THE MARCH AND ITS INCIDENTS.
I found that Mr Brooks had succeeded in getting his boat and
sledges as far as the floe off Bedevilled Reach. I stopped only long
enough to point out to him an outside track, where I had found the ice
quite smooth and free from snow, and pressed my dogs for the hut. I
noticed, to my great joy, too, that the health of his party seemed to be
improving under our raw-meat specific, and could not find fault with the
extravagant use they were making of it.
The invalids at the sick-station were not as well as I could have wished;
but I had only time to renew their stock of provision and give them a few
cheering words. Our walrus-meat was nearly exhausted.
[Sidenote: Setting Out]
I had fixed upon two new stations further to the south, as the depôts to
which our stores were now to be transported. One was upon the old and
heavy floes off Navialik, "the big gull's place,"--a headland opposite
Cape Hatherton,--the other on the level ice-plain near Littleton Island.
Having now gathered our stores at Anoatok, I began with a thankful heart
to move them onward. I sent on Metek to the further station with two bags
of bread-dust, each weighing ninety pounds, and, having myself secured
some three hundred pounds at Navialik, drove on for Etah Bay.
My long succession of journeys on this route had made me thoroughly weary
of the endless waste of ice to seaward, and I foolishly sought upon this
trip to vary the travel by following the ice-belt. But, upon reaching
Refuge Harbour, I found the snow so heavy and the fragments from the
cliffs so numerous and threatening, that I was obliged to give it up. A
large chasm stopped my advance and drove me out again upon the floes.
Getting beyond a table-land known as Kasarsoak, or "the big promontory,"
I emerged from the broken ice upon a wide plain. Here I first saw with
alarm that the ice had changed its character: the snow which covered
it had become lead-coloured and sodden by the water from beneath, and
ice-fields after ice-fields stretching before me were all covered with
stained patches. As I rode along these lonely marshes, for such they
were, the increased labour of the dogs admonished me that the floe was no
longer to be trusted. It chilled my heart to remember the position of our
boats and stores. Nearly nine hundred pounds of food, exclusive of the
load now upon my sledge, were still awaiting transportation at Anoatok.
Two hundred more, including our shot and bullet-bags, were at the Cape
Hatherton station; and Metek's load was probably by this time lying on
the ice opposite M'Gary Island. Like Robinson Crusoe with his powder, the
reflection came over me:--"Good God! what will become of us if all this
is destroyed?"
Only by men experienced in the rapid changes of Arctic ice can the full
force of this reflection be appreciated. A single gale might convert the
precarious platform, over which we were travelling, into a tumultuous
ice-pack. Had the boats their stores on board even, and could they break
through without foundering, there was not the remotest prospect of their
being liberated in open water; and I knew well what obstacles a wet,
sludy surface would present to our over-tasked and almost worn-out party.
[Sidenote: Equimaux at Etah]
I determined, therefore, as soon as I could secure the meat, which was
my immediate errand, to make a requisition upon the Esquimaux for two
of the four dogs which were still at Etah, and by their aid to place
the provisions in safety. The north cape of Littleton Island, afterward
called Point Security, was selected for the purpose, and I left orders
with the invalids at the sick station to be in readiness for instant
removal. I pursued my journey alone.
It was quite late in the evening when I drew near Etah. I mean that it
was verging on to our midnight, the sun being low in the heavens, and the
air breathing that solemn stillness which belongs to the sleeping-time
of birds and plants. I had not quite reached the little settlement when
loud sounds of laughter came to my ear; and, turning the cape, I burst
suddenly upon an encampment of the inhabitants.
Some thirty men, women, and children, were gathered together upon a
little face of offal-stained rock. Except a bank of moss, which broke
the wind-draught from the fiord, they were entirely without protection
from the weather, though the temperature was 5° below zero. The huts were
completely deserted, the snow-tossut had fallen in, and the window was as
free and open as summer to the purifying air. Every living thing about
the settlement was out upon the bare rocks.
The fires were of peat-moss, greased with the fat of the bird-skins. They
were used only for cooking, however, the people depending for comfort
on the warmth of close contact. Old Kresuk, the blind patriarch of the
settlement, was the favoured centre, and around him, as a focus, was a
coil of men, women, and children, as perplexing to unravel as a skein of
eels. The children alone were toddling about and bringing in stores of
moss, their faces smeared with blood, and tit-bits of raw liver between
their teeth.
The scene was redolent of plenty and indolence,--the _dolce far niente_
of the short-lived Esquimaux summer. Provision for the dark winter was
furthest from their thoughts; for, although the rocks were patched with
sun-dried birds, a single hunting-party from Peteravik could have eaten
up their entire supplies in a night.
The dogs seemed as happy as their masters: they were tethered by
seal-skin thongs to prevent robbery, but evidently fed to the full extent
of their capacity.
Aningnah, wife of Marsumah, was one of the presiding deities of the
soup-pot, or rather first witch of the caldron. She was a tall, well-made
woman, and, next to Mrs Metek, had a larger influence than any female in
the settlement.
During one of my visits to the settlement, I had relieved her from
much suffering by opening a furuncle, and the kind creature never lost
an opportunity of showing how she remembered it. Poor old Kresuk was
summarily banished from his central seat of honour, and the nalegak
installed in his place. She stripped herself of her bird-skin kapetah
to make me a coverlet, and gave me her two-year-old baby for a pillow.
There was a little commotion in the tangled mass of humanity as I
crawled over them to accept these proffered hospitalities; but it was
all of a welcoming sort. I had learned by this time to take kindly and
condescendingly the privileges of my rank; and, with my inner man well
refreshed with auk-livers, I was soon asleep.
In the morning I left my own tired dogs in charge of Marsumah, quite
confident that his wife would feed them faithfully, and took from them
their only team in unequal exchange. Such had become our relations with
these poor friends of ours, that such an act of authority would have gone
unquestioned if it had cost them a much graver sacrifice. They saw the
condition of my own travel-broken animals, and were well aware of the
sufferings of our party, so long their neighbours and allies. Old Nessark
filled my sledge with walrus-meat; and two of the young men joined me on
foot, to assist me through the broken ice between Littleton Island and
the mainland.
The sledge-party under Mr Brooks had advanced to within three miles of
the hut when I reached them on my return. They had found the ice more
practicable, and their health was improving. But their desire for food
had increased proportionally; and, as it was a well-understood rule of
our commissariat not to touch the reserved provision of the boats, it
became necessary to draw additional supplies from the brig. The seven
hundred pounds of bread-dust, our entire stock, could not be reduced with
safety.
But the dogs were wanted to advance the contents of our Anoatok
storehouse to the stations further south, and I resolved to take Tom
Hickey with me and walk back for another baking exploit. It was more of
an effort than I counted on: we were sixteen hours on the ice, and we had
forgotten our gutta-percha eyautick, or slit-goggles. The glare of the
sun as we entered the curve of our ice-cumbered harbour almost blinded us.
[Sidenote: Bread Baking]
Tom had been a baker at home; but he assures me, with all the authority
of an ancient member of the guild, that our achievement the day we came
on board might be worthy of praise in the "old country;" Tom knows no
praise more expanded. We kneaded the dough in a large pickled-cabbage
cask, burnt sundry volumes of the "Penny Cyclopædia of Useful Knowledge,"
and converted, between duff and loaf, almost a whole barrel of floor
into a strong likeness to the staff of life. It was the last of our
stock; and "all the better too," said my improvident comrade, who
retained some of the genius of blundering as well as the gallantry of
his countrymen,--"all the better, sir, since we'll have no more bread to
bake."
Godfrey came on with the dogs three days after, to carry back the fruits
of our labour; but an abrupt change of the weather gave us a howling gale
outside, and we were all of us storm-stayed. It was Sunday, and probably
the last time that two or three would be gathered together in our dreary
cabin. So I took a Bible from one of the bunks, and we went through
the old-times service. It was my closing act of official duty among my
shipmates on board the poor little craft. I visited her afterward, but
none of them were with me.
I was glad, when I reached the sick-station, to find things so much
better. Everybody was stronger, and, as a consequence, more cheerful.
They had learned housekeeping, with its courtesies as well as comforts.
Their kotluk would have done credit to Aningnah herself: they had a dish
of tea for us, and a lump of walrus; and they bestirred themselves, real
housewife-fashion, to give us the warm place and make us comfortable. I
was right sorry to leave them, for the snow outside was drifting with the
gale; but after a little while the dogs struck the track of the sledges,
and following it with unerring instinct, did not slacken their pace till
they had brought us to our companions on the floe.
They had wisely halted on account of the storm; and, with their three
little boats drawn up side by side for mutual protection, had been lying
to for the past two days, tightly housed, and moored fast by whale-lines
to the ice. But the drifts had almost buried the _Hope_, which was the
windward boat; and when I saw the burly form of Brooks emerging from the
snow-covered roof, I could have fancied it a walrus rising through the
ice.
[Sidenote: Disheartening Work]
They had found it hard travel, but were doing well. Brooks's
provision-report was the old story,--out of meat and nearly out of
bread--no pleasant news for a tired-out man, who saw in this the
necessity of another trip to Etah. I was only too glad, however, to see
that their appetites held, for with the animal man, as with all others,
while he feeds he lives.
Six Esquimaux, three of them women--that ugly beauty, Nessark's wife,
at the head of them--had come off to the boats for shelter from the
gale. They seemed so entirely deferential, and to recognise with such
simple trust our mutual relations of alliance, that I resolved to
drive down to Etah with Petersen as interpreter, and formally claim
assistance, according to their own laws, on the ground of our established
brotherhood. I had thought of this before; but both Marsumah and Metek
had been so engrossed with their bird-catching that I was loath to take
them from their families.
After further consideration, I determined to send Morton; so Petersen and
myself gave up the sledge to him, and, along with Marsumah and Nessark,
he set out at once to negotiate at Etah, while I took my place with the
sledge-parties.
The 6th saw the same disheartening work. The ice was almost impassable.
Both sick and well worked at the drag-ropes alike, and hardly a man
but was constantly wet to the skin. Fearing for the invalids at the
sick-station in case we should be cut off from them, I sent for Mr
Goodfellow at once, and gave orders for the rest to be in readiness for
removal at a moment's notice.
The next day Morton returned from Etah. The natives had responded to the
brotherly appeal of the nalegak; and they came down from the settlement,
bringing a full supply of meat and blubber, and every sound dog that
belonged to them. I had now once more a serviceable team. The comfort and
security of such a possession to men in our critical position can hardly
be realised. It was more than an addition of ten strong men to our party.
I set off at once with Metek to glean from the brig her last remnant of
slush (tallow), and to bring down the sick men from Anoatok.
Our visit to the brig was soon over: we had very few stores to remove. I
trod her solitary deck for the last time, and returned with Metek to his
sledge.
I had left the party on the floes with many apprehensions for their
safety, and the result proved they were not without cause. While crossing
a "tide-hole," one of the runners of the _Hope's_ sledge broke through,
and, but for the strength and presence of mind of Ohlsen, the boat would
have gone under. He saw the ice give way, and, by a violent exercise of
strength, passed a capstan-bar under the sledge, and thus bore the load
till it was hauled on to safer ice. He was a very powerful man, and might
have done this without injuring himself; but it would seem his footing
gave way under him, forcing him to make a still more desperate effort to
extricate himself. It cost him his life--he died three days afterwards.
I was bringing down George Stephenson from the sick-station, and my
sledge being heavily laden, I had just crossed, with some anxiety, near
the spot at which the accident occurred. A little way beyond we met Mr
Ohlsen, seated upon a lump of ice, and very pale. He pointed to the camp
about three miles further on, and told us, in a faint voice, that he had
not detained the party; he "had a little cramp in the small of the back,"
but would soon be better.
I put him at once in Stephenson's place, and drove him on to the _Faith_.
Here he was placed in the stern-sheets of the boat, and well muffled
up in our best buffalo-robes. During all that night he was assiduously
attended by Dr Hayes; but he sank rapidly. His symptoms had from the
first a certain obscure but fatal resemblance to our winter's tetanus,
which filled us with forebodings.
On Saturday, June 6, after stowing away our disabled comrade in the
_Faith_, we again set all hands at the drag-ropes. The ice ahead of
us bore the same character as the day before--no better; we were all
perceptibly weaker, and much disheartened.
[Sidenote: Sledging Under Sail]
We had been tugging in harness about two hours, when a breeze set in
from the northward, the first that we had felt since crossing Bedevilled
Reach. We got out our long steering-oar as a boom, and made sail upon the
boats. The wind freshened almost to a gale; and, heading toward the depôt
on Littleton Island, we ran gallantly before it.
It was a new sensation to our foot-sore men, this sailing over solid ice.
Levels which, under the slow labour of the drag-ropes, would have delayed
us for hours, were glided over without a halt. We thought it dangerous
work at first, but the speed of the sledges made rotten ice nearly as
available as sound. The men could see plainly that they were approaching
new landmarks, and leaving old ones behind. Their spirits rose; the sick
mounted the thwarts, the well clung to the gunwale; and, for the first
time for nearly a year, broke out the sailor's chorus, "Storm along, my
hearty boys!"
We must have made a greater distance in this single day than in the five
that preceded it. We encamped at 5 P.M. near a small berg, which
gave us plenty of fresh water, after a progress of at least eight miles.
As we were halting, I saw two Esquimaux on the ice toward Life-Boat Cove;
and the well-known "Huk! huuk!" a sort of masonic signal among them, soon
brought them to us. They turned out to be Sip-su and old Nessark. They
were the bearers of good news: my dogs were refreshed and nearly able
to travel again; and, as they volunteered to do me service, I harnessed
up our united teams, and despatched Nessark to the hut to bring down Mr
Wilson and George Whipple.
We expected now to have our whole party together again; and the day would
have been an active cheering one throughout, but for the condition of
poor Ohlsen, who was growing rapidly worse.
From this time we went on for some days, aided by our sails, meeting with
accidents occasionally--the giving way of a spar or the falling of some
of the party through the spongy ice--and occasionally, when the floe was
altogether too infirm, labouring our way with great difficulty upon the
ice-belt.
One only was absent of all the party that remained on our rolls. Hans,
the kind son and ardent young lover of Fiskernaes, my well-trusted
friend, had been missing for nearly two months. I am loath to tell the
story as I believe it, for it may not be the true one after all, and I
would not intimate an unwarranted doubt of the constancy of boyish love.
But I must explain, as far as I can at least, why he was not with us
when we first looked at the open water. Just before my departure for my
April hunt, Hans came to me with a long face, asking permission to visit
Peteravik: "he had no boots, and wanted to lay in a stock of walrus-hide
for soles; he did not need the dogs; he would rather walk." It was a long
march, but he was well practised in it, and I consented of course. Both
Petersen and myself gave him commissions to execute, and he left us,
intending to stop by the way at Etah.
[Sidenote: Hans the Faithless]
In our labours of the next month we missed Hans much. He had not yet
returned, and the stories of him that came to us from Etah were the theme
of much conversation and surmise among us. He had certainly called there
as he promised, and given to Nessark's wife an order for a pair of boots,
and he had then wended his way across the big headland to Peteravik,
where Shang-hu and his pretty daughter had their home. This intimation
was given with many an explanatory grin; for Hans was a favourite with
all, the fair especially, and, as a _match_, one of the greatest men in
the country. It required all my recollections of his "old love" to make
me suspend my judgment; for the boots came, as if to confirm the scandal.
I never failed in my efforts afterward to find his whereabouts, and went
out of our way to interrogate this and that settlement; for, independent
of everything like duty, I was very fond of him. But the story was
everywhere the same. Hans the faithful--yet, I fear, the faithless--was
last seen upon a native sledge, driving south from Peteravik, with a
maiden at his side, and professedly bound to a new principality at
Uwarrow Suk-suk, high up Murchison's Sound. Alas for Hans, the married
man!
Though the condition of the ice assured us that we were drawing near the
end of our sledge-journeys, it by no means diminished their difficulty or
hazards. The part of the field near the open water is always abraded by
the currents, while it remains apparently firm on the surface. In some
places it was so transparent that we could even see the gurgling eddies
below it; while in others it was worn into open holes that were already
the resort of wildfowl. But in general it looked hard and plausible,
though no more than a foot or even six inches in thickness.
This continued to be its character as long as we pursued the Littleton
Island channel, and we were compelled, the whole way through, to sound
ahead with the boat-hook or narwhal-horn. We learned this precaution from
the Esquimaux, who always move in advance of their sledges when the ice
is treacherous, and test its strength before bringing on their teams.
Our first warning impressed us with the policy of observing it. We were
making wide circuits with the whale-boats to avoid the tide-holes, when
signals of distress from men scrambling on the ice announced to us that
the _Red Eric_ had disappeared. This unfortunate little craft contained
all the dearly-earned documents of the expedition. There was not a man
who did not feel that the reputation of the party rested in a great
degree upon their preservation. It had cost us many a pang to give up our
collections of natural history, to which every one had contributed his
quota of labour and interest; but the destruction of the vouchers of the
cruise--the log-books, the meteorological registers, the surveys, and the
journals--seemed to strike them all as an irreparable disaster.
When I reached the boat everything was in confusion. Blake, with a line
passed round his waist, was standing up to his knees in sludge, groping
for the document-box; and Mr Bonsall, dripping wet, was endeavouring to
haul the provision-bags to a place of safety. Happily the boat was our
lightest one, and everything was saved. She was gradually lightened until
she could bear a man, and her cargo was then passed out by a line and
hauled upon the ice. In spite of the wet and the cold, and our thoughts
of poor Ohlsen, we greeted its safety with three cheers.
It was by great good fortune that no lives were lost. Stephenson was
caught as he sank by one of the sledge-runners, and Morton, while in the
very act of drifting under the ice, was seized by the hair of the head by
Mr Bonsall and saved.
We were now close upon Life-boat Cove, where nearly two years before we
had made provision for just such a contingency as that which was now
before us. Buried under the frozen soil, our stores had escaped even
the keen scrutiny of our savage allies, and we now turned to them as
essential to our relief. Mr M'Gary was sent to the _cache_, with orders
to bring everything except the salt beef. This had been so long a poison
to us that, tainted as we were by scurvy, I was afraid to bring it among
those who might be tempted to indulge in it.
On the 12th the boats and sledges came to a halt in the narrow passage
between the islands opposite Cape Misery, the scene of our late snow
storm. All our cargo had been gathered together at this spot, and the
rocks were covered with our stores. Out of the fourteen hundred pounds
not an ounce had been sacrificed. Everything was cased in its waterproof
covering, and as dry and perfect as when it had left the brig.
[Sidenote: Death of Ohlsen]
I was with the advance boat, trying to force a way through the channel,
when the report came to me from Dr Hayes that Ohlsen was no more. He had
shown, a short half hour before, some signs of revival, and Petersen had
gone out to kill a few birds, in the hope of possibly sustaining him by a
concentrated soup. But it was in vain: the poor fellow flushed up only to
die a few minutes after.
We had no time to mourn the loss of our comrade, a tried and courageous
man, who met his death in the gallant discharge of duty. It cast a gloom
over the whole party; but the exigencies of the moment were upon us, and
we knew not whose turn would come next, or how soon we might all of us
follow him together.
The body of Mr Ohlsen was sewed up, while they were gone, in his own
blankets, and carried in procession to the head of a little gorge on the
east face of Pekiutlik, where by hard labour we consigned his remains to
a sort of trench, and covered them with rocks to protect them from the
fox and bear. Without the knowledge of my comrades, I encroached on our
little store of sheet-lead, which we were husbanding to mend our leaky
boats with, and, cutting on a small tablet his name and age--
CHRISTIAN OHLSEN,
AGED 36 YEARS,
laid it on his manly breast. The cape that looks down on him bears his
name.
We gave two quiet hours to the memory of our dead brother, and then
resumed our toilsome march. We kept up nearly the same routine as before;
but, as we neared the settlements, the Esquimaux came in flocks to our
assistance. They volunteered to aid us at the drag-ropes. They carried
our sick upon hand-sledges. They relieved us of all care for our supplies
of daily food. The quantity of little auks that they brought us was
enormous. They fed us and our dogs at the rate of eight thousand birds
a week, all of them caught in their little hand-nets. All anxiety left
us for the time. The men broke out in their old forecastle songs; the
sledges began to move merrily ahead, and laugh and jest drove out the old
moody silence.
My little note-book closes for the week with this gratefully-expounded
record:--
[Sidenote: Open Water]
"_June 16._--Our boats are at the open water. We see its deep indigo
horizon, and hear its roar against the icy beach. Its scent is in our
nostrils and our hearts.
"Our camp is but three-quarters of a mile from the sea; it is at the
northern curve of the North Baffin polynia. We must reach it at the
southern sweep of Etah Bay, about three miles from Cape Alexander. A
dark headland defines the spot. It is more marked than the southern
entrance of Smith's Straits. How magnificently the surf beats against its
sides! There are ridges of squeezed ice between us and it, and a broad
zone of floating sludge is swelling and rolling sluggishly along its
margin--formidable barriers to boats and sledges. But we have mastered
worse obstacles, and by God's help we will master these."
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