DOMESTIC TROUBLES--RETURN OF THE DEPÔT PARTY.
The island on which we placed our observatory was some fifty
paces long by perhaps forty broad, and about thirty feet above the
water-line. Here we mounted our transit and theodolite.
The magnetic observatory adjoined, and had rather more of the affectation
of comfort. No iron was used in its construction. Here were our
magnetometer and dip instruments; and the tide-register was placed on
board the vessel.
Our meteorological observatory was upon the open ice-field, one hundred
and forty yards from the ship. It was a wooden structure, latticed and
pierced with augur-holes on all sides, so as to allow the air to pass
freely, and firmly luted to its frozen base. This was well supplied
with thermometers of all varieties.
"_September 30._--We have been terribly annoyed by rats. Some days ago
we made a brave effort to smoke them out with the vilest imaginable
compound of vapours,--brimstone, burnt leather, and arsenic,--and spent a
cold night in a deck-bivouac, to give the experiment fair play. But they
survived the fumigation. We now determined to dose them with carbonic
acid gas. Dr Hayes burnt a quantity of charcoal; and we shut down the
hatches, after closing up every fissure that communicated aft, and
starting three stoves on the skin of the forepeak.
"As the gas was generated with extreme rapidity in the confined area
below, great caution had to be exercised. Our French cook, good Pierre
Schubert,--who to a considerable share of bull-headed intrepidity unites
a commendable portion of professional zeal,--stole below, without my
knowledge or consent, to season a soup. Morton fortunately saw him
staggering in the dark, and, reaching him with great difficulty as he
fell, both were hauled up in the end,--Morton, his strength almost gone,
and the cook perfectly insensible.
[Sidenote: Fire on Board Ship]
"The next disaster was of a graver sort. I record it with emotions of
mingled awe and thankfulness. We have narrowly escaped being burnt out of
house and home. I had given orders that the fires, lit under my own eye,
should be regularly inspected; but I learned that Pierre's misadventure
had made the watch pretermit for a time opening the hatches. As I lowered
a lantern, which was extinguished instantly, a suspicious odour reached
me, as of burning wood. I descended at once. Reaching the deck of the
forecastle, my first glance toward the fires showed me that all was
safe there; and, though the quantity of smoke still surprised me, I was
disposed to attribute it to the recent kindling. But at this moment,
while passing on my return near the door of the bulkhead, which leads to
the carpenter's room, the gas began to affect me. My lantern went out as
if quenched by water; and, as I ran by the bulkhead door, I saw the deck
near it a mass of glowing fire for some three feet in diameter. I could
not tell how much further it extended, for I became quite insensible at
the foot of the ladder, and would have sunk, had not Mr Brooks seen my
condition and hauled me out.
"When I came to myself, which happily was very soon, I confided my
fearful secret to the four men around me, Brooks, Ohlsen, Blake, and
Stevenson. It was all important to avoid confusion: we shut the doors of
the galley, so as to confine the rest of the crew and officers aft, and
then passed up water from the fire-hole alongside. It was all done very
quietly. Ohlsen and myself went down to the burning deck; Brooks handed
us in the buckets; and in less than ten minutes we were in safety. We
found the fire had originated in the remains of a barrel of charcoal,
which had been left in the carpenter's room, ten feet from the stoves,
and with a bulkhead separating it from them. How it had been ignited
it was impossible to know. Our safety was due to the dense charge of
carbonic acid gas which surrounded the fire, and the exclusion of
atmospheric air. When the hatches were opened the flame burst out with
energy. Our fire-hole was invaluable; and I rejoiced that, in the midst
of our heavy duties, this essential of an Arctic winter harbour had not
been neglected. The ice around the brig was already fourteen inches thick.
"_October 1._--Upon inspecting the scene of yesterday's operations, we
found twenty-eight well-fed rats of all varieties of age. The cook,
though unable to do duty, is better; I can hear him chanting his Béranger
through the blankets in his bunk.
"_October 3._--On shore to the south-east, above the first terrace, Mr
Petersen found unmistakable signs of a sledge-passage. The tracks were
deeply impressed, but certainly more than one season old. This adds to
our hope that the natives, whose ancient traces we saw on the point south
of Godsend Ledge, may return this winter.
"October 5.--A circumstance that happened to-day is of serious concern
to us. Our dogs have been adding to our stock. We have now on hand
four reserved puppies of peculiar promise; six have been ignominiously
drowned, two devoted to a pair of mittens for Dr Kane, and seven eaten
by their mammas. Yesterday the mother of one batch, a pair of fine
white pups, showed peculiar symptoms. We recalled the fact that for days
she had avoided water, or had drunk with spasms and evident aversion;
but hydrophobia, which is unknown north of 70°, never occurred to us.
The animal was noticed this morning walking up and down the deck with a
staggering gait, her head depressed, and her mouth frothing and tumid.
Finally she snapped at Petersen, and fell foaming and biting at his
feet. He reluctantly pronounced it hydrophobia, and advised me to shoot
her. The advice was well-timed: I had hardly cleared the deck before she
snapped at Hans, the Esquimaux, and recommenced her walking trot. It was
quite an anxious moment to me; for my Newfoundlanders were around the
housing, and the hatches open. We shot her, of course.
"_October 8._--I have been practising with my dog-sledge and an Esquimaux
team till my arms ache. To drive such an equipage, a certain proficiency
with the whip is indispensable; which, like all proficiency, must be
worked for. In fact, the weapon has an exercise of its own, quite
peculiar, and is as hard to learn as single-stick or broadsword.
"_October 10._--Our depôt party has been out twenty days, and it is
time they were back: their provisions must have run very low, for I
enjoined them to leave every pound at the depôt they could spare. I am
going out with supplies to look after them. I take four of our best
Newfoundlanders, now well broken, in our lightest sledge; and Blake will
accompany me with his skates. We have not hands enough to equip a sledge
party, and the ice is too unsound for us to attempt to ride with a large
team."
My first effort was, of course, to reach the land; but it was
unfortunately low tide, and the ice-belt rose up before me like a wall.
The pack was becoming more and more unsafe, and I was extremely anxious
to gain an asylum on shore; for, though it was easy to find a temporary
refuge by retreating to the old floes which studded the more recent ice,
I knew that in doing so we should risk being carried down by the drift.
[Sidenote: Accident to the Dogs]
The dogs began to flag; but we had to press them;--we were only two
men; and, in the event of the animals failing to leap any of the
rapidly-multiplying fissures, we could hardly expect to extricate our
laden sledge. Three times, in less than three hours, my shaft or hinder
dogs went in; and John and myself, who had been trotting alongside the
sledge for sixteen miles were nearly as tired as they were. This state of
things could not last; and I therefore made for the old ice to seaward.
We were nearing it rapidly, when the dogs failed in leaping a chasm that
was somewhat wider than the others and the whole concern came down in
the water. I cut the lines instantly, and, with the aid of my companion,
hauled the poor animals out. We owed the preservation of the sledge to
their admirable docility and perseverance. The tin-cooking apparatus
and the air confined in the India-rubber coverings kept it afloat
till we could succeed in fastening a couple of seal-skin cords to the
cross-pieces at the front and back. By these John and myself were able to
give it an uncertain support from the two edges of the opening, till the
dogs, after many fruitless struggles, carried it forward at last upon the
ice.
Although the thermometer was below zero, and in our wet state we ran
considerable risk of freezing, the urgency of our position left no room
for thoughts of cold. We started at a run, men and dogs, for the solid
ice; and by the time we had gained it we were steaming in the cold
atmosphere like a couple of vapour-baths.
We rested on the floe. We could not raise our tent, for it had frozen
hard. But our buffalo-robe bags gave us protection; and, though we were
too wet inside to be absolutely comfortable, we managed to get something
like sleep before it was light enough for us to move on again.
The journey was continued in the same way for a few days; but we found,
to our great gratification, that the cracks closed with the change of the
tide, and at high-water we succeeded in gaining the ice-belt under the
cliffs.
Our progress averaged twenty miles a day since leaving the brig, and we
were within a short march of the cape which I have named William Wood,
when a broad chasm brought us to a halt. It was in vain that we worked
out to seaward, or dived into the shore-ward recesses of the bay: the ice
everywhere presented the same impassable fissures. We had no alternative
but to retrace our steps and seek among the bergs some place of security.
We found a camp for the night on the old floe-ices to the westward,
gaining them some time after the darkness had closed in.
On the morning of the 15th, about two hours before the late sunrise, as I
was preparing to climb a berg from which I might have a sight of the road
ahead, I perceived far off upon the white snow a dark object, which not
only moved, but altered its shape strangely,--now expanding into a long
black line, now waving, now gathering itself up into a compact mass. It
was the returning sledge party. They had seen our black tent, and ferried
across to seek it.
[Sidenote: Return of the Wanderers]
They were most welcome; for their absence, in the fearfully open state of
the ice, had filled me with apprehensions. We could not distinguish each
other as we drew near in the twilight; and my first good news of them was
when I heard that they were singing. On they came, and at last I was able
to count their voices, one by one. Thank God, seven! Poor John Blake
was so breathless with gratulation, that I could not get him to blow his
signal-horn. We gave them, instead, the good old English greeting, "three
cheers!" and in a few minutes were among them.
They had made a creditable journey, and were, on the whole, in good
condition. They had no injuries worth talking about, although not a
man had escaped some touches of the frost. Bonsall was _minus_ a big
toe-nail, and _plus_ a scar upon the nose. M'Gary had attempted, as
Tom Hickey had told us, to pluck a fox, it being so frozen as to defy
skinning by his knife; and his fingers had been tolerably frost-bitten in
the operation. "They're very horny, sir, are my fingers," said M'Gary,
who was worn down to a mere shadow of his former rotundity; "very horny,
and they water up like bladders." The rest had suffered in their feet;
but, like good fellows, postponed limping until they reached the ship.
Within the last three days they had marched fifty-four miles. Their
sledge being empty, and the young ice north of Cape Bancroft smooth
as a mirror, they had travelled, the day before we met them, nearly
twenty-five miles. A very remarkable pace for men who had been
twenty-eight days in the field.
My supplies of hot food, coffee, and marled beef soup, which I had
brought with me, were very opportune. They had almost exhausted their
bread; and, being unwilling to encroach on the depôt stores, had gone
without fuel in order to save alcohol. Leaving orders to place my own
sledge stores in _cache_, I returned to the brig, ahead of the party,
with my dog sledge, carrying Mr Bonsall with me.
This extract from the journal shows how the men fared on reaching the
brig:--"The spar-deck--or, as we call it from its wooden covering, the
'house'--is steaming with the buffalo-robes, tents, boots, socks, and
heterogeneous costumings of our returned parties. We have ample work in
repairing these and restoring the disturbed order of our domestic Life.
The men feel the effects of their journey, but are very content in their
comfortable quarters. A pack of cards, grog at dinner, and the promise
of a three days' holiday, have made the decks happy with idleness and
laughter."
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