STARVATION--PLENTY--THE ESCAPE WELCOME.
Things grew worse and worse with us: the old difficulty of
breathing came back again, and our feet swelled to such an extent that
we were obliged to cut open our canvas boots. But the symptom which gave
me most uneasiness was our inability to sleep. A form of low fever which
hung by us when at work had been kept down by the thoroughness of our
daily rest; all my hopes of escape were in the refreshing influences of
the halt.
It was at this crisis of our fortunes that we saw a large seal
floating--as is the custom of these animals--on a small patch of ice, and
seemingly asleep. It was an ussuk, and so large that I at first mistook
it for a walrus. Signal was made for the _Hope_ to follow astern, and,
trembling with anxiety, we prepared to crawl down upon him.
Petersen, with the large English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and
stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal,
our excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. I
had a set of signals for such occasions, which spared us the noise of the
voice; and when about three hundred yards off, the oars were taken in,
and we moved on in deep silence with a single scull astern.
He was not asleep, for he reared his head when we were almost within
rifle-shot; and to this day I can remember the hard, care-worn, almost
despairing expression of the men's thin faces as they saw him move: their
lives depended on his capture.
[Sidenote: Capturing a Seal]
I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for Petersen to fire. M'Gary
hung upon his oar, and the boat, slowly but noiselessly sagging ahead,
seemed to me without certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the
poor fellow was paralysed by his anxiety, trying vainly to obtain a rest
for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his
four-flippers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity, and
coiled himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously with the
crack of our rifle, he relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at the
very brink of the water, his head fell helpless to one side.
I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have
controlled the men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to
his own impulse, they urged both boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands
seized the seal and bore him up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy;
I had not realised how much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran
over the floe, crying and laughing, and brandishing their knives. It
was not five minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers or
eating long strips of raw blubber.
That night, on the large halting-floe, to which, in contempt of the
dangers of drifting, we happy men had hauled our boats, two entire planks
of the _Red Eric_ were devoted to a grand cooking-fire, and we enjoyed a
rare and savage feast.
This was our last experience of the disagreeable effects of hunger. In
the words of George Stephenson, "the charm was broken, and the dogs were
safe." The dogs I have said little about, for none of us liked to think
of them. The poor creatures, Toodla and Whitey, had been taken with us
as last resources against starvation. They were, as M'Gary worded it,
"meat on the hoof," and "able to carry their own fat over the floes."
Once, near Weary Man's Rest, I had been on the point of killing them; but
they had been the leaders of our winter's team, and we could not bear the
sacrifice.
I need not detail our journey any further. Within a day or two we shot
another seal, and from that time forward had a full supply of food.
And now, with the apparent certainty of reaching our homes, came that
nervous apprehension which follows upon hope long deferred. I could
not trust myself to take the outside passage, but timidly sought the
quiet-water channels running deep into the archipelago which forms a sort
of labyrinth along the coast.
Thus it was that at one of our sleeping-halts upon the rocks--for we
still adhered to the old routine--Petersen awoke me with a story. He
had just seen and recognised a native, who, in his frail kayack, was
evidently seeking eider-down among the islands. The man had once been
an inmate of his family. "Paul Zacharias, don't you know me? I'm Carl
Petersen!" "No," said the man; "his wife says he's dead;" and, with a
stolid expression of wonder, he stared for a moment at the long beard
that loomed at him through the fog, and paddled away with all the energy
of fright.
Two days after this, a mist had settled down upon the islands which
embayed us, and when it lifted we found ourselves rowing, in lazy time,
under the shadow of Karkamoot. Just then a familiar sound came to us over
the water. We had often listened to the screeching of the gulls or the
bark of the fox, and mistaken it for the "Huk" of the Esquimaux; but this
had about it an inflection not to be mistaken, for it died away in the
familiar cadence of a "halloo."
"Listen, Petersen! oars, men!" "What is it?"--and he listened quietly at
first, and then, trembling, said, in a half whisper, "Dannemarkers!"
[Sidenote: Carlie Mossyn]
By-and-by--for we must have been pulling a good half-hour--the single
mast of a small shallop showed itself; and Petersen, who had been very
quiet and grave, burst out into an incoherent fit of crying, only
relieved by broken exclamations of mingled Danish and English. "Tis the
Upernavik oil-boat! The Fraulein Flaischer! Carlie Mossyn, the cooper,
must be on his road to Kingatok for blubber."
It was Carlie Mossyn, sure enough. The quiet routine of a Danish
settlement is the same, year after year, and Petersen had hit upon the
exact state of things. The _Mariane_ was at Proven, and Carlie Mossyn had
come up in the Fraulein Flaischer to get the year's supply of blubber
from Kingatok.
Here we first got our cloudy, vague idea of what had passed in the big
world during our absence. The friction of its fierce rotation had not
much disturbed this little outpost of civilisation, and we thought it a
sort of blunder as he told us that France and England were leagued with
the Mussulman against the Greek Church. He was a good Lutheran, this
assistant cooper, and all news with him had a theological complexion.
"What of America, eh, Petersen?"--and we all looked, waiting for him to
interpret the answer.
"America?" said Carlie; "we don't know much of that country here, for
they have no whalers on the coast; but a steamer and a barque passed up a
fortnight ago, and have gone out into the ice to seek your party."
How gently all the lore of this man oozed out of him! he seemed an
oracle, as, with hot-tingling fingers pressed against the gunwale of the
boat, we listened to his words. "Sebastopol is not taken." Where and what
was Sebastopol?
But "Sir John Franklin?" There we were at home again,--our own delusive
little speciality rose uppermost. Franklin's party, or traces of the dead
which represented it, had been found nearly a thousand miles to the south
of where we had been searching for them. He knew it; for the priest had a
German newspaper which told all about it. And so we "out oars" again, and
rowed into the fogs.
Another sleeping-halt has passed, and we have all washed clean at the
fresh-water basins, and furbished up our ragged furs and woollens.
Kasarsoak, the snow top of Sanderson's Hope, shows itself above the
mists, and we hear the yelling of the dogs. Petersen had been foreman of
the settlement, and he calls my attention, with a sort of pride, to the
tolling of the workmen's bell. It is six o'clock. We are nearing the end
of our trials. Can it be a dream?
We hugged the land by the big harbour, turned the corner by the old
brew-house, and, in the midst of a crowd of children, hauled our boats
for the last time upon the rocks.
For eighty-four days we had lived in the open air. Our habits were hard
and weather-worn. We could not remain within the four walls of a house
without a distressing sense of suffocation. But we drank coffee that
night before many a hospitable threshold, and listened again and again to
the hymn of welcome, which, sung by many voices, greeted our deliverance.
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