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 realized 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
mouthing long strips of raw blubber.
Not an ounce of this seal was lost. The intestines found their way into
the soup-kettles without any observances of the preliminary home
processes. The cartilaginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in
the _melee_ and passed round to be chewed upon; and even the liver, warm
and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten before it had seen the pot.
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 McGary 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 farther. Within a day or two we shot
another seal, and from that time forward had a full supply of food....
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 an "halloo."
"Listen, Petersen! Oars, men!" "What is it?" and he listened quietly at
first, and then, trembling, said in a half-whisper, "Dannemarkers!"
I remember this, the first tone of Christian voice which had greeted our
return to the world. How we all stood up and peered into the distant
nooks; and how the cry came to us again, just as, having seen nothing,
we were doubting whether the whole was not a dream; and then how, with
long sweeps, the white ash cracking under the spring of the rowers, we
stood for the cape that the sound proceeded from, and how nervously we
scanned the green spots which our experience, grown now into instinct,
told us would be the likely camping-ground of wayfarers.
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 into an incoherent fit of crying, only relieved
by broken exclamations of mingled Danish and English. "'Tis the
Upernavik oil-boat! The 'Fraeulein Flaischer!' Carlie Mossyn, the
assistant cooper, must be on his road to Kingatok for blubber. The
'Mariane' (the one annual ship) has come, and Carlie Mossyn----" and
here he did it all over again, gulping down his words and wringing his
hands.
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 "Fraeulein Flaischer" to get the year's supply of
blubber from Kingatok.
RESCUED FROM DEATH.
W. S. SCHLEY.
[In the whole history of Arctic exploration there is no story
more replete with the elements of tragedy than that of
Lieutenant A. W. Greely and his brave companions. Sailing to
the far north in 1881 on a scientific expedition, misfortune
overtook the party, largely due to the failure of the relief
expeditions of 1882 and 1883 to reach them. The imperilled
navigators left their vessel and made their way down the coast,
suffering terribly from cold and hunger, and were in the throes
of starvation when finally rescued by the relief expedition of
1884. Many of them had already died, and but a perishing
remnant was left when they were at length discovered in their
final place of refuge. The story of their discovery and rescue,
as told by Commander W. S. Schley and Professor J. R. Soley, in
their "Rescue of Greely," is tragically dramatic, and we make
it the subject of our present selection. The relief vessels,
the "Thetis" and the "Bear," examining the coast in the
vicinity of Cape York, found that there was no trace of the
sufferers at Littleton Island. Thence they made their way to
Brevoort Island, near Cape Sabine, and from there sent out four
parties to examine the coast in different directions.]
It was intended that, as soon as a satisfactory examination had been
made and a depot landed, the ships should advance without delay into
Kane Sea. There was no expectation of finding that any one had been at
the cape, or that the cairns or caches had been disturbed, as it was
clear that if Greely had arrived he would have been short of provisions,
and would therefore have sought to obtain those at Littleton Island; and
nobody could have imagined for a moment that with prospective starvation
on one side of the strait, and a provision depot (although a small one)
twenty-three miles off on the other, a party supplied with a boat and
oars would have preferred the former alternative. In fact, at the time
the cutter started, the crew of the "Bear" were getting provisions on
deck, to be in readiness for the sledge journey that was to be made
northward, after the ships were stopped by the fast ice. As the cutter
left the ship, Colwell picked up a can of hard-tack and two one-pound
cans of pemmican, as he thought that his party might be out all night,
and a little of something to eat would not go amiss.
Within half an hour after the first parties had left the ship cheers
were heard above the roaring of the wind. At first it was impossible to
tell from what quarter the sound proceeded, but soon the cheering was
heard a second time more distinctly, in the direction of Brevoort
Island. Almost immediately after, Ensign Harlow was observed signalling
from Stalknecht Island. His message read, "Have found Greely's record;
send five men."
Before this request could be carried out, Yewell was seen running over
the ice towards the ships, and a few minutes later he came on board,
almost out of breath, with the information that Lieutenant Taunt had
found a message from Greely in the cairn on Brevoort Island. Yewell
brought the papers with him, and called out, as he gave them to the
officer of the deck, that Greely's party were at Cape Sabine, all well.
The excitement of the moment was intense, and it spread with the
rapidity of lightning through both the ships. It was decided instantly
to go on to the Cape, and a general recall was sounded by three long
blasts from the steam-whistle of the "Thetis."
The first thing to be done before taking definite action was to go
carefully over the papers that Taunt had found. All the officers who had
remained behind in the two ships gathered around the wardroom table of
the "Thetis," and the records were hurriedly read aloud. As one paper
after another was quickly turned over, until the last was reached, it
was discovered with horror that the latest date borne by any of them was
October 21, 1883, and that but forty days' complete rations were left to
live upon. Eight months had elapsed since then, and the belief was
almost irresistible that the whole party must have perished during this
terrible period of waiting and watching for relief....
It was a wonderful story. It told how the expedition, during its two
years at Lady Franklin Bay, had marked out the interior of Grinnell
Land, and how Lockwood had followed the northern shore of Greenland, and
had reclaimed for America the honor of "the farthest north." But there
was no time now to think of what the expedition had accomplished; that
was already a matter of history. The pressing question was, Where was
Greely's party now? and to that question it was too probable that there
was but one answer.
The records had named the wreck-cache as the site of Greely's camp, and
preparations were made at once to go there. The cutter, with Colwell and
his party on board, had not yet got away, having been stopped by the
cries from the shore, and she now steamed back under the stern of the
"Thetis." Colwell was directed to go to the site of the cache and look
for the explorers; and if any were alive,--of which the record gave
little hope,--to tell them that relief was close at hand. As he was
about to leave, he called out for a boat-flag, and one was thrown to him
from the ship. This was bent on a boat-hook and set up in the stern of
the boat.
Before the cutter had disappeared to the northward the commander of the
expedition had gone on board the "Bear," and the ship was under way,
following the track of the cutter around the cape. The detachment under
Harlow, which had found Greely's scientific records and instruments on
Stalknecht Island, and the other party under Melville, some of whom had
not yet returned, were to come after in the "Thetis," which was left
behind to pick them up. The passage which the ships and the cutter were
to make was about six miles, although from Payer Harbor to the
wreck-cache, in a straight line, across the rugged neck of intervening
land, it was less than half that distance. Fortunately, the southerly
gale had set the ice off shore into Kane Sea, leaving a clear passage
around for the vessels.
It was half-past eight o'clock in the evening as the cutter steamed
around the rocky bluff of Cape Sabine and made her way to the cove, four
miles farther on, which Colwell remembered so well from his hurried
landing with the stores on the terrible night following the wreck of the
"Proteus." The storm, which had been raging with only slight intervals
since early the day before, still kept up, and the wind was driving
in bitter gusts through the openings in the ridge that followed the
coast to the westward. Although the sky was overcast, it was broad
daylight,--the daylight of a dull winter afternoon,--and as the cutter
passed along, Colwell could recognize the familiar landmarks of the year
before; the long sweep of the rocky coast, with its ice-foot spanning
every cove, the snow gathered in the crevices, the projecting headlands,
and the line of the ice-pack which had ground up the "Proteus," dimly
seen in the mists to the north, across the tossing waters of Kane Sea.
At last the boat arrived at the site of the wreck-cache, and the shore
was eagerly scanned, but nothing could be seen. Rounding the next point,
the cutter opened out the cove beyond. There, on the top of a little
ridge, fifty or sixty yards above the ice-foot, was plainly outlined the
figure of a man. Instantly the coxswain caught up the boat-hook and
waved his flag. The man on the ridge had seen them, for he stooped,
picked up a signal-flag from the rock, and waved it in reply. Then he
was seen coming slowly and cautiously down the steep rocky slope. Twice
he fell down before he reached the foot. As he approached, still walking
feebly and with difficulty, Colwell hailed him from the bow of the boat.
"Who all are there left?"
"Seven left."
As the cutter struck the ice, Colwell jumped off and went up to him. He
was a ghastly sight. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes wild, his hair and
beard long and matted. His army blouse, covering several thicknesses of
shirts and jackets, was ragged and dirty. He wore a little fur cap and
rough moccasins of untanned leather tied around the leg. As he spoke,
his utterance was thick and mumbling, and in his agitation his jaws
worked in convulsive twitches. As the two met, the man, with a sudden
impulse, took off his glove and shook Colwell's hand.
"Where are they?" asked Colwell, briefly.
"In the tent," said the man, pointing over his shoulder; "over the hill;
the tent is down."
"Is Mr. Greely alive?"
"Yes, Greely's alive."
"Any other officers?"
"No." Then he repeated, absently, "The tent is down."
"Who are you?"
"Long."
Before this colloquy was over Lowe and Norman had started up the hill.
Hastily filling his pockets with bread, and taking the two cans of
pemmican, Colwell told the coxswain to take Long into the cutter, and
started after the others with Ash. Reaching the crest of the ridge, and
looking southward, they saw spread out before them a desolate expanse
of rocky ground, sloping gradually from a ridge on the east to the
ice-covered shore, which at the west made in and formed a cove. Back of
the level space was a range of hills rising up eight hundred feet, with
a precipitous face, broken in two by a gorge, through which the wind was
blowing furiously. On a little elevation directly in front was the tent.
Hurrying on across the intervening hollow, Colwell came up with Lowe and
Norman just as they were greeting a soldierly-looking man who had come
out from the tent.
As Colwell approached, Norman was saying to the man,--
"There is the lieutenant."
And he added to Colwell,--
"This is Sergeant Brainard."
Brainard immediately drew himself up to the position of the soldier, and
was about to salute when Colwell took his hand.
At this moment there was a confused murmur within the tent, and a voice
said,--
"Who's there?"
Norman answered, "It's Norman,--Norman who was in the 'Proteus.'"
This was followed by cries of "Oh, it's Norman!" and a sound like a
feeble cheer.
Meanwhile, one of the relief party, who in his agitation and excitement
was crying like a child, was down on his hands and knees trying to roll
away the stones that held down the flapping tent cloth. The tent was a
"tepik," or wigwam tent, with a fly attached. The fly, with its posts
and ridge-pole, had been wrecked by the gale which had been blowing for
thirty-six hours, and the pole of the tepik was toppling over, and only
kept in place by the guy-ropes. There was no entrance except under the
flap opening, which was held down by stones. Colwell called for a knife,
cut a slit in the tent-cover, and looked in.
It was a sight of horror. On one side, close to the opening, with his
head towards the outside, lay what was apparently a dead man. His jaw
had dropped, his eyes were open, but fixed and glassy, his limbs were
motionless. On the opposite was a poor fellow, alive to be sure, but
without hands or feet, and with a spoon tied to the stump of his right
arm. Two others seated on the ground, in the middle, had just got down a
rubber bottle that hung on the tent-pole, and were pouring from it into
a tin can. Directly opposite, on his hands and knees, was a dark man
with a long matted beard, in a dirty and tattered dressing-gown, with a
little red skull-cap on his head, and brilliant staring eyes. As Colwell
appeared, he raised himself a little, and put on a pair of eye-glasses.
"Who are you?" asked Colwell.
The man made no answer, staring at him vacantly.
"Who are you?" again.
One of the men spoke up: "That's the major,--Major Greely."
Colwell crawled in and took him by the hand, saying to him, "Greely, is
this you?"
"Yes," said Greely in a faint broken voice, hesitating and shuffling
with his words, "yes--seven of us left--here we are--dying--like men.
Did what I came to do--beat the best record."
Then he fell back exhausted.
The four men in the tent with Greely were two sergeants, Elison and
Fredericks; Bierderbick, the hospital steward; and Private Connell, who,
with Brainard and Long, were all that remained of the twenty-five
members of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition. The scene, as Colwell
looked around, was one of misery and squalor. The rocky floor was
covered with cast-off clothes, and among them were huddled together the
sleeping-bags in which the party had spent most of their time during the
last few months. There was no food left in the tent but two or three
cans of a thin, repulsive-looking jelly, made by boiling strips cut from
the seal-skin clothing. The bottle on the tent-pole still held a few
teaspoonfuls of brandy, but it was their last, and they were sharing it
as Colwell entered; it was evident that most of them had not long to
live....
As soon as Colwell understood the condition of affairs, he sent
Chief-Engineer Lowe back to the cutter to put off to the "Bear" with
Long, to report what had happened, and bring off the others with the
surgeon and stimulants. Fredericks and Bierderbick presently got up and
came out. Colwell gave them, as well as Greely and Elison, a little of
the biscuit he had in his pocket, which they munched slowly and
deliberately. Then he gave them another bit, while Norman opened one of
the cans of pemmican. Scraping off a little with a knife, Colwell fed
them slowly by turns. It was a pitiable sight. They could not stand up,
and had dropped down on their knees, and held out their hands begging
for more. After they had each been fed twice, they were told that they
had had enough, that they could not eat more then without danger; but
their hunger had now come back with full force, and they begged
piteously to be helped again, protesting that it could do them no harm.
Colwell was wisely deaf to their entreaties and threw away the can.
When Greely found that he was refused he took out a can of the boiled
seal-skin, which had been carefully husbanded, and which he said he had
a right to eat, as it was his own. This was taken away from him, but
while Colwell was at work trying to raise the tent, some one got the
half-emptied can of pemmican, and by the time it was discovered had
eaten its contents.
The weaker ones were like children, petulant, rambling and fitful in
their talk, absent, and sometimes a little incoherent. While they were
waiting for the return of the boat, Colwell and the ice-masters did
their best to cheer them up by telling them that relief was at hand, and
that the others would soon arrive. They could not realize it, and
refused to believe it. So they were humored, and by way of taking up
their thoughts, Colwell told them something of what had been going on in
the world during their three years of exile. Curiously enough, there was
much that they knew already. It turned out that among the stores from
the "Proteus" were two boxes of lemons, and the fruit had been wrapped
up in scraps of English newspapers,--"those lemons which your dear wife
put up for us," as one of them said to Colwell in a moment of wandering
fancy. The latter could only disclaim the imaginary obligation to an
imaginary person, but the impression had already faded.
As Greely complained of cold, Colwell gave him his gloves, and persuaded
him to go back to his sleeping-bag. This was lying under the fallen
tent-cloth, which the party had been too weak or too discouraged to
raise up and disengage. Where the single remaining pole supported the
tent there was a clear space of perhaps six feet, just enough for a man
to stand upright, but around it the canvas was lying on the ground. The
bag, from which Greely had hardly moved for a month, was found under the
canvas, and by the united efforts of the three men the tent was partly
raised.
Meanwhile, the "Bear" had arrived and Lowe had gone off in the cutter,
taking with him Sergeant Long. Long was too weak to get on board without
assistance, and was lifted over the side by some of the crew and taken
to a chair in the wardroom. In reply to questions about the party and
their condition, Long, in a husky voice, told his story: that all were
dead except Greely and five others, who were on shore in "sore
distress--sore distress;" that they had had a hard winter, and "the
wonder was how in God's name they had pulled through." No words can
describe the pathos of this man's broken and enfeebled utterance as he
said, over and over, "a hard winter--a hard winter;" and the officers
who were gathered about him in the wardroom felt an emotion which most
of them were at little pains to conceal. The first sign of the relief
expedition which had reached the camp was the sound from the steam
whistle of the "Thetis," recalling the shore parties at Payer Harbor.
Lieutenant Greely, lying on the ground in his tent, had heard it, as it
was borne faintly over the neck of land, but the others had not noticed
it in the roaring wind, and when he told them he had heard a steamer's
whistle, they thought it only the impression of his disturbed
imagination. Long crawled out of the tent and, bracing himself against
the wind, struggled up to the ridge; but nothing could be seen but the
rocky coast, and the ice-foot, and the chopping sea with the pack
stretching off in the distance. It was a bitter disappointment. Long
went back disheartened, but after waiting uneasily awhile longer, he
mounted the ridge a second time. Still there was nothing to be seen but
the same hopeless prospect, and he was about to return again when the
cutter came into view around the point above. After all these months of
waiting it was hard to believe that he was not dreaming, but when he
saw the coxswain wave the familiar flag, he knew that relief had come at
last.
[The conclusion of the story is longer than we have space to
give. It will suffice to say that the survivors were
gradually brought back to life and health, and that the
living and the bodies of the dead alike were brought back to
the United States; and that in the robust-appearing General
Greely of to-day there is nothing to indicate the terrible
strain of that dread winter in the realm of ice.]
THE MUIR GLACIER.
SEPTIMA M. COLLIS.
[No other country in the world possesses so many unique wonders
of nature as the United States. The Yosemite Valley,
Yellowstone Park, Mammoth Cave, Niagara Falls, and Sequoia
Groves each stands alone in its peculiar beauty or grandeur;
and to these we may add the Muir Glacier in Alaska, before
which the famous glaciers of the Alps shrink into
insignificance, and which has no rival outside the Arctic zone.
"A Woman's Trip to Alaska," by Mrs. Collis, gives a vivid and
picturesque description of this glacial wonder, which we here
append. The sketch given is preceded by a statistical one, in
which we are told that this glacier sheds from its front "one
hundred and sixty million cubic feet of ice every twenty-four
hours."]
The previous chapter has briefly outlined the main facts within my
knowledge concerning the Muir Glacier which I had gathered from my
reading, and upon which I had to create the image of what I expected to
see. True, I had seen photographs of it; yes, and I had seen photographs
of the Canyon of the Yellowstone, and of the Nevada Falls, and of
Niagara, just as I have seen paste diamonds; I knew their shapes, and
that is all I ever gathered from their portraits. Neither the
expression, nor the complexion, nor the sound of the voice of nature are
to be found upon the dull surface of the photograph; you simply get the
general lines, some of the shadows, very erroneous perspective, and that
is all. We had come to a stand-still while we were at lunch. I had
observed the slackening of speed; next the stoppage of the machinery;
then the absolute stillness of the ship; and finally a darkening of the
saloon. We were evidently at a halt under the shadow of some immense
elevation. A passenger on tiptoe looked through the port-hole, and
uttered an exclamation of amazement; then we all rushed to similar
apertures; climbed on the chairs; looked over the men's shoulders; in
fact, did all kinds of unreasonable things, and at last stampeded up the
companion-way to the deck.
I pray heaven that neither age nor infirmity may ever efface from my
memory the sight and the sensation of that moment. To say that I was
transfixed, speechless, fascinated to intoxication by the spell of this
marvellous development is no exaggeration. Those who reached the deck
first seemed paralyzed, halted, and thus blockaded the way for those who
were to follow; others kept within the saloon from choice, as though
they dreaded some phenomenal convulsion. I wedged my way as best I
could, after the first shock of amazement had subsided, up to the very
bow of the ship.