PREPARATIONS FOR LEAVING THE BRIG.
We continued toiling on with our complicated preparations till
the evening of the 24th, when Hans came back well laden with walrus meat.
Three of the Esquimaux accompanied him, each with his sledge and dog-team
fully equipped for a hunt. The leader of the party, Kalutunah, was a
noble savage, greatly superior in everything to the others of his race.
He greeted me with respectful courtesy, yet as one who might rightfully
expect an equal measure of it in return, and, after a short interchange
of salutations, seated himself in the post of honour at my side.
I waited, of course, till the company had fed and slept, for among
savages especially haste is indecorous, and then, after distributing
a few presents, opened to them my project of a northern exploration.
Kalutunah received his knife and needles with a "Kuyanake," "I thank
you:" the first thanks I have heard from a native of this upper region.
He called me his friend,--"Asakaoteet," "I love you well,"--and would be
happy, he said, to join the "nalegak-soak" in a hunt.
The project was one that had engaged my thoughts long before daylight
had renewed the possibility of carrying it out. I felt that the further
shores beyond Kennedy Channel were still to be searched before our work
could be considered finished; but we were without dogs, the indispensable
means of travel. We had only four left out of sixty-two. Famine among
the Esquimaux had been as disastrous as disease with us: they had killed
all but thirty, and of these there were now sixteen picketed on the
ice about the brig. The aid and influence of Kalutunah could secure my
closing expedition.
I succeeded in making my arrangements with him, provisionally at least,
and the morning after we all set out. The party consisted of Kalutunah,
Shang-hu, and Tatterat, an outlandish Esquimaux, who had his name from
the Kitty-wake Gull, with their three sledges. Hans, armed with the
Marston rifle, was my only companion from the ship's company. The natives
carried no arms but the long knife and their unicorn ivory lances. Our
whole equipment was by no means cumbersome: except the clothes upon our
back and raw walrus-meat, we carried nothing.
[Sidenote: Setting Out]
We started with a wild yell of dogs and men in chorus, Kalutunah and
myself leading. In about two hours we had reached a high berg about
fifteen miles north of the brig. Here I reconnoitred the ice ahead. It
was not cheering: the outside tide-channel, where I had broken through
the fall before, was now full of squeezed ice, and the plain beyond the
bergs seem much distorted. The Esquimaux, nevertheless, acceded to my
wish to attempt the passage, and we were soon among the hummocks. We ran
beside our sledges, clinging to the upstanders, but making, perhaps, four
miles an hour where, unassisted by the dogs, we could certainly have made
but one. Things began to look more auspicious.
We halted for lunch about thirty miles north of the brig, after having
edged along the coast about thirty miles eastward. Lunch over, the
journey began again, and we should have accomplished my wishes had it
not been for the untoward influence of sundry bears. The tracks of
these animals were becoming more and more numerous as we rounded one
iceberg after another; and we could see the beds they had worn in the
snow while watching for seal. These swayed the dogs from their course:
yet we kept edging onwards; and when in sight of the northern coast,
about thirty miles from the central peak of the "Three Brothers," I
saw a deep band of stratus lying over the horizon in the direction of
Kennedy Channel. This water-sky indicated the continued opening of the
channel, and made me more deeply anxious to proceed. But at this moment
our dogs encountered a large male bear in the act of devouring a seal.
The impulse was irresistible; I lost all control over both dogs and
drivers. They seemed dead to everything but the passion of pursuit. Off
they sped with incredible swiftness, the Esquimaux clinging to their
sledges, and cheering their dogs with loud cries of "Nannook!" A mad,
wild chase, wilder than German legend,--the dogs, wolves; the drivers,
devils. After a furious run, the animal was brought to bay; the lance
and the rifle did their work, and we halted for a general feed. The
dogs gorged themselves, the drivers did as much, and we buried the
remainder of the carcass in the snow. A second bear had been tracked
by the party to a large iceberg north of Cape Russel; for we had now
travelled to the neighbourhood of the Great Glacier. But the dogs were
too much distended by their abundant diet to move: their drivers were
scarcely better. Rest was indispensable.
We took a four hours' sleep on the open ice, the most uncomfortable that
I remember. Our fatigue had made us dispense with the snow-house; and,
though I was heavily clad in a full suit of furs, and squeezed myself in
between Kalutunah and Shang-hu, I could not bear the intense temperature.
I rose in the morning stiff and sore. I mention it as a trait of
nobleness on the part of Kalutunah, which I appreciated very sensibly at
the time, that, seeing me suffer, he took his kapetah from his back and
placed it around my feet.
The next day I tried again to make my friends steer to the northward. But
the bears were most numerous upon the Greenland side; and they determined
to push on toward the glacier. They were sure, they said, of finding the
game among the broken icebergs at the base of it. All my remonstrances
and urgent entreaties were unavailing to make them resume their promised
route. They said that to cross so high up as we then were was impossible,
and I felt the truth of this when I remembered the fate of poor Baker and
Schubert at this very passage. Kalutunah added, significantly, that the
bear-meat was absolutely necessary for the support of their families,
and that Nalegak had no right to prevent him from providing for his
household. It was a strong argument, and withal the argument of the
strong.
[Sidenote: Bear Hunting]
I found now that my projected survey of the northern coast must be
abandoned, at least for the time. My next wish was to get back to the
brig, and to negotiate with Metek for a purchase or loan of his dogs as
my last chance. But even this was not readily gratified. All of Saturday
was spent in bear-hunting. The natives, as indomitable as their dogs,
made the entire circuit of Dallas Bay, and finally halted again under one
of the islands which group themselves between the headlands of Advance
Bay and at the base of the glacier.
While the Esquimaux were hunting about the bergs, I sat and took a sketch
of the glacier; seeing them come to a halt above the island, I gained
the nearest sledge, and the whole party gathered together a few miles
from the face of the glacier. Here Hans and myself crawled with Tatterat
and his dogs into an impromptu snow-hut, and, cheered by our aggregated
warmth, slept comfortably. Our little dome, or rather burrow, for it was
scooped out of a drift, fell down in the night; but we were so worn out
that it did not wake us.
On rising from a sleep in the open air, at a temperature of 12° below
zero, the hunt was resumed along the face of the glacier, with just
enough of success to wear out the dogs and endanger my chances of return
to the brig. In spite of the grandeur of the scenery and the noble
displays of force exhibited by the falling bergs, my thoughts wandered
back to the party I had left; and I was really glad when Kalutunah
yielded to my renewed persuasion, and turned his team toward the ice-belt
of the south-eastern shore.
The spot at which we landed I have called Cape James Kent. It was a
lofty headland, and the land-ice which hugged its base was covered with
rocks from the cliffs above. As I looked over this ice-belt, losing
itself in the far distance, and covered with its millions of tons of
rubbish, greenstones, limestones, chlorite slates, rounded and angular,
massive and ground to powder, its importance as a geological agent in the
transportation of drift struck me with great force. Its whole substance
was studded with these varied contributions from the shore; and further
to the south, upon the now frozen waters of Marshall Bay, I could
recognise raft after raft from the last year's ice-belt, which had been
caught by the winter, each one laden with its heavy freight of foreign
material.
On the south-eastern corner of this bay, where some low islands at the
mouth of the fiord formed a sort of protection against the north wind,
was a group of Esquimaux remains,--huts, cairns, and graves. Though
evidently long deserted, my drivers seemed to know all about them,
for they suspended the hunt around the bergs to take a look at these
evidences of a bygone generation of their fathers.
There were five huts, with two stone pedestals for the protection of
meat, and one of those strange little kennels which serve as dormitories
when the igloë is crowded. The graves were further up the fiord; from
them I obtained a knife of bone, but no indications of iron.
[Sidenote: "The Inhabited Spot"]
These huts stood high up, upon a set of shingle terraces, similar
to those of Rensselaer Bay. The belt-ice at their foot was old and
undisturbed, and must have been so for years; so, too, was the heavy
ice of the bay. Yet around these old homesteads were bones of the seal
and walrus, and the vertebræ of a whale similar to that of the igloë of
Anoatok. There must have been both open water and a hunting-ground around
them, and the huts had in former days been close upon this water-line.
"Una suna nuna?" "What land is this, Kalutunah?" I did not understand his
answer, which was long and emphatic; but I found from our interpreter
that the place was still called "the inhabited spot;" and that a story
was well preserved among them of a time when families were sustained
beside its open water, and musk-ox inhabited the hills. We followed the
belt-ice, crossing only at the headlands of the bays, and arrived at the
brig on the afternoon of Wednesday.
The Esquimaux left the brig after a day's rest, fully laden with wood and
other presents, and promising to engage Metek, if they could, to come
up with his four dogs. They themselves engaged to lend me one dog from
each of their teams. It pleased me to find that I had earned character
with these people, at first so suspicious and distrustful. They left on
board each man his dog, without a shade of doubt as to my good faith,
only begging me to watch the poor animals' feet, as the famine had nearly
exterminated their stock.
* * * * *
The month of May had come. Metek, less confiding because less trustworthy
than Kalutunah, did not bring his dogs, and my own exhausted team was
in almost daily requisition to bring in supplies of food from Etah.
Everything admonished me that the time was at hand when we must leave
the brig and trust our fortunes to the floes. Our preparations were well
advanced, and the crew so far restored to health that all but three or
four could take some part in completing them.
Still, I could not allow myself to pass away from our region of search
without a last effort to visit the furthest shores of the channel. Our
communications with the Esquimaux, and some successful hunts of our own,
had given us a stock of provisions for at least a week in advance. I
conferred with my officers, made a full distribution of the work to be
performed in my absence, and set out once more, with Morton for my only
companion. We took with us the light sledge, adding the two borrowed
dogs to our team, but travelling ourselves on foot. Our course was to be
by the middle ice, and our hope that we might find it free enough from
hummocks to permit us to pass.
My journal, written after our return, gives nothing but a series of
observations going to verify and complete my charts. We struggled
manfully, through days and nights of adventurous exposure and recurring
disaster, to force our way, and at last found our way back to the brig,
Morton broken down anew, and my own energies just adequate to the duty
of supervising our final departure. I had neither time nor strength to
expend on my diary.
The operations of the search were closed.
[Sidenote: Preparing for Retreat]
The detailed preparations for our escape would have little interest for
the general reader; but they were so arduous and so important that I
cannot pass them by without a special notice. They had been begun from
an early day of the fall, and had not been entirely intermitted during
our severest winter-trials. All who could work, even at picking over
eider-down, found every moment of leisure fully appropriated. But since
our party had begun to develop the stimulus of more liberal diet, our
labours were more systematic and diversified.
The manufacture of clothing had made considerable progress. Canvas
mocassins had been made for every one of the party, and three dozen were
added as a common stock to meet emergencies. Three pairs of boots were
allowed each man. These were generally of carpeting, with soles of walrus
and seal hide; and when the supply of these was exhausted, the leather
from the chaffing-gear of the brig for a time supplied their place. A
much better substitute was found afterward in the gutta-percha that had
formed the speaking-tube. This was softened by warm water, cut into
Lengths, and so made available to its new uses. Blankets were served out
as the material for body clothing. Every man was his own tailor.
For bedding, the woollen curtains that had formerly decorated our berths
supplied us with a couple of large coverlets, which were abundantly
quilted with eider-down. Two buffalo-robes of the same size, with the
coverlets, were arranged so as to button on them, forming sleeping-sacks
for the occasion, but easily detached for the purpose of drying or
airing.
Our provision-bags were of assorted sizes, to fit under the thwarts of
the boats. They were of sailcloth, made water-tight by tar and pitch,
which we kept from penetrating the canvas by first coating it with
flour-paste and plaster of Paris. The bread-bags were double, the inner
saturated with paste and plaster by boiling in the mixture, and the space
between the two filled with pitch. Every bag was, in sailor-phrase, roped
and becketed; in ordinary parlance, well secured by cordage.
These different manufactures had all of them been going on through
the winter, and more rapidly as the spring advanced. They had given
employment to the thoughts of our sick men, and in this way had exerted a
wholesome influence on their moral tone and assisted their convalescence.
Other preparations had been begun more recently. The provisions for the
descent were to be got ready and packed. The ship-bread was powdered by
beating it with a capstan-bar, and pressed down into the bags which were
to carry it. Pork-fat and tallow were melted down, and poured into other
bags to freeze. A stock of concentrated bean-soup was cooked, and secured
for carriage like the pork-fat; and the flour and remaining meat-biscuit
were to be protected from moisture in double bags. These were the only
provisions we were to carry with us. I knew I should be able to subsist
the party for some time after their setting out by the food I could bring
from the vessel by occasional trips with my dog-team. For the rest we
relied upon our guns.
Besides all this, we had our camp equipage to get in order, and the
vitally important organization of our system of boats and sledges.
[Sidenote: The Boats]
Our boats were three in number, all of them well battered by exposure
to ice and storm, almost as destructive of their sea-worthiness as
the hot sun of other regions. Two of them were cypress whale-boats,
twenty-six feet long, with seven feet beam, and three feet deep. These
were strengthened with oak bottom-pieces and a long string-piece bolted
to the keel. A wash board of light cedar, about six inches high, served
to strengthen the gunwale and give increased depth. A neat housing of
light canvas was stretched upon a ridge-line sustained fore and aft by
stanchions, and hung down over the boats' sides, where it was fastened
(stopped) to a jack-stay. My last year's experience on the attempt to
reach Beechy Island determined me to carry but one mast to each boat.
It was stepped into an oaken thwart, made especially strong, as it was
expected to carry sail over ice as well as water; the mast could be
readily unshipped, and carried, with the oars, boat-hooks, and ice-poles,
alongside the boat. The third boat was my little _Red Eric_. We mounted
her on the old sledge, the _Faith_, hardly relying on her for any
purposes of navigation, but with the intention of cutting her up for
firewood in case our guns should fail to give us a supply of blubber.
Indeed, in spite of all the ingenuity of our carpenter, Mr Ohlsen, well
seconded by the persevering labours of M'Gary and Bonsall, not one of
our boats was positively sea-worthy. The _Hope_ would not pass even
charitable inspection, and we expected to burn her on reaching water. The
planking of all of them was so dried it could hardly be made tight by
calking.
The three boats were mounted on sledges rigged with rue-raddies; the
provisions stowed snugly under the thwarts; the chronometers carefully
boxed and padded, placed in the stern-sheets of the _Hope_, in charge of
Mr Sontag. With them were such of the instruments as we could venture to
transport.
Our powder and shot, upon which our lives depended, were carefully
distributed in bags and tin canisters. The percussion-caps I took into
my own possession, as more precious than gold. Mr Bonsall had a general
charge of the arms and ammunition. Places were arranged for the guns,
and hunters appointed for each boat. Mr Petersen took charge of the most
important part of our field-equipage, our cooking gear. Petersen was our
best tinker. All the old stove-pipe, now none the better for two winters
of Arctic fires, was called into requisition. Each boat was provided with
two large iron cylinders, fourteen inches in diameter and eighteen high.
Each of them held an iron saucer or lamp, in which we could place our
melted pork-fat or blubber, and, with the aid of spun-yarn for a wick,
make a roaring fire. I need not say that the fat and oil always froze
when not ignited.
Into these cylinders, which were used merely to defend our lamp from
the wind, and our pots from contact with the cold air, we placed a
couple of large tin vessels, suitable either for melting snow or making
tea or soup. They were made out of cake-canisters cut down. How many
kindly festival associations hung by these now abused soup-cans! One of
them had, before the fire rubbed off its bright gilding, the wedding
inscription of a large fruit-cake.
We carried spare tins in case the others should burn out; it was well we
did so. So completely had we exhausted our household furniture, that we
had neither cups nor plates, except crockery. This, of course, would not
stand the travel, and our spare tin had to be saved for protecting the
boats from ice. At this juncture we cut plates out of every imaginable
and rejected piece of tin-ware. Borden's meat-biscuit canisters
furnished us with a splendid dinner-service; and some rightly-feared tin
jars, with ominous labels of Corrosive Sublimate and Arsenic, which once
belonged to our department of natural history, were emptied, scoured, and
cut down into tea-cups.
[Sidenote: Final Orders]
Recognising the importance of acting directly upon the men's minds, my
first step now was to issue a general order appointing a certain day, the
17th of May, for setting out. Every man had twenty-four hours given him
to select and get ready his eight pounds of personal effects. After that,
his time was to cease to be his own for any purpose. The long-indulged
waywardness of our convalescents made them take this hardly. Some who
were at work on articles of apparel that were really important to them
threw them down unfinished, in a sick man's pet. I had these in some
cases picked up quietly and finished by others. But I showed myself
inexorable. It was necessary to brace up and concentrate every man's
thoughts and energies upon the one great common object, our departure
from the vessel on the 17th, not to return.
I tried my best also to fix and diffuse impressions that we were going
home. But in this I was not always successful. I was displeased, indeed,
with the moody indifference with which many went about the tasks to which
I put them. The completeness of my preparations I know had its influence;
but there were many doubters. Some were convinced that my only object
was to move further south, retaining the brig, however, as a home to
retreat to. Others whispered that I wanted to transport the sick to the
hunting grounds and other resources of the lower settlements. A few of
a more cheerful spirit thought I had resolved to make for some point
of look-out, in the hope of a rescue by whalers or English expedition
parties which were supposed still to be within the Arctic circle. The
number is unfortunately small of those human beings whom calamity
elevates.
There was no sign or affectation of spirit or enthusiasm upon the
memorable day when we first adjusted the boats to their cradles on the
sledges and moved them off to the ice-foot. But the ice immediately
around the vessel was smooth; and, as the boats had not received their
lading, the first labour was an easy one. As the runners moved, the
gloom of several countenances were perceptibly lightened. The croakers
had protested that we could not stir an inch. These cheering remarks
always reach a commander's ears, and I took good care of course to make
the outset contradict them. By the time we reached the end of our little
level, the tone had improved wonderfully, and we were prepared for the
effort of crossing the successive lines of the belt-ice and forcing a way
through the smashed material which interposed between us and the ice-foot.
This was a work of great difficulty, and sorrowfully exhausting to the
poor fellows not yet accustomed to heave together. But in the end I had
the satisfaction, before twenty-four hours were over, of seeing our
little arks of safety hauled upon the higher plane of the ice-foot,
in full trim for ornamental exhibition from the brig; their neat
canvas-housing rigged, tent-fashion, over the entire length of each; a
jaunty little flag, made out of one of the commander's obsolete linen
shirts, decorated in stripes from a disused article of stationery,
the red-ink bottle, and with a very little of the blue-bag in the
star-spangled corner. All hands after this returned on board; I had ready
for them the best supper our supplies afforded, and they turned in with
minds prepared for their departure next day.
They were nearly all of them invalids, unused to open air and exercise.
It was necessary to train them very gradually. We made but two miles the
first day, and with a single boat; and indeed for some time after this
I took care that they should not be disheartened by overwork. They came
back early to a hearty supper and warm beds, and I had the satisfaction
of marching them back each recurring morning refreshed and cheerful. The
weather, happily, was superb.
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