situated at the foretopgallant-mast, conning the
ship through the broken ice, when through my binoculars I saw a polar
bear about three miles away on the level floe. This was a welcome
sight, for the meat would be an addition to our current food supply and
the hide useful in several ways. There was no wind, so the bear did
not scent us. At first we could not go towards him because the ice was
too closely packed,—in fact at times we had to steam away from him to
follow the open lanes of water—but finally we managed to get headed in
the right direction. When we got within a few hundred yards of him he
spied us and promptly went into the water. That was just what I wanted;
if he had stayed on the ice he would probably have started to run and
as he could run much faster than the ship could steam he would probably
have got away from us.
With the bear in the water I now worked the ship to keep between him
and the ice and as polar bears, though they are good swimmers, do not
often dive, I knew that with ordinary luck we should get him. Shouting
to the mate to keep an eye on him I ran down the rope-ladder from the
barrel and rushed forward to the forecastle-head with a Winchester in
my hand. Some of the other members of the expedition, too, hearing the
word bear, grabbed their rifles and blazed away at him. Every one was
pretty much excited and for a few moments the bear seemed possessed of
a charmed life. At last my second shot hit him in the back and my third
in the head. This finished him; he keeled over and floated. We lowered
a boat, towed the bear to the side and hoisted him on board; then the
Eskimo skinned him. He was old and, as he had on his summer coat, his
hair was sparse and yellow and of no great value. The Eskimo cut up the
meat for dog food; we should have used it ourselves if we had not just
obtained a large supply of fresh meat at Nome and Port Clarence.
The skin of this old bear had something of a history. The Eskimo
stretched it on a frame and hung it up in the rigging for the wind and
sun to cure it. I had a pair of trousers made from the softest part
of the skin, which later I gave to Malloch. From the remainder I had
a sleeping-robe made which I used on the ice from the time the ship
sank until I reached the coast of Siberia. There I traded it for a
deerskin which I afterwards gave to a native at East Cape. The skin of
the polar bear makes the best sleeping-robe for Arctic use and the skin
of a young bear is also the best for trousers, because it will wear the
longest and, furthermore, the hair will not fall out, in spite of the
brushing and pounding you have to give it to get rid of the snow that
will cling to it after the day’s march.
Some time after we got this bear, I saw another one from the crow’s
nest. We were going away from him, however, and getting along pretty
well, so I hardly felt it wise to stop for him. Occasionally we saw
walrus asleep on the ice.
August 3 the wind again veered to the southwest, pushing the ice on
shore and jamming the ship in it so that we were unable to make any
progress. We were about four miles off the Seahorse Islands. Here we
found a current running to the eastward parallel with the shore and we
began to drift with this current in an easterly direction which was the
way we wanted to go. By eleven o’clock we had reached a point about two
miles from shore and twenty-five miles southwest of Point Barrow.
The early presence of ice on this coast convinced us that all was
not to be plain sailing on our voyage to Herschel Island and that it
behooved us to save every hour possible. With this in mind, Stefansson
now decided to go ashore and make his way to Point Barrow on foot. He
would need at least a day there to obtain furs for our use and he could
have his work all done by the time we reached there. Accordingly, at
eleven o’clock, he took the doctor and a couple of Eskimo, with a dog
sledge, and went ashore over the ice, the Eskimo and the dog-sledge
returning late in the afternoon. It was summer and there was no snow
or ice on the land so by walking all night in the continuous August
daylight, Stefansson and the doctor reached Point Barrow in the morning.
By the sixth, usually drifting only a few miles a day but occasionally
getting clear of the ice for a while to go ahead under our own power,
we had reached a point about a mile from shore off Cape Smythe,
which is only a few miles from Point Barrow. At midnight Stefansson
returned from Point Barrow, bringing with him some new members of
the expedition: an Eskimo family of five, consisting of Kerdrillo or
Kuralluk, a man about thirty-five years old, his wife Keruk, about
twenty-eight, and their children, a girl of seven who went by the name
of Helen and a baby called Mugpi not much over a year old; an Eskimo
named Kataktovick, between eighteen and twenty years old, who was
already a widower, with a baby girl whom he had left with his mother;
and John Hadley, a man between fifty-five and sixty years old, who for
a long time had been in charge of the whaling station at Cape Smythe
owned by Mr. Charles Brower, the proprietor of the store at Point
Barrow. Mr. Hadley had resigned his position to go east to Banks Land
and establish a trading-station of his own, chiefly to get foxskins
by barter with the Eskimo. As we were on our way to Herschel Island,
now was Mr. Hadley’s chance to get to his destination, for at Herschel
Island he could be transferred to the _Mary Sachs_ or the _Alaska_,
when they reached there, and so go east in the direction of Banks
Land with the southern party in the sequel Mr. Hadley, who, as I have
already mentioned was put on the ship’s articles as carpenter, proved a
very valuable addition to the party, but he did not get to Banks Land.
While we were at Cape Smythe, the white dog-driver who had accompanied
us from Port Clarence asked for his discharge and went on shore. We
sent our mail ashore to be taken to Point Barrow. As a result of our
trading with the Eskimo here we obtained altogether three skin-boats,
two kayaks and a number of sealskins for boot-soles. The Eskimo
Kerdrillo brought his three dogs to add to our own.
There is a wide difference between the skin-boat and the kayak. The
former is shaped not unlike an ordinary rowboat and is large enough
to hold from ten to twenty persons. Over the framework are stretched
sealskins, sewed together with deer sinew, which makes the boat
water-tight. The skin-boat will stand a lot of wear and tear. The
kayak, on the other hand, is small, pointed at both ends and completely
covered over except for an opening in the middle, where the single
occupant sits. The kayak is used for hunting and as it is small and
light can be easily placed on a sledge and drawn over the ice.
During the early morning of August 7 the ice began to move us eastward
around Point Barrow, where we met a current from the southeast and
began to drift towards the northwest, until by the next day we were
ten miles from land. We were still unable to use our engines and the
ice was closely packed, though it had been smashed and pounded by its
constant impact against the grounded floe along the shore. While we
were still jammed in the ice we took the opportunity of filling up our
tanks from a big floe not far away on which there was a lake of fresh
water where the sun and the rain had melted the ice.
Early on the ninth we got clear of the ice at last and steamed eastward
along the shore, free for the first time for many days. The ice was
closely packed outside of us but near shore there was open water
and we had little difficulty in making our way along. Navigation was
precarious on account of shallow water, but we used the hand lead-line
constantly. On the tenth while rounding a point of ice we got aground
for two hours, but the use of the anchors and engines enabled us to
back off into deep water again. The bottom was soft with the silt
carried down the rivers in the spring freshets and the ship sustained
no damage. We now made pretty steady progress to the eastward, though
the ice constantly threatened our path, and by the eleventh had reached
Cross Island, about half way from Point Barrow to Herschel Island.