AN ANXIOUS SEARCH.
"Not a man now, except Pierre and Morton, is exempt from scurvy;
and, as I look around upon the pale faces and haggard looks of my
comrades, I feel that we are fighting the battle of life at disadvantage,
and that an Arctic night and an Arctic day age a man more rapidly and
harshly than a year anywhere else in all this weary world.
"_March 13._--Since January, we have been working at the sledges and
other preparations for travel. The death of my dogs, the rugged obstacles
of the ice, and the intense cold, have obliged me to reorganise our whole
equipment. We have had to discard all our India-rubber fancy-work;
canvas shoe-making, fur-socking, sewing, carpentering, are all going
on; and the cabin, our only fire-warmed apartment, is the workshop,
kitchen, parlour, and hall. Pemmican cases are thawing on the lockers;
buffalo-robes are drying around the stove; camp equipments occupy the
corners; and our woe-begone French cook, with an infinitude of useless
saucepans, insists on monopolising the stove.
"_March 17._--It is nine o'clock P.M., and the thermometer
outside at -46°. I am anxious to have my depôt party off; but I must wait
until there is a promise of milder weather. It must come soon. The sun
is almost at the equator. On deck, I can see to the northward all the
bright glare of sunset, streaming out in long bands of orange through the
vapours of the ice-foot, and the frost-smoke exhaling in wreaths like
those from the house-chimneys a man sees in the valleys as he comes down
a mountain side.
[Sidenote: Start of the Depôt Party]
"_March 18._--To-day our spring-tides gave to the massive ice which
sustains our little vessel a rise and fall of seventeen feet. The
crunching and grinding, the dashing of the water, the gurgling of the
eddies, and the toppling over of the nicely-poised ice-tables, were
unlike the more brisk dynamics of hummock action, but conveyed a more
striking expression of power and dimension.
"The thermometer at four o'clock in the morning was -49°; too cold
still, I fear, for our sledgemen to set out. But we packed the sledge
and strapped on the boat, determined to see how she would drag. Eight
nun attached themselves to the lines, but were scarcely able to move
her. This may be due in part to an increase of friction produced by the
excessive cold, according to experience of the Siberian travellers; but I
have no doubt it is principally caused by the very thin runners of our
Esquimaux sledge cutting through the snow-crust.
"The excessive refraction this evening, which entirely lifted up the
northern coast as well as the icebergs, seems to give the promise of
milder weather. In the hope that it may be so, I have fixed on to-morrow
for the departure of the sledge, after very reluctantly dispensing with
more than two hundred pounds of her cargo, besides the boat. The party
think they can get along with it now.
"_March 20._--I saw the depôt party off yesterday. They gave the
usual three cheers, with three for myself. I gave them the whole of
my brother's great wedding-cake and my last two bottles of Port, and
they pulled the sledge they were harnessed to famously. But I was not
satisfied. I could see it was hard work; and, besides, they were without
the boat, or enough extra pemmican to make their deposit of importance. I
followed them, therefore, and found that they encamped at 8 P.M.
only five miles from the brig.
"When I overtook them I said nothing to discourage them, and gave no new
orders for the morning; but after laughing at good Ohlsen's rueful face,
and listening to all Petersen's assurances that the cold and nothing but
the cold retarded his Greenland sledge, and that no sledge of any other
construction could have been moved at all through -40° snow, I quietly
bade them good-night, leaving all hands under their buffaloes.
"Once returned to the brig, all my tired remainder-men were summoned; a
large sled with broad runners, which I had built somewhat after the neat
Admiralty model sent me by Sir Francis Beaufort, was taken down, scraped,
polished, lashed, and fitted with track-ropes and _rue-raddies_--the
lines arranged to draw as near as possible in a line with the centre
of gravity. We made an entire cover of canvas, with snugly-adjusted
fastenings; and by one in the morning we had our discarded excess of
pemmican and the boat once more in stowage.
[Sidenote: The Rescue]
"Off we went for the camp of the sleepers. It was very cold, but a
thoroughly Arctic night--the snow just tinged with the crimson stratus
above the sun, which, equinoctial as it was, glared beneath the northern
horizon like a smelting-furnace. We found the tent of the party by the
bearings of the stranded bergs. Quietly and stealthily we hauled away
their Esquimaux sledge, and placed her cargo upon the _Faith_. Five men
were then 'rue-raddied' to the track-lines, and with the whispered word,
'Now, boys, when Mr Brooks gives his third snore, off with you!' off they
went, and the _Faith_ after them, as free and nimble as a volunteer.
The trial was a triumph. We awakened the sleepers with three cheers;
and, giving them a second good-bye, returned to the brig, carrying
the dishonoured vehicle along with us. And now, barring mishaps past
anticipation, I shall have a depôt for my long trip.
"The party were seen by M'Gary from aloft, at noon to-day, moving easily,
and about twelve miles from the brig. The temperature too is rising, or
rather unmistakably about to rise. Our lowest was -43°, but our highest
reached -22°; this extreme range, with the excessive refraction and a
gentle misty air from about the south-east, makes me hope that we are
going to have a warm spell. The party is well off. Now for my own to
follow them.
"_March 21._--All hands at work house-cleaning. Thermometer -18°. Visited
the fox-traps with Hans in the afternoon, and found one poor animal
frozen dead. A hard thing about his fate was that he had succeeded
in effecting his escape from the trap, but, while working his way
underneath, had been frozen fast to a smooth stone by the moisture of
his own breath. He was not probably aware of it before the moment when
he sought to avail himself of his hard-gained liberty. These saddening
thoughts did not impair my appetite at supper, where the little creature
looked handsomer than ever.
"_March 22._--We took down the forward bulkhead to-day, and moved the men
aft, to save fuel. All hands are still at work clearing up the decks, the
scrapers sounding overhead, and the hickory-brooms crackling against the
frozen woodwork. Afternoon comes, and M'Gary brings from the traps two
foxes, a blue and a white. Afternoon passes, and we skin them. Evening
passes, and we eat them. Never were foxes more welcome visitors, or
treated more like domestic animals.
"_March 27._--We have been for some days in all the flurry of preparation
for our exploration trip: buffalo-hides, leather, and tailoring utensils
everywhere. Every particle of fur comes in play for mits, and muffs, and
wrappers. Poor Flora is turned into a pair of socks, and looks almost as
pretty as when she was heading the team.
"The wind to-day made it intensely cold. In riding but four miles to
inspect a fox-trap, the movement froze my cheeks twice. We avoid masks
with great care, reserving them for the severer weather; the jaw when
protected recovers very soon the sensibility which exposure has subdued.
"_March 31._--I was within an ace to-day of losing my clogs, every one of
them. When I reached the ice-foot, they balked;--who would not?--the tide
was low, the ice rampant, and a jump of four feet necessary to reach the
crest. The howling of the wind and the whirl of the snow-drift confused
the poor creatures; but it was valuable training for them, and I strove
to force them over. Of course I was on foot, and they had a light load
behind them. 'Now, Stumpy! Now, Whitey!' 'Good dogs!' 'Tu-lee-ēē-ēē!
Tuh!' They went at it like good staunch brutes, and the next minute the
whole team was rolling in a lump, some sixteen feet below me, in the
chasm of the ice-foot. The drift was such that at first I could not see
them. The roaring of the tide, and the subdued wail of the dogs, made me
fear for the worst. I had to walk through the broken ice, which rose in
toppling spires over my head, for nearly fifty yards, before I found an
opening to the ice-face, by which I was able to climb down to them. A few
cuts of a sheath-knife released them, although the caresses of the dear
brutes had like to have been fatal to me, for I had to straddle with one
foot on the fast ice and the other on loose piled rubbish. But I got a
line attached to the cross-pieces of the sledge-runners, flung it up on
the ice-foot, and then piloted my dogs out of their slough. In about ten
minutes we were sweating along at eight miles an hour."
Everything looked promising, and we were only waiting for intelligence
that our advance party had deposited its provisions in safety to begin
our transit of the bay. Except a few sledge-lashings and some trifling
accoutrements to finish, all was ready.
[Sidenote: Bad News]
We were at work cheerfully, sewing away at the skins of some moccasins
by the blaze of our lamps, when, toward midnight, we heard the noise of
steps above, and the next minute Sontag, Ohlsen, and Petersen, came down
into the cabin. Their manner startled me even more than their unexpected
appearance on board. They were swollen and haggard, and hardly able to
speak.
Their story was a fearful one. 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 among the hummocks to the north and east; it was
drifting heavily round them when they parted. Irish Tom had stayed by to
feed and care for the others; but the chances were sorely against them.
It was in vain to question them further. They had evidently travelled a
great distance, for they were sinking with fatigue and hunger, and could
hardly be rallied enough to tell us the direction in which they had come.
My first impulse was to move on the instant with an unencumbered party;
a rescue, to be effective even hopeful, could not be too prompt. What
pressed on my mind most was where the sufferers were to be looked for
among the drifts. Ohlsen seemed to have his faculties rather more at
command than his associates, and I thought that he might assist us as a
guide; but he was sinking with exhaustion, and if he went with us we must
carry him.
There was not a moment to be lost. While some were still busy with the
new-comers and getting ready a hasty meal, others were rigging out the
_Little Willie_ with a buffalo-cover, a small tent, and a package of
pemmican; and, as soon as we could hurry through our arrangements, Ohlsen
was strapped on in a fur bag, his legs wrapped in dog skins and eider
down, and we were off upon the ice. Our party consisted of nine men and
myself. We carried only the clothes on our backs. The thermometer stood
at -46°, seventy-eight below the freezing point.
A well known peculiar tower of ice, called by the men the "Pinnacly
Berg," served as our first landmark other icebergs of colossal size,
which stretched in long beaded lines across the bay, helped to guide us
afterward; and it was not until we had travelled for sixteen hours that
we began to lose our way.
We knew that our lost companions must be somewhere in the area before
us, within a radius of forty miles. Ohlsen who had been for fifty hours
without rest, fell asleep; soon as we began to move, and awoke now with
unequivocal signs of mental disturbance. It became evident that he had
lost the bearing of the icebergs, which in form and colour endlessly
repeated themselves; and the uniformity of the vast field of snow utterly
forbade the hope of local landmarks.
Pushing ahead of the party, and clambering over some rugged ice-piles, I
came to a long level floe, which I thought might probably have attracted
the eyes of weary men in circumstances like our own. It was a light
conjecture; but it was enough to turn the scale, for there was no other
to balance it. I gave orders to abandon the sledge, and disperse in
search of footmarks. We raised our tent, placed our pemmican in _cache_,
except a small allowance for each man to carry on his person; and poor
Ohlsen, now just able to keep his legs, was liberated from his bag.
[Sidenote: Affect of the Cold]
It was indispensable that we should move on, looking out for traces as
we went. Yet when the men were ordered to spread themselves, so as to
multiply the chances, though they all obeyed heartily, some painful
impress of solitary danger, or perhaps it may have been the varying
configuration of the ice-field, kept them closing up continually into
a single group. The strange manner in which some of us were affected I
now attribute as much to shattered nerves as to the direct influence of
the cold. Men like M'Gary and Bonsall, who had stood out our severest
marches, were seized with trembling fits and short breath; and, in spite
of all my efforts to keep up an example of sound bearing, I fainted twice
on the snow.
We had been nearly eighteen hours out, without water or food, when a new
hope cheered us. I think it was Hans, our Esquimaux hunter, who thought
he saw a broad sledge-track. The drift had nearly effaced it, and 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; and,
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. I was not among the first to come
up; but, when I reached the tent-curtain, the men were standing in
silent 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. As I
crawled in, and, coming upon the darkness, 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 I would come!"
We were now fifteen souls; the thermometer 75° below the freezing point;
and our sole accommodation a tent barely able to contain eight persons:
more than half our party were obliged to keep from freezing by walking
outside while the others slept. We could not halt long. Each of us took
a turn of two hours' sleep, and we prepared for our homeward march.
[Sidenote: The Retreat]
We took with us nothing but the tent, furs to protect the rescued party,
and food for a journey of fifty hours. Everything else was abandoned.
Two large buffalo-bags, each made of four skins, were doubled up, so
as to form a sort of sack, lined on each side by fur, closed at the
bottom, but opened at the top. This was laid on the sledge; the tent,
smoothly folded, serving as a floor. 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 blanket-bags 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 time and effort; but it was
essential to the lives of the sufferers. It took us no less than four
hours to strip and refresh them, and then to embale them in the manner I
have described. Few of us escaped without frost-bitten fingers.
It was completed at last, however; all hands stood round, and after
repeating a short prayer, we set out on our retreat. It was fortunate
indeed that we were not inexperienced in sledging over the ice. A great
part of our track lay among a succession of hummocks, some of them
extending in long lines, fifteen or twenty feet high, and so uniformly
steep that we had to turn them by a considerable deviation from our
direct course; others that we forced our way through, far above our
heads in height, lying in parallel ridges, with the space between too
narrow for the sledge to be lowered into it safely, and yet not enough
for the runners to cross without the aid of ropes to stay them. These
spaces, too, were generally choked with light snow, hiding the openings
between the ice-fragments. They were fearful traps to disengage a limb
from, for every man knew that a fracture, or a sprain even, would cost
him his life. Besides all this, the sledge was top-heavy with its load:
the maimed men could not bear to be lashed down tight enough to secure
them against falling off. Notwithstanding our caution in rejecting every
superfluous burden, the weight, including bags and tent, was eleven
hundred pounds.
And yet our march for the first six hours was very cheering. We made,
by vigorous pulls and lifts, nearly a mile an hour, and reached the new
floes before we were absolutely weary. Our sledge sustained the trial
admirably. Ohlsen, restored by hope, walked steadily at the leading belt
of the sledge lines; and I began to feel certain of reaching our half-way
station of the day before, where we had left our tent. But we were still
nine miles from it, when, almost without premonition, we all became aware
of an alarming failure of our energies.
Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging
permission to sleep. "They were not cold, the wind did not enter them
now,--a little sleep was all they wanted." Presently Hans was found
nearly stiff under a drift; and Thomas, bolt upright, had his eyes
closed, and could hardly articulate. At last John Blake threw himself on
the snow, and refused to rise. They did not complain of feeling cold;
but it was in vain that I wrestled, boxed, ran, argued, jeered, or
reprimanded: an immediate halt could not be avoided.
We pitched our tent with much difficulty. Our hands were too powerless
to strike a fire; we were obliged to do without water or food. Even the
spirits (whisky) had frozen at the men's feet, under all the coverings.
We put Bonsall, Ohlsen, Thomas, and Hans, with the other sick men, well
inside the tent, and crowded in as many others as we could. Then, leaving
the party in charge of Mr M'Gary, with orders to come on after four
hours' rest, I pushed ahead with William Godfrey, who volunteered to be
my companion. My aim was to reach the half-way tent, and thaw some ice
and pemmican before the others arrived.
[Sidenote: A Bear Frolic]
The floe was of level ice, and the walking excellent. I cannot tell how
long it took us to make the nine miles, for we were in a strange sort of
stupor, and had little apprehension of time. It was probably about four
hours. We kept ourselves awake by imposing on each other a continued
articulation of words; they must have been incoherent enough. I recall
these hours as among the most wretched I have ever gone through: we
were neither of us in our right senses, and retained a very confused
recollection of what preceded our arrival at the tent. We both of us,
however, remember a bear, who walked leisurely before us, and tore up
as he went a jumper that Mr M'Gary had improvidently thrown off the day
before. He tore it into shreds and rolled it into a ball, but never
offered to interfere with our progress. I remember this, and with it a
confused sentiment that our tent and buffalo-robes might probably share
the same fate. Godfrey, with whom the memory of this day's work may
atone for many faults of a later time, had a better eye than myself;
and, looking some miles ahead, he could see that our tent was undergoing
the same unceremonious treatment. I thought I saw it too, but we were
so drunken with cold that we strode on steadily, and, for aught I know,
without quickening our pace.
Probably our approach saved the contents of the tent; for when we
reached it the tent was uninjured, though the bear had overturned it,
tossing the buffalo-robes and pemmican into the snow; we missed only a
couple of blanket-bags. What we recollect, however,--and perhaps all we
recollect,--is, that we had great difficulty in raising it. We crawled
into our reindeer sleeping-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. Four days after our escape, I found my
woollen comfortable with a goodly share of my beard still adhering to it.
We were able to melt water and get some soup cooked before the rest of
our party arrived: it took them but five hours to walk the nine miles.
They were doing well, and, considering the circumstances, in wonderful
spirits. The day was almost providentially windless, with a clear sun.
All enjoyed the refreshment we had got ready: the crippled were repacked
in their robes; and we sped briskly toward the hummock-ridges which lay
between us and the Pinnacly Berg.
It required desperate efforts to work our way over it--literally
desperate, for our strength failed us anew, and we began to lose our
self-control. We could not abstain any longer from eating snow; our
mouths swelled, and some of us became speechless.
Our halts multiplied, and we fell half-sleeping on the snow. I could
not prevent it. Strange to say, it refreshed us. I ventured upon the
experiment myself, making Riley wake me at the end of three minutes; and
I felt so much benefited by it 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.
By eight in the evening we emerged from the floes. The Bight of Pinnacly
Berg revived us. Brandy, an invaluable resource in emergency, had already
been served out in table-spoonful doses. We now took a longer rest, and
a last but stouter dram, and reached the brig at 1 P.M., we
believe without a halt.
[Sidenote: Mental Failure]
I say _we believe_; and here perhaps is the most decided proof of our
sufferings; we were quite delirious, and had ceased to entertain a sane
apprehension of the circumstances about us. We moved on like men in a
dream. Our footmarks seen afterward showed that we had steered a straight
line for the brig. It must have been by a sort of instinct, for it left
no impress on the memory. Bonsall was sent staggering ahead, and reached
the brig, God knows how, for he had fallen repeatedly at the track-lines;
but he delivered with punctilious accuracy the messages I had sent by him
to Dr Hayes. I thought myself the soundest of all, for I went through
all the formula of sanity, and can recall the muttering delirium of my
comrades when we got back into the cabin of our brig. Yet I have been
told since of some speeches and some orders too of mine, which I should
have remembered for their absurdity, if my mind had retained its balance.
Petersen and Whipple came out to meet us about two miles from the brig.
They brought my dog-team, with the restoratives I had sent for by
Bonsall. I do not remember their coming. Dr Hayes entered with judicious
energy upon the treatment our condition called for, administering
morphine freely, after the usual frictions. He reported none of our
brain-symptoms as serious, referring them properly to the class of
those indications of exhausted power which yield to generous diet and
rest. Mr 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. This 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, including the warmest hours of three days,
was at -41°·2. We had no water except at our halts, and were at no time
able to intermit vigorous exercise without freezing.
"_April 4._--Four days have passed, and I am again at my record of
failures, sound, but aching still in every joint. The rescued men are not
out of danger, but their gratitude is very touching. Pray God that they
may live!"
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