COLLIDING FLOES.
AFTER this ice encounter the expedition put into a little port called
Tessuissak, to complete their outfit of dogs. An impatient tarry of two
days enabled them to count, on the deck of the little vessel, thirty
first-class, howling dogs, whose amiable tempers found expression in
biting each other, and making both day and night hideous with their
noise.
This port was left on the twenty-third of August, and, much to the joy
of all, the dreaded Melville Bay was clear of the ice-pack; the
icebergs, however, kept their watch over its storm-tossed waters.
Through these waters driven before a fierce wind, and buried often in a
fog so dense that the length of the vessel could not be seen, the
"United States" sped. Its anxious commander was on deck night and day,
not knowing the moment when an icy wall, as fatal to the vessel as one
of granite, might arrest its course and send it instantly to the bottom
of the sea. Once they passed so near a berg just crossing their track
that the fore-yard grazed its side, and the spray from its surf-beaten
wall was thrown upon the deck. A berg at one time hove in sight with an
arch through it large enough for a passage-way for the schooner. The
explorers declined, however, the novel adventure. The passage of
Melville Bay was made, with sails only, in fifty-five hours. The pack
which had invariably troubled explorers seemed to have been enjoying a
summer vacation, and the bergs were off duty. The expedition had reached
the North Water and lay off Cape York.
The ocean current which sweeps past this cape, and opens the way to the
other side of Baffin Bay, is wonderful. It is the great Polar current
which comes rushing down through Spitzbergen Sea, along the eastern
coast of Greenland, laden with ice, and taking the waters of its rivers
with their freight of drift-wood as it passes. Leaving most of the wood
along its shore, a welcome gift to the people, it sweeps around Cape
Farewell, courses near the western shore in its run north until it has
passed Melville Bay. When it has crossed over to the American shore near
Jones Strait, it joins the current from the Arctic Sea, turns south, and
makes the long journey until it reaches our own coast, dropping its ice
freight as it goes, and sending its cooling air through the
heat-oppressed atmosphere of our summer.
As our explorers approached the shore of Cape York they looked carefully
for the natives. Soon a company of Esquimo were seen making their wild
gesticulations to attract attention. A boat was lowered, and Dr. Hayes
and Professor Sontag went ashore, and as they approached the
landing-place one of the Esquimo called them by name. It was our old
friend Hans, of the Kane voyage, who, the reader will recollect, left
his white friends for an Esquimo wife. The group consisted, besides
Hans, of his wife and baby, his wife's mother, an old woman having
marked talking ability, and her son, a bright-eyed boy of twelve years.
Hans had found his self-imposed banishment among the savages of this
extreme north rather tedious. He had removed his family to this lookout
for the whale ships, and had watched and waited. It was the dreariest of
places, and his hut, pitched on a bleak spot the better to command a
view of the sea, was the most miserable of abodes. It had plainly cost
him dear to break his faith with his confiding commander and the friends
of his early Christian home.
Dr. Hayes asked Hans if he would go with the expedition. He answered
promptly, "Yes."
"Would you take your wife and baby?"
"Yes."
"Would you go without them?"
"Yes."
He was taken on board with his wife and baby. The mother and her boy
cried to go, but the schooner was already overcrowded.
Leaving Cape York, the vessel spread her sails before a "ten-knot"
breeze, and dodging the icebergs with something of a reckless daring,
seemed bent on reaching the Polar Sea before winter set in. At one time
what appeared to be two icebergs a short distance apart lay in the
course of the vessel. The helmsman was ordered to steer between them,
for to go round involved quite a circuit. On dashed the brave little
craft for the narrow passage. When she was almost abreast of them the
officer on the lookout shuddered to see that the seeming bergs were but
one, and that the connecting ice appeared to be only a few feet below
the surface. It was too late to stop the headway of the vessel, or to
turn her to the right or left. She rushed onward, but the water of the
opening proved to be deeper than it appeared, and her keel but touched
once or twice, just to show how narrow was the escape.
Hans was delighted with his return to ship life. His wife seemed pleased
and half bewildered by the strange surroundings. The baby crowed,
laughed, and cried, and ate and slept--like other babies.
The sailors put the new comers through a soap-and-water ordeal, to which
was added the use of scissors and combs. Esquimo do not bathe, nor
practice the arts of the barber, and consequently they keep numerous
boarders on their persons. When this necessary cleansing and cropping
was done, they donned red shirts and other luxuries of civilization.
With the new dresses they were delighted, and they were never tired of
strutting about in them. But the soap and water was not so agreeable. At
first it was taken as a rough joke, but the wife soon began to cry. She
inquired of her husband if it was a religious ceremony of the white men.
The vessel made good time until she came within three miles of Cape
Alexander. It was now August twenty-eighth, and so it was time these
Arctic regions should begin to show their peculiar temper. A storm came
down upon them, pouring the vials of its wrath upon the shivering vessel
for about three days. During a lull in the storm the schooner was hauled
under the shelter of the highlands of Cape Alexander and anchored. She
rocked and plunged fearfully. At one time when these gymnastics were
going on, the old Swedish cook came to the commander in the cabin with
refreshments, but he was hardly able to keep his "sea legs." He remarks
as he comes in, "I falls down once, but de commander sees I keeps de
coffee. It's good an' hot, and very strong, and go right down into de
boots."
"Bad night on deck, cook," remarks the captain.
"O, it's awful, sar! I never see it blow so hard in all my life, an' I's
followed de sea morn'n forty years. An' den it's so cold! My galley is
full of ice, and de water, it freeze on my stove."
"Here, cook, is a guernsey for you. It will keep you warm."
"Tank you, sar!" says the cook, starting off with his prize. But
encouraged by the kind bearing of his captain, he stops and asks, "Would
the commander be so kind as to tell me where we is? De gentlemen fool
me."
"Certainly, cook. The land over there is Greenland; the big cape is Cape
Alexander; beyond that is Smith's Sound, and we are only about eight
hundred miles from the North Pole."
"De Nort Pole! vere's dat?"
The commander explains as well as he can.
"Tank you, sar. Vat for we come--to fish?"
"No, not to fish, cook; for science."
"O, dat it! Dey tell me we come to fish. Tank you, sar."
The old cook pulls his greasy cap over his bald head and thinks.
"Science!" "De Nort Pole!" He don't get the meaning of these through his
cap, and he "tumbles up" the companion-ladder, and goes to the galley to
enjoy his guernsey.
Dr. Hayes and Knorr went ashore and climbed to the top of the cliffs,
twelve hundred feet. The wind was fearfully breezy, and Knorr's cap left
and went sailing like a feather out to sea. The view was full of arctic
grandeur, but not flattering to the storm-bound navigators. Ice was
evidently king a little farther north.
Soon after the explorer's return to the vessel the storm gathered fresh
power, and the anchors began to drag. Soon one hawser parted, and away
went the schooner, with fearful velocity, and brought up against a berg.
The crash was appalling, and the stern boat flew into splinters. The
spars were either bent or carried away; and, as they attempted to hoist
the mainsail, it went to pieces. The crippled craft was with difficulty
worked back into the projecting covert of Cape Alexander. Her decks were
covered with ice, and the dogs were perishing with wet and cold, three
having died.
Having repaired damages as well as they could, they again pushed into
the pack of Smith's Sound, which lay between them and open water,
visible far to the north. Entering a lead under full sail, they made
good progress for awhile; but suddenly a solid floe shot across the
channel, and the vessel, with full headway, struck it like a battering
ram. The cut-water flew into splinters, and the iron sheathing of the
bows was torn off as if it had been paper.
Pushing off from the floe, and passing through a narrow lead, they
emerged into an area of open water. But the floe was on the alert. This
began to close up, and, taking a hint of foul play, the explorers
steered toward the shore. But the ice battalions moved with celerity,
piled up across the vessel's bow, and closed in on every side. In an
hour they held her as in a vice, while the reserve force was called up
to crush her to atoms. The foe was jubilant, for the power at his
command was kindred to that of the earthquake. An ice-field of millions
of tons, moved by combined wind and current, rushed upon the solid
ice-field which rested against the immovable rocks of the shore. Between
these was the schooner--less than an egg-shell between colliding,
heavily laden freight trains. As the pressure came steadily, in well
assured strength, she groaned and shrieked like a thing of conscious
pain, writhing and twisting as if striving to escape her pitiless
adversary. Her deck timbers bowed, and the seams of the deck-planks
opened, while her sides seemed ready to yield.
Thus far the closing forces were permitted to strike severely on the
side of the helpless vessel, to show that they could crush her as rotten
fruit is crushed in a strong man's hand. Then He, without whose
permission no force in nature moves, and at whose word they are
instantly stayed, directed the floe under the strongly timbered "bilge"
of the hull, and, with a jerk which sent the men reeling about the deck,
lifted the vessel out of the water. The floes now fought their battle
out beneath her, as if they disdained, like the lion with the mouse in
his paw, to crush so small a thing. Great ridges were piled up about
her, and one underneath lifted her high into the air. Eight hours she
remained in this situation, while the lives of all on board seemed
suspended on the slenderest thread.
Then came the yielding and breaking up of the floes. Once, at the
commencing of the giving way, an ice prop of the bows suddenly yielded,
let the forward end of the vessel down while the stern was high in the
air. But finally the battered craft settled squarely into the water.
She was leaking badly, and the pumps were kept moving with vigor. The
rudder was split, and two of its bolts broken; the stern-post started,
and fragments of the cut-water and keel were floating away. But, strange
to say, no essential injury was done. She was slowly navigated into
Hartstene or _Etah_ Bay, where we have been so often, anchored safely,
and repairs immediately commenced.