ACROSS THE MOVING ICE
From now on, our journey became a never-ending series of struggles
to get around or across lanes of open water—leads, as they are
called,—the most exasperating and treacherous of all Arctic
travelling. We would come to a lead and, leaving the sledge and dogs
by it, Kataktovick would go in one direction and I in the other;
when either of us found a place where we could cross he would fire a
revolver or, if the whirling snow and the condensation were not too
thick would climb up on some rafter where he could be seen by the other
and make a signal to come on. Sometimes there would be a point where
the ice on the opposite sides of the lead almost met and by throwing
the dogs over, bridging the sledge across and jumping ourselves, we
could manage to reach the opposite edge of the ice; at other times the
lead would be too wide for this method and we would have to look for
a floating ice-cake or a projecting piece that we could break off to
use as a ferry-boat. Often we would get across one difficult lead—and
they all had their peculiar difficulties—and then in almost no time
would find ourselves confronted by another. We consumed a great deal
of time crossing the leads and even more in finding a place to cross,
for sometimes, no matter how far we looked in either direction—and it
was not safe for us to get too widely separated—we would find that
in the middle of a lead there was a narrow platform of thin ice, not
strong enough to bear the sledge. It called for the exercise of all the
training I had gained in my twenty years of Newfoundland sealing and
Arctic exploration with Peary to negotiate these constantly recurring
leads with any degree of safety.
We did not turn in until ten o’clock that night, for tired as we were
from our first day’s wrestle with the leads, we had to sit up and mend
our clothes, which had been torn by the jagged rafters.
[Illustration:
McKinlay Williamson Templeman Chafe Williams
FIVE OF THE MEN OF THE _KARLUK_ ON WRANGELL ISLAND]
The next morning we were up and away at dawn, in a howling gale from
the west and blinding snowdrift. Open water and young ice across our
path sent us off at right angles to our true course. Several times
during the day the sledge broke through the young ice and before we
could whip up the dogs to rush across we got some of our sleeping
gear wet. The dogs were badly frightened and huddled together in
their terror and of course immensely increasing the danger of
breaking through the ice. We saw a number of bear-tracks during the
day. Somewhere along the trail we lost the little hatchet which
we had for opening pemmican tins. When we missed it, we left the
dogs, thinking that it might have been dropped only a short distance
away, and walked back to look for it, but we found the ice changing
materially and were afraid to go far from our sledge, so we had to
abandon the search, and thereafter had to use a knife in its place.
At half past five, when we stopped and built our igloo, a job that
always took about three quarters of an hour at the end of our day’s
march, we had advanced during the day not over four miles. At this
rate the journey from shore to shore would be a long one. The wind
was moderating somewhat, however, when we turned in, and we hoped for
better weather next day.
Sure enough when we broke camp the following morning we found the wind
a light easterly and the weather fine. It looked as if good going must
now be in store for us; we had had almost continuously stormy weather
from the moment of our departure from Icy Spit. Another encouraging
thing was that shortly after we started on our way, we shot a seal in
a wide lead of water. The Eskimo used a native device for retrieving
the seal. This device consists of a wooden ball, as large as a man’s
fist, made something like a stocking darner, with hooks projecting from
it on all sides; there is a handle eight or ten inches long, with a
white cotton fishing line attached to it about fifty fathoms long. The
Eskimo would whirl this ball around and around by the handle, sometimes
first putting lumps of ice on the slack line near the handle to add
to the weight and thus increase the momentum, and would then let it
fly out beyond where the body of the seal was floating. By carefully
drawing in the line he would hook the seal and pull it along to the
edge of the ice. On this occasion Kataktovick had to lie down and worm
his way out on thin ice to get near enough to the water’s edge to make
his cast, which he made when he found a piece of heavier ice on which
he could stand. I had him fastened to me by a rope, so that when he
finally hooked the seal, he hauled it in hand over hand to the place
where he was standing and then, while he kept his feet firmly together
and slid, I hauled him back on to the solid ice where I was, while he
in turn was towing the seal.
Our hope of better weather proved to be short-lived, for as the day
wore on the wind increased to a living gale from the east. The ice was
constantly in motion and we had many wide leads to negotiate. With the
open water the air was filled with condensation and the light was very
bad. When it came time to build our igloo we had made only about five
miles to the good.
Shortly after midnight the wind veered sharply around until it blew
from the west, without diminishing. We had a small tent with us and
to save time we were in the habit of using this as the roof for our
igloo, weighting it down with snow-blocks and a rifle, pemmican tins
and snowshoes, and covering the whole with snow to make it tight. When
the wind changed it whipped off this canvas roof and the first thing
we knew we were covered with snow. We turned out in the darkness and
looked for our things which were almost completely buried.
It was not a restful night and when daylight came we were glad to be
on the march again. Shortly after we started one of the dogs broke his
trace and got away. Fortunately we caught him before he had gone far.
Some of the dogs were docile and when we unharnessed them would not
stray away but would let us harness them up again when the time came;
others would try to evade us and we had to coax them in with pemmican
before we could catch them.
Being so often adrift on running ice, as we were, is really a wild
experience that is hard on dogs and ours were so tired that with two
exceptions they did not work well. When we came to open water it
took a great deal of urging to get them to jump across; often we had
to unharness them and throw them across, one after another. I had a
bamboo pole, split at one end; I would shake this over the dogs when
we were on the march and the rattling of the loose ends would serve as
a stimulus for them to buckle down to work.
On one occasion the whole team broke away from sledge and started back
over the trail. I was very much afraid that they might run all the
way back to Wrangell Island, leaving us with the sledge half way to
Siberia, so I took a pemmican tin and went through all the motions of
opening it to feed them and then started to walk back towards them. I
dared not run after them, for the more I ran the faster they would go.
After I had walked back half a mile I got near enough to attract their
attention. They pricked up their ears, looked around, saw the tins of
pemmican and finally came back slowly towards me. When they got near
enough I seized the rope. They evidently were afraid they were in for a
licking, for they stayed on their good behavior for several hours.
One great trouble that we had with them was their habit of chewing
their harness, though it was made of hemp canvas instead of sealskin
to prevent that very thing. In the night they would free themselves
in this way and we would have difficulty in catching them, for
although they had collars we had no chains left. Food, clothing and
sledge-lashings had to be kept away from the dogs or they would
chew any of them. One of the dogs was called Kaiser. He got away one
morning and I could not catch him, even though I tried to tempt him
with pemmican. We harnessed up the others and started on our way. All
day he came along behind us, sometimes in sight, sometimes not. When
we stopped to camp and I fed the other dogs, at dark, he finally came
sulkily in and hung around; I paid no attention to him. I saved out
his ration of pemmican, however, and when he finally could hold out no
longer, he came up to be fed and as I gave him the pemmican I caught
him. He never got away again; sometimes we had to tie his mouth so that
he could not chew his harness.
At ten o’clock on the morning after our miserable midnight hunt in the
snow, we were stopped by an open lead of water about three hundred
yards wide. The lead ran east and west across our way and we had to
follow along the northern edge for some distance before we found a
solid piece of ice for our ferry-boat. It was frozen to the edge of
the main floe by thin ice, but we chopped away with our tent poles
and jumped on it until we split it off. Then we put the dogs and the
sledge aboard and with our snowshoes for paddles made our way across
the lead. The ice cake was about ten feet square and one end of the
sledge projected out over the water, but with the dogs huddled in the
middle and ourselves paddling on either side we managed to get along
and landed safely on the other shore.
About five we stopped to camp for the night. I was engaged in brushing
the snow off the sleeping-robes and Kataktovick was cutting out
snow-blocks for the igloo when suddenly he shouted. I looked up and
saw right beside us the largest polar bear I have ever seen. I seized
the rifle and fired. The first shot missed but the second hit him in
the fore-shoulder and the third in the hind-quarter and down he went.
As he fell he stretched out his four paws and I had a chance to get a
good idea of his length; I should judge that he was twelve or thirteen
feet from tip to tip. His hair was snow white and very long but not
very thick; evidently he was old. I cut off a hind-quarter—all we
could carry—to take along with us the next day; we ate some of the
meat—raw, because we had no time to cook it—and made a broth out of
another piece by boiling it in water, made by melting the snow, just
as we made our tea. We gave the dogs all they could eat. They had not
noticed the bear; they were too tired. Evidently he had come upon the
place where we had cut up the seal we had killed the day before and had
followed the scent all day.
Not long after I shot the bear I saw a white Arctic fox near by. At
first I thought he was one of the dogs. I fired at him, but it was too
dark to see to hit him and he got away. He, too, had evidently been
attracted by the pieces of raw seal meat, which we had scattered around
when we had eaten it earlier in the day, and had followed us. The dogs
took no more notice of the fox than they had of the bear.
The next day the strong east wind continued. The sky was overcast and
as there was much snow-drift the light was bad; we were shaping our
course altogether by the compass. The temperature, I should guess,
was about fifteen degrees below zero. We broke camp at seven o’clock
and had not gone more than fifty yards when we found that during the
night an open lead had made in the ice. We followed our usual method
of procedure in such a case, Kataktovick going in one direction and
I in the other, to find a better place to cross. We had no luck and
returned to meet again at the sledge. We now made up our minds to try
to cross here. There was a good deal of young ice in the lead, that
had been smashed up against the edges of the heavier ice, and the snow
that had been blown off the ice into the water had filled up the lead
to some extent and ice and snow had all frozen together in a rough and
irregular mass. I took two tent-poles, therefore, and got out on this
young ice but I soon realized that it was not strong enough to hold
me, so I hastily and carefully made my way back. Kataktovick, however,
was lighter than I; he laid the poles on the ice and, with a rope
fastened to him so that I could pull him back if he broke through, he
crawled over on the young ice and reached the other side in safety.
Then I unloaded the sledge and fastened another rope to it at the
stern; Kataktovick drew it across with just a few articles on it and I
pulled it back empty. We repeated this until we got everything on the
farther side of the lead. The dogs got across by themselves, all but
Kaiser; I could take no chances with him, on account of his propensity
for running away, so he had to be tied and hauled across. I got over
by lying face downward on the empty sledge and having Kataktovick,
with the rope over his shoulder, run as fast as he could and pull me
across. The ice, which was only a single night’s freezing, buckled
and the runners broke through in places but Kataktovick got going so
fast that they did not break through their full length and I got over
in safety. Kataktovick’s safe passage was a relief to me. As far as
physical endurance went I think he was as well able to survive a fall
in the water as I would have been but his experience had been less than
mine and if he had fallen through he would have been so completely
terrified that I believe he would have died of fright.
The method by which he worked his way across with the poles was one
which is followed among the Newfoundland sealers; many a time I had
done the same thing when I was a youngster. You take bigger chances in
sealing than we averaged to take in the Arctic. You leave the ship in
the morning and go out on the ice to kill seals. You take no tea, no
tent or shelter of any kind; perhaps all you have is a little food in
your bag. The weather is fine and offers no indications of change. You
get off eight or ten miles from the ship, which is perhaps the only one
in that vicinity, a couple of hundred miles from land, when suddenly
the ice cracks and open leads form between you and the ship. Your
only chance of safety is that the men on the ship, who are constantly
sweeping the horizon with powerful glasses, have foreseen what is
going to happen and know where you are. If the ice is open near the
ship they will steam over and pick you up. If not they will blow the
whistle and let you know where the ship is, for the chances are that
there is a storm breaking upon you with high winds and snow, so that
you can see the ship only a short time. You have no dogs, no canvas, no
snowshoes, no hot coffee, no stove. If the ship cannot reach you, or
you cannot make your way across the leads and reach her, you freeze to
death. I remember getting into a situation like this when I was a boy;
fortunately I was rescued before things got too bad.
When we got our sledge, dogs, supplies and ourselves across the lead we
had to load up again. The wind was still blowing hard and whirling the
snow around, so that we lost a good deal of time hunting for things in
the drifts and loading the sledge again. It was a slow job. Everything
was white; boxes, bags, sleeping-robes, all the objects of our search,
in fact, were blended into the one dead tone, so that the effect on
the eye was as if one were walking in the dark instead of what passed
technically for daylight. The drifts all looked level but the first
thing we would know we would stumble into a gulch of raftered ice,
heaped full of soft snow, or a crack in the ice, covered by a similar
deceptive mass. Altogether we lost three hours and not until ten
o’clock did we get under way again.
When we finally started we soon found the weather better. This was
fortunate, for in crossing the lead and afterwards in picking up our
things, we had got our clothes and our sleeping-robes more or less
water-soaked and we were glad of a more moderate gale and a higher
temperature, which as the afternoon wore on became almost springlike.
This would mean open water, to be sure, but for the rest of the day
we went along well over old floes of heavy ice where the going was
good and the open leads few. About noon it came off clear and calm,
and during the afternoon we made good progress. In fact, when, just at
dark, we stopped and built our igloo, we had done the best day’s work
since we had left the island.
For the first time, too, we built our igloo on a solid floe where we
could sleep without the constant menace of a split in the ice beneath
us during the night. We found a floe of fresh-water ice near by; up to
this time we had found few of these, none at our stopping-places, and
had had to use snow to make our tea. The dogs had worked well all day;
it was a relief to go on for hour after hour without having to stop for
open water.
The next morning, when we were still in our igloo, finishing our tea,
we heard the dogs outside, sniffing and whining excitedly; something
was up. We always kept our rifle in the igloo when we made camp, with
the magazine full. Now, jabbing a hole in the side of the igloo, we
looked out; the dogs were moving about restlessly. Kataktovick seized
the rifle and jumped outside, with me close at his heels. A bear was
just making off; he had evidently come close and had been frightened by
the dogs. Kataktovick ran after him and fired twice, the first shot
hitting the bear in the hind-quarter, the second in the fore-shoulder,
bringing him down. Before I had our things out of the igloo and loaded
on the sledge, he came back, bringing in a hind-quarter of bear-meat
with him. We fed some to the dogs, though not too much, for if we let
them overeat they would not work well. Some of it we took with us; we
could not carry much, however.
At seven o’clock we finally got away but were soon held up by a lead
of open water which in some places was half a mile wide. Looking from
a high rafter we could see no chance to cross in either direction,
east or west, so we took up our march eastward, the course of the lead
gradually veering to the southeast.
As we went along we saw several seal in the water. One of these we shot
and recovered after some difficulty. The Eskimo captured the seal in
the usual way and towed it to the edge of the ice, which at this point
was about five feet above the surface of the water. As the seal came
alongside, I reached down to haul it up. Braced against a hummock,
Kataktovick held my feet to keep me from sliding down into the water
and I caught hold of the seal by the flipper and held it. The seal was
not quite dead and made some resistance. On account of my position I
could get no purchase on the ice to pull up with my arms and the seal
weighed about a hundred pounds. I managed to lift it out of the water
far enough to get its hind flipper in my teeth, and then Kataktovick
hauled us back. When I got up a little way he passed me a rope and I
jabbed a hole in the flipper and passed the rope through. I was then
able to let go with my teeth, sprang up with the rope in my hand and
dragged the seal up on to the level ice. We skinned it and cut it up
and put as much of the meat on the sledge as we could carry, giving the
dogs a very little. We could have got more seal here but one was all
we could take. Our food consisted very largely of frozen bear meat and
seal meat now, eaten raw because we had no time to cook it. This saved
our pemmican.
About noon we ferried over the lead and found the going so good on the
other side that when, travelling as long as possible to make the most
of it, we built our igloo after dark, we had made at least nine miles
south of the point where we started our day’s march, though the long
tramp along the lead had made our total distance travelled considerably
more than that.