DISASTER.
[Illustration: Unloading Stores from the "Polaris."]
ABOUT noon of October twenty-fourth Captain Hall and his party were seen
in the distance approaching the ship. Captain Tyson, the assistant
navigator, went out to meet them. Not even a dog had been lost, and
Captain Hall was jubilant over his trip and the future of the
expedition. While he was absent the work of banking up the "Polaris"
with snow as an increased defense against the cold, the building of a
house on shore for the stores, and their removal to it from the ship,
had gone forward nearly to completion. He looked at the work, greeted
all cheerfully, and entered the cabin. He obtained water, and washed and
put on clean underclothes. The steward, Mr. Herron, asked him what he
would have to eat, expressing at the same time a wish to get him
"something nice." He thanked him, but said he wanted only a cup of
coffee, and complained of the heat of the cabin. He drank a part of the
cup of coffee and set it aside. Soon after he complained of sickness at
the stomach, and threw himself into his berth. Chester, the mate, and
Morton, second mate, watched with him all night, during which he was at
times delirious. It was thought he was partially paralyzed. The
surgeon, Dr. Bessel, was in constant attendance, but after temporary
improvement he became wildly delirious, imagining some one had poisoned
him, and accused first one, then another. He thought he saw blue gas
coming from the mouths of persons about him. He refused clean stockings
at the hand of Chester, thinking they were poisoned, and he made others
taste the food tendered him before taking it himself, even that from
sealed cans opened in his cabin. During the night of November seventh he
was clear in his mind, and as Surgeon Bessel was putting him to bed and
tucking him in, he said in his own kind tone, "Doctor, you have been
very kind to me, and I am obliged to you." Early in the morning of
November eighth he died, and with his death the American North Polar
Expedition was ended.
The grave of their beloved commander was dug by the men under Captain
Tyson, inland, southeast, about a half mile from the "Polaris." The
frozen ground yielded reluctantly to the picks, and the grave was of
necessity very shallow.
On the eleventh a mournful procession moved from the "Polaris" to the
place of burial. Though not quite noon it was Arctic night. A weird,
electric light filled the air, through which the stars shone
brilliantly. Captain Tyson walked ahead with a lantern, followed by
Commander Buddington and his officers, and then by the scientific corps,
which included the chaplain, Mr. Bryan; the men followed, drawing the
coffin on a sled, one of their number bearing another lantern. The
fitting pall thrown over the coffin was the American flag. Following the
sled were the Esquimo--last in the procession but not the least in the
depth and genuineness of their sorrow. At the grave, Tyson held the
light for the chaplain to read the burial service. As the solemn, yet
comforting words were uttered, "I am the resurrection and the life,
saith the Lord," all were subdued to tears. Only from the spirit of the
Gospel, breathing its tender influence through these words, was there
any cheerful inspiration. The day was cold and dismal, and the wind
howled mournfully. Inland over a narrow snow-covered plain, and in the
shadowy distance, were huge masses of slate-rock, the ghostly looking
sentinels of the barren land beyond. Seaward was the extended ice of
Polaris Bay, and the intervening shore strown with great ice-blocks in
wild confusion. About five hundred paces away was the little hut called
an observatory, and from its flag-staff drooped at half-mast the stars
and stripes.
Far away were his loved family and friends, whose prayers had followed
him during his adventures in the icy north, who even now hoped for his
complete success and safe return; and far away the Christian burial
place where it would have been to them mournfully pleasant to have laid
him. But he who had declared that he loved the Arctic regions, and to
whose ears there was music in its wailing winds, and to whose eyes there
was beauty in its rugged, icy barrenness, had found his earthly
resting-place where nature was clothed in its wildest Arctic features.
A board was erected over his grave in which was cut:--
"TO THE MEMORY OF
C. F. HALL,
_Late Commander of the North Polar Expedition._
Died November 8, 1871,
Aged fifty years."
When the funeral procession had returned to the ship, all moved about in
the performance of their duty in gloomy silence. It is sad to record
that the great affliction caused by the death of Hall was rendered more
intense by the moral condition of the surviving party. Two hideous
specters had early in the expedition made their appearance on board the
"Polaris." They were the spirits of Rum and Discord! Commander Hall had
forbidden the admission of liquor on shipboard, but it had come _with_
the medicines whether _of_ them or not. It was put under the key of the
locker, but it broke out--no, we will not do injustice even to this
foulest of demons: _an officer_, selected to guard the safety and
comfort of the ship's company, broke open the locker and let it out.
This brought upon him a reprimand from Captain Hall, and later a letter
of stricture upon his conduct. The doctor's alcohol could not be safely
kept for professional purposes, which raised "altercations" on board. So
Rum and Discord, always so closely allied, went stalking through the
ship, with their horrid train. Insubordination, of course, was from the
first in attendance. Hall had, it would seem, in part _persuaded_ into
submission this ghastly specter. Where, on shipboard, the lives of all
depend upon submission to one will, rebellion becomes, in effect,
murder. We have seen that Dr. Kane argued down this bloody intruder by a
pistol in a steady hand leveled at the head of the chief rebel; and that
Dr. Hayes saved his boat party by the same persuasive influence over
Kalutunah. But Hall was not reared in the navy, and was cast in a gentle
mold.
On the Sunday following the burial of Hall it was announced that from
that time the Sunday service would be omitted. "Each one can pray for
himself just as well," it was remarked. The faithful chaplain, however,
seems to have held religious service afterward for such as pleased to
attend. Hall had taken great pleasure in it, and it had, we think,
attended every Arctic expedition through which we have carried the
reader.
After such a purpose to dismiss public worship from the vessel we are
not surprised to learn that "the men made night hideous by their
carousings." Nature without had ceased to distinguish night from day,
and our explorers did not follow the example of their predecessors in
this region, and _make_ day and night below decks by requiring the light
to be put out at a stated hour. So the noise and card-playing had all
hours for their own. Under these circumstances, as if to make the
"Polaris" forecastle the counterpart of one of our city "hells,"
pistols were put into the hands of the men. Discord was now armed, and
Alcohol was at the chief place of command.
The Christmas came, but no religious service with it. New-Year's day
brought nothing special. The winter dragged along but not the wind,
which roared in tempests, and rushed over the floe in currents traveling
fifty-three miles an hour. It played wild and free with the little bark
which had intruded upon its domains, breaking up the ice around it, and
straining at its moorings attached to the friendly berg.
Spring came at last. Hunting became lively and successful. His majesty,
the bear, became meat for the hunters after a plucky fight, in which two
dogs had their zeal for bear combat fairly subdued. Musk-oxen stood in
stupid groups to be shot. White foxes would not be hit at any rate.
Birds, trusting to their spread wings, were brought low, plucked and
eaten. Seals coming out of their holes, and stretching themselves on the
ice to enjoy dreamily a little sunshine, to which they innocently
thought they had a right as natives of the country, were suddenly
startled by the crack of the rifles of Hans and Joe, and often under
such circumstances died instantly of lead. It seemed hardly fair. In
fact we are confident that the animals about Polaris Bay contracted a
prejudice against the strangers, except the white foxes, who could not
see what _hurt_ these hunters did--at least to foxes--and they were of a
mind that it was decided fun to be hunted by them.
The Esquimo have been in this high latitude in the not distant past, as
a piece of one of their sledges was found.
Soon after Hall's death the chief officers had mutually pledged in
writing that, "It is our honest intention to honor our flag, and to
hoist it upon the most northern point of the earth." During the spring
and summer some journeys northward were made, but were not extended
beyond regions already visited. The eye which would have even now looked
with hope and faith to the region of the star which is the "crowning
jewel" of the central north, was dim in death. Captain Buddington, now
in chief command, had faith and hope in the homeward voyage only.
[Illustration: Perilous Situation of the "Polaris."]
On the twelfth of August, 1872, the "Polaris" was ready, with steam up,
for the return trip. On that very day there was added to the family of
Hans a son. All agreed to name him Charlie Polaris, thus prettily
suggesting the name of the late commander and of the ship. Little
Charlie was evidently disgusted with his native country, for he
immediately turned his back upon it, the ship steaming away that
afternoon. The "Polaris" had made a tolerably straight course up, but
now made a zig-zag one back. On she went, steaming, drifting, banging
against broken floes, through the waters over which we have voyaged with
Kane and Hayes, until they came into the familiar regions of Hayes's
winter-quarters. On the afternoon of the fifteenth of October the wind
blew a terrific gale from the north-west. The floe, in an angry mood,
_nipped_ the ship terribly. She groaned and shrieked, in pain but not in
terror, for with her white oak coat of mail she still defied her icy
foe, now rising out of his grasp, and then falling back and breaking for
herself an easier position. The hawsers were attached to the floe, and
the men stood waiting for the result of the combat on which their lives
depended. At this moment the engineer rushed to the deck with the
startling announcement that the "Polaris" had sprung a leak, and that
the water was gaining on the pumps. "The captain threw up his arms, and
yelled the order to throw every thing on the ice." No examination into
the condition of the leak seems to have been made. A panic followed, and
overboard went every thing in reckless confusion, many valuable articles
falling near the vessel, and, of course, were drawn under by her
restless throes and lost. Overboard went boats, provisions, ammunition,
men, women, and children, nobody knew what nor who. It was night--an
intensely dark, snowy, tempestuous night.
It was in this state of things, when the ship's stores and people were
divided between the floe and her deck, that the anchors planted in the
floe tore away, and the mooring lines snapped like pack-thread, and away
went the "Polaris" in the darkness, striking against huge ice-cakes, and
drifting none knew where. "Does God care for sparrows?" and will he not
surely care for these imperiled explorers, both those in the drifting
steamer, and those on the floe whom he alone can save, unhoused in an
Arctic night on which no sun will rise for many weeks, exposed to the
caprice of winds, currents, and the ever untrustworthy ice-raft on which
they are cast?
We will leave the floe party awhile in His care, and follow the fortunes
of the brave little vessel and her men.