The first part of the journey over the rugged ice was not so difficult
as had been anticipated, because they found a number of openings--narrow
lanes, as it were--winding between the masses, most of which were wide
enough to permit of the passage of the sledges; and when they chanced to
come on a gap that was too narrow, they easily widened it with their
hatchets and ice-chisels.
There was, however, some danger connected with this process, for some of
the mighty blocks of ice amongst which they moved were piled in such
positions that it only required a few choppings at their base to bring
them down in ruins on their heads. One instance of this kind sufficed
to warn them effectually.
Captain Vane's dog-sledge was leading the way at the time. Leo drove
it, for by that time the Eskimos had taught him how to use the
short-handled whip with the lash full fifteen feet long, and Leo was an
apt pupil in every athletic and manly exercise. Beside him sat the
Captain, Alf, Benjy, and Butterface--the black visage of the latter
absolutely shining with delight at the novelty of the situation. Behind
came the sledge of Chingatok, which, besides being laden with bear-rugs,
sealskins, junks of meat, and a host of indescribable Eskimo implements,
carried himself and the precious persons of Toolooha and Tekkona. Next
came the sledge of the laughter-loving Oolichuk, with the timid Oblooria
and another woman. Then followed the sledges of Ivitchuk and Akeetolik,
laden with the rest of the Eskimo women and goods, and last of all came
Captain Vane's two English-made sledges, heavily-laden with the goods
and provisions of the explorers. These latter sledges, although made in
England, had been constructed on the principle of the native sledge,
namely, with the parts fastened by means of walrus-sinew lashings
instead of nails, which last would have snapped like glass in the winter
frosts of the Polar regions, besides being incapable of standing the
twistings and shocks of ice-travel.
All the dogs being fresh, and the floor of the lanes not too rough, the
strangely-assorted party trotted merrily along, causing the echoes among
the great ice-blocks, spires, and obelisks, to ring to the music of
their chatting, and the cracks of their powerful whips. Suddenly, a
shout at the front, and an abrupt pull up, brought the whole column to a
halt. The Captain's dogs had broken into a gallop. On turning suddenly
round a spur of a glacier about as big as Saint Paul's Cathedral, they
went swish into a shallow pond which had been formed on the ice. It was
not deep, but there was sufficient water in it to send a deluge of spray
over the travellers.
A burst of laughter greeted the incident as they sprang off the sledge,
and waded to the dry ice a few yards ahead.
"No damage done," exclaimed the Captain, as he assisted the dogs to haul
the sledge out of the water.
"No damage!" repeated Benjy, with a rueful look, "why, I'm soaked from
top to toe!"
"Yes, you've got the worst of it," said Leo, with a laugh; "that comes
of being forward, Benjy. You would insist on sitting in front."
"Well, it is some comfort," retorted Benjy, squeezing the water from his
garments, "that _Alf_ is as wet as myself, for that gives us an
opportunity of sympathising with each other. Eh, _Alf_? Does Buzzby
offer no consolatory remarks for such an occasion as this?"
"O yes," replied Alf; "in his beautiful poem on Melancholy, sixth canto,
Buzzby says:--
"`When trouble, like a curtain spread,
Obscures the clouded brain,
And worries on the weary head
Descend like soaking rain--
Lift up th'umbrella of the heart,
Stride manfully along;
Defy depression's dreary dart,
And shout in gleeful song.'"
"Come, Alf, clap on to this tow-rope, an' stop your nonsense," said
Captain Vane, who was not in a poetical frame of mind just then.
"Dat is mos' boosiful potry!" exclaimed Butterface, with an immense
display of eyes and teeth, as he lent a willing hand to haul out the
sledge. "Mos' boosiful. But he's rader a strong rem'dy, massa, don'
you tink? Not bery easy to git up a gleefoo' shout when one's down in
de mout' bery bad, eh!"
Alf's reply was checked by the necessity for remounting the sledge and
resuming the journey. Those in rear avoided the pond by going round it.
"The weather's warm, anyhow, and that's a comfort," remarked Benjy, as
he settled down in his wet garments. "We can't freeze in summer, you
know, and--"
He stopped abruptly, for it became apparent just then that the opening
close ahead of them was too narrow for the sledge to pass. It was
narrowed by a buttress, or projection, of the cathedral-berg, which
jutted up close to a vast obelisk of ice about forty feet high, if not
higher.
"Nothing for it, boys, but to cut through," said the Captain, jumping
out, and seizing an axe, as the sledge was jammed between the masses.
The dogs lay down to rest and pant while the men were at work.
"It's cut an' come again in dem regins," muttered the negro steward,
also seizing an axe, and attacking the base of the obelisk.
A sudden cry of alarm from the whole party caused him to desist and look
up. He echoed the cry and sprang back swiftly, for the huge mass of ice
having been just on the balance, one slash at its base had destroyed the
equilibrium, and it was leaning slowly over with a deep grinding sound.
A moment later the motion was swift, and it fell with a terrible crash,
bursting into a thousand fragments, scattering lumps and glittering
morsels far and wide, and causing the whole ice-field to tremble. The
concussion overturned several other masses, which had been in the same
nicely-balanced condition, some near at hand, others out of sight,
though within earshot, and, for a moment, the travellers felt as if the
surrounding pack were disrupting everywhere and falling into utter ruin,
but in a few seconds the sounds ceased, and again all was quiet.
Fortunately, the obelisk which had been overturned fell towards the
north--away from the party; but although it thus narrowly missed
crushing them all in one icy tomb, it blocked up their path so
completely that the remainder of that day had to be spent in cutting a
passage through it.
Need we say that, after this, they were careful how they used their axes
and ice-chisels?
Soon after the occurrence of this incident, the labyrinths among the ice
became more broken, tortuous, and bewildering. At last they ceased
altogether, and the travellers were compelled to take an almost straight
course right over everything, for blocks, masses, and drifts on a
gigantic scale were heaved up in such dire confusion, that nothing
having the faintest resemblance to a track or passage could be found.
"It's hard work, this," remarked the Captain to Leo one evening, seating
himself on a mass of ice which he had just chopped from an obstruction,
and wiping the perspiration from his brow.
"Hard, indeed," said Leo, sitting down beside him, "I fear it begins to
tell upon poor Benjy. You should really order him to rest more than he
does, uncle."
A grim smile of satisfaction played for a minute on the Captain's rugged
face, as he glanced at his son, who, a short distance ahead, was hacking
at the ice with a pick-axe, in company with Alf and Butterface and the
Eskimo men.
"It'll do him good, lad," replied the Captain. "Hard work is just what
my Benjy needs. He's not very stout, to be sure, but there is nothing
wrong with his constitution, and he's got plenty of spirit."
This was indeed true. Benjy had too much spirit for his somewhat
slender frame, but his father, being a herculean man, did not quite
perceive that what was good for himself might be too much for his son.
Captain Vane was, however, the reverse of a harsh man. He pondered what
Leo had said, and soon afterwards went up to his son.
"Benjy, my lad."
"Yes, father," said the boy, dropping the head of his pick-axe on the
ice, resting his hands on the haft, and looking up with a flushed
countenance.
"You should rest a bit now and then, Benjy. You'll knock yourself up if
you don't."
"Rest a bit, father! Why, I've just had a rest, and I'm not tired--that
is, not very. Ain't it fun, father? And the ice cuts up so easily, and
flies about so splendidly--see here."
With flashing eyes our little hero raised his pick and drove it into the
ice at which he had been working, with all his force, so that a great
rent was made, and a mass the size of a dressing-table sprang from the
side of a berg, and, falling down, burst into a shower of sparkling
gems. But this was not all. To Benjy's intense delight, a mass of many
tons in weight was loosened by the fall of the smaller lump, and rolled
down with a thunderous roar, causing Butterface, who was too near it, to
jump out of the way with an amount of agility that threw the whole party
into fits of laughter.
"What d'ye think o' that, father?"
"I think it's somewhat dangerous," answered the Captain, recovering his
gravity and re-shouldering his axe. "However, as long as you enjoy the
work, it can't hurt you, so go ahead, my boy; it'll be a long time
before you cut away too much o' the Polar ice!"
Reaching a slightly open space beyond this point, the dogs were
harnessed, and the party advanced for a mile or so, when they came to
another obstruction worse than that which they had previously passed.
"There's a deal of ice-rubbish in these regions," remarked Benjy, eyeing
the wildly heaped masses with a grave face, and heaving a deep sigh.
"Yes, Massa Benjy, bery too much altogidder," said Butterface, echoing
the sigh.
"Come, we won't cut through this," cried Captain Vane in a cheery voice;
"we'll try to go over it. There is a considerable drift of old snow
that seems to offer a sort of track. What says Chingatok?"
The easy-going Eskimo said that it would be as well to go over it as
through it, perhaps better!
So, over it they went, but they soon began to wish they had tried any
other plan, for the snow-track quickly came to an end, and then the
difficulty of passing even the empty sledges from one ice mass to
another was very great, while the process of carrying forward the goods
on the shoulders of the men was exceedingly laborious. The poor dogs,
too, were constantly falling between masses, and dragging each other
down, so that they gave more trouble at last than they were worth.
In all these trying circumstances, the Eskimo women were almost as
useful as the men. Indeed they would have been quite as useful if they
had been as strong, and they bore the fatigues and trials of the journey
with the placid good humour, and apparent, if not real, humility of
their race.
At last, one afternoon, our discoverers came suddenly to the edge of
this great barrier of ancient ice, and beheld, from an elevated plateau
to which they had climbed, a scene which was calculated to rouse in
their breasts feelings at once of admiration and despair, for there,
stretching away below them for several miles, lay a sea of comparatively
level ice, and beyond it a chain of stupendous glaciers, which presented
an apparently impassable barrier--a huge continuous wall of ice that
seemed to rise into the very sky.
This chain bore all the evidences of being very old ice--compared to
which that of the so-called "ancient sea" was absolutely juvenile. On
the ice-plain, which was apparently illimitable to the right and left,
were hundreds of pools of water in which the icebergs, the golden
clouds, the sun, and the blue sky were reflected, and on the surface of
which myriads of Arctic wild-fowl were sporting about, making the air
vocal with their plaintive cries, and ruffling the glassy surfaces of
the lakes with their dipping wings. The heads of seals were also
observed here and there.
"These will stop us at last," said Alf, pointing to the bergs with a
profound sigh.
"No, they won't," remarked the Captain quietly. "_Nothing_ will stop
us!"
"That's true, anyhow, uncle," returned Alf; "for if it be, as Chingatok
thinks, that we are in search of nothing, of course when we find
nothing, nothing will stop us!"
"Why, Alf," said Leo, "I wonder that you, who are usually in an
enthusiastic and poetical frame of mind, should be depressed by distant
difficulties, instead of admiring such a splendid sight of birds and
beasts enjoying themselves in what I may style an Arctic heaven. You
should take example by Benjy."
That youth did indeed afford a bright example of rapt enthusiasm just
then, for, standing a little apart by himself, he gazed at the scene
with flushed face, open mouth, and glittering eyes, in speechless
delight.
"Ask Chingatok if he ever saw this range before," said the Captain to
Anders, on recovering from his first feeling of surprise.
No, Chingatok had never seen it, except, indeed, the tops of the bergs--
at sea, in the far distance--but he had often heard of it from some of
his countrymen, who, like himself, were fond of exploring. But that sea
of ice was not there, he said, when he had passed on his journey
southward. It had drifted there, since that time, from the great sea.
"Ah! the great sea that he speaks of is just what we must find and cross
over," muttered the Captain to himself.
"But how are we to cross over it, uncle?" asked Leo.
The Captain replied with one of his quiet glances. His followers had
long become accustomed to this silent method of declining to reply, and
forbore to press the subject.
"Come now, boys, get ready to descend to the plain. We'll have to do it
with caution."
There was, indeed, ground for caution. We have said that they had
climbed to an elevated plateau on one of the small bergs which formed
the outside margin of the rugged ice. The side of this berg was a steep
slope of hard snow, so steep that they thought it unwise to attempt the
descent by what in Switzerland is termed glissading.
"We'll have to zig-zag down, I think," continued the Captain, settling
himself on his sledge; but the Captain's dogs thought otherwise. Under
a sudden impulse of reckless free-will, the whole team, giving vent to a
howl of mingled glee and fear, dashed down the slope at full gallop. Of
course they were overtaken in a few seconds by the sledge, which not
only ran into them, but sent them sprawling on their backs right and
left. Then it met a slight obstruction, and itself upset, sending
Captain Vane and his companions, with its other contents, into the midst
of the struggling dogs. With momentarily increasing speed this
avalanche of mixed dead and living matter went sliding, hurtling,
swinging, shouting, struggling, and yelling to the bottom. Fortunately,
there was no obstruction there, else had destruction been inevitable.
The slope merged gradually into the level plain, over which the
avalanche swept for a considerable distance before the momentum of their
flight was expended.
When at length they stopped, and disentangled themselves from the knot
into which the traces had tied them, it was found that no one was
materially hurt. Looking up at the height down which they had come,
they beheld the Eskimos standing at the top with outstretched arms in
the attitude of men who glare in speechless horror. But these did not
stand thus long. Descending by a more circuitous route, they soon
rejoined the Captain's party, and then, as the night was far advanced,
they encamped on the edge of the ice-plain, on a part that was bathed in
the beams of the ever-circling sun.
That night at supper Captain Vane was unusually thoughtful and silent.
"You're not losing heart, are you, uncle?" asked Leo, during a pause.
"No, lad, certainly not," replied the Captain, dreamily.
"You've not been bumped very badly in the tumble, father, have you?"
asked Benjy with an anxious look.
"Bumped? no; what makes you think so?"
"Because you're gazing at Toolooha's lamp as if you saw a ghost in it."
"Well, perhaps I do see a ghost there," returned the Captain with an
effort to rouse his attention to things going on around him. "I see the
ghost of things to come. I am looking through Toolooha's lamp into
futurity."
"And what does futurity look like?" asked Alf. "Bright or dark?"
"Black--black as me," muttered Butterface, as he approached and laid
fresh viands before the party.
It ought to be told that Butterface had suffered rather severely in the
recent glissade on the snow-slope, which will account for the gloomy
view he took of the future at that time.
"Listen," said the Captain, with a look of sudden earnestness; "as it is
highly probable that a day or two more will decide the question of our
success or failure, I think it right to reveal to you more fully my
thoughts, my plans, and the prospects that lie before us. You all know
very well that there is much difference of opinion about the condition
of the sea around the North Pole. Some think it must be cumbered with
eternal ice, others that it is comparatively free from ice, and that it
enjoys a somewhat milder climate than those parts of the Arctic regions
with which we have hitherto been doing battle. I hold entirely with the
latter view--with those who believe in an open Polar basin. I won't
weary you with the grounds of my belief in detail, but here are a few of
my reasons--
"It is an admitted fact that there is constant circulation of the water
in the ocean. That wise and painstaking philosopher, Maury, of the US
navy, has proved to my mind that this grand circulation of the sea-water
round the world is the cause of all the oceanic streams, hot and cold,
with which we have been so long acquainted.
"This circulation is a necessity as well as a fact. At the Equator the
water is extremely warm and salt, besides lime-laden, in consequence of
excessive evaporation. At the Poles it is extremely cold and fresh.
Mixing is therefore a necessity. The hot salt-waters of the Equator
flow to the Poles to get freshened and cooled. Those of the Poles flow
to the Equator to get salted, limed, and warmed. They do this
continuously in two grand currents, north and south, all round the
world. But the land comes in as a disturbing element; it diverts the
water into streams variously modified in force and direction, and the
streams also change places variously, sometimes the hot currents
travelling north as under-currents with the cold currents above,
sometimes the reverse. One branch of the current comes from the Equator
round the Cape of Good Hope, turns up the west coast of Africa, and is
deflected into the Gulf of Mexico, round which it sweeps, and then
shoots across the Atlantic to England and Norway. It is known as our
Gulf Stream.
"Now, the equatorial warm and salt current enters Baffin's Bay as a
submarine current, while the cold and comparatively fresh waters of the
Polar regions descend as a surface-current, bearing the great ice-fields
of the Arctic seas to the southward. One thing that goes far to prove
this, is the fact that the enormous icebergs thrown off from the
northern glaciers have been frequently seen by navigators travelling
northward, right _against_ the current flowing south. These huge
ice-mountains, floating as they do with seven or eight parts of their
bulk beneath the surface, are carried thus forcibly up stream by the
under-current until their bases are worn off by the warm waters below,
thus allowing the upper current to gain the mastery, and hurry them
south again to their final dissolution in the Atlantic.
"Now, lads," continued the Captain, with the air of a man who propounds
a self-evident proposition; "is it not clear that if the warm waters of
the south flow into the Polar basin as an _under_ current, they must
come up _somewhere_, to take the place of the cold waters that are for
ever flowing away from the Pole to the Equator? Can anything be clearer
than that--except the nose on Benjy's face? Well then, that being so,
the waters round the Pole _must_ be comparatively warm waters, and also,
comparatively, free from ice, so that if we could only manage to cross
this ice-barrier and get into them, we might sail right away to the
North Pole."
"But, father," said Benjy, "since you have taken the liberty to trifle
with my nose, I feel entitled to remark that we can't sail in waters,
either hot or cold, without a ship."
"That's true, boy," rejoined the Captain. "However," he added, with a
half-humorous curl of his black moustache, "you know I'm not given to
stick at trifles. Time will show. Meanwhile I am strongly of opinion
that this is the last ice-barrier we shall meet with on our way to the
Pole."
"Is there not some tradition of a mild climate in the furthest north
among the Eskimos?" asked Alf.
"Of course there is. It has long been known that the Greenland Eskimos
have a tradition of an island in an iceless sea, lying away in the far
north, where there are many musk-oxen, and, from what I have been told
by our friend Chingatok, I am disposed to think that he and his kindred
inhabit this island, or group of islands, in the Polar basin--not far,
perhaps, from the Pole itself. He says there are musk-oxen there. But
there is another creature, and a much bigger one than any Eskimo, bigger
even than Chingatok, who bears his testimony to an open Polar sea,
namely, the Greenland whale. It has been ascertained that the `right'
whale does not, and cannot, enter the tropical regions of the Ocean.
They are to him as a sea of fire, a wall of adamant, so that it is
impossible for him to swim south, double Cape Horn, and proceed to the
North Pacific; yet the very same kind of whale found in Baffin's Bay is
found at Behring Straits. Now, the question is, how did he get there?"
"Was born there, no doubt," answered Benjy, "and had no occasion to make
such a long voyage!"
"Ah! my boy, but we have the strongest evidence that he was _not_ born
there, for you must know that some whalers have a habit of marking their
harpoons with date and name of ship; and as we have been told by that
good and true man Dr Scoresby, there have been several instances where
whales have been captured near Behring Straits with harpoons in them
bearing the stamp of ships that were known to cruise on the Baffin's Bay
side of America. Moreover, in one or two instances a very short time
had elapsed between the date of harpooning on the Atlantic and capturing
on the Pacific side. These facts prove, at all events, a `North-west
Passage' for whales, and, as whales cannot travel far under ice without
breathing, they also tend to prove an open Polar sea.
"Another argument in favour of this basin is the migration of birds to
the northward at certain seasons. Birds do not migrate to frozen
regions, and such migrations northward have been observed by those who,
like ourselves, have reached the highest latitudes.
"Captain Nares of the _Alert_, in May 1876, when only a little to the
southward of this, saw ptarmigan flying in pairs to the north-west,
seeking for better feeding-grounds. Ducks and geese also passed
northward early in June, indicating plainly the existence of suitable
feeding-grounds in the undiscovered and mysterious North.
"We have now passed beyond the point reached by Captain Nares. My last
observation placed us in parallel 84 degrees 40 minutes, the highest
that has yet been reached by civilised man."
"The highest, uncle?" interrupted Leo. "Yes--the highest. Scoresby
reached 81 degrees 50 minutes in 1806, Parry 82 degrees 45 minutes in
1827--with sledges. That unfortunate and heroic American, Captain Hall,
ran his vessel, the _Polaris_, in the shortest space of time on record,
up to latitude 82 degrees 16 minutes. Captain Nares reached a higher
latitude than had previously been attained by ships, and Captain
Markham, of Captain Nares' expedition, travelled over this very `sea of
ancient ice' with sledges to latitude 83 degrees 20.4 minutes--about 400
miles from the Pole, and the highest yet reached, as I have said. So,
you see, we have beaten them all! Moreover, I strongly incline to the
belief that the open Polar Sea lies just beyond that range of huge
icebergs which we see before us."
The Captain rose as he spoke, and pointed to the gigantic chain, behind
one of which the sun was just about to dip, causing its jagged peaks to
glow as with intense fire.
"But how are we ever to pass that barrier, uncle?" asked Alf, who was by
nature the least sanguine of the party in regard to overcoming
difficulties of a geographical nature, although by far the most
enthusiastic in the effort to acquire knowledge.
"You shall see, to-morrow," answered the Captain; "at present we must
turn in and rest. See, the Eskimos have already set us the example."