ACROSS THE ICE-FIELDS.
The little band made their way towards the southeast. Simpson drove
the sledge. Duke aided him much, without being disturbed at the
occupation of his mates. Hatteras and the doctor followed behind on
foot, while Bell, who was charged with making a road, went on in
advance, testing the ice with the iron point of his stick.
[Illustration: "The little band made their way towards the
southeast."]
The rise in the thermometer foretold a fall of snow, and soon it came,
beginning in large flakes. This added to the hardships of their
journey; they kept straying from a straight line; they could not go
quickly; nevertheless, they averaged three miles an hour.
The ice-field, under the pressure of the frost, presented an unequal
surface; the sledge was often nearly turned over, but they succeeded
in saving it.
Hatteras and his companions wrapped themselves up in their fur clothes
cut in the Greenland fashion; they were not cut with extraordinary
neatness, but they suited the needs of the climate; their faces were
enclosed in a narrow hood which could not be penetrated by the snow or
wind; their mouths, noses, and eyes were alone exposed to the air, and
they did not need to be protected against it; nothing is so
inconvenient as scarfs and nose-protectors, which soon are stiff with
ice; at night they have to be cut away, which, even in the arctic
seas, is a poor way of undressing. It was necessary to leave free
passage for the breath, which would freeze at once on anything it met.
The boundless plain stretched out with tiresome monotony; everywhere
there appeared heaped-up ice-hills, hummocks, blocks, and icebergs,
separated by winding valleys; they walked staff in hand, saying but
little. In this cold atmosphere, to open the mouth was painful; sharp
crystals of ice suddenly formed between the lips, and the heat of the
breath could not melt them. Their progress was silent, and every one
beat the ice with his staff. Bell's footsteps were visible in the
fresh snow; they followed them mechanically, and where he had passed,
the others could go safely.
Numerous tracks of bears and foxes crossed one another everywhere; but
during this first day not one could be seen; to chase them would have
been dangerous and useless: they would only have overloaded the
already heavy sledge.
Generally, in excursions of this sort, travellers take the precaution
of leaving supplies along their path; they hide them from the animals,
in the snow, thus lightening themselves for their trip, and on their
return they take the supplies which they did not have the trouble of
carrying with them.
Hatteras could not employ this device on an ice-field which perhaps
was moving; on firm land it would have been possible; and the
uncertainty of their route made it doubtful whether they would return
by the same path.
At noon, Hatteras halted his little troop in the shelter of an
ice-wall; they dined off pemmican and hot tea; the strengthening
qualities of this beverage produced general comfort, and the
travellers drank a large quantity. After an hour's rest they started
on again; in the first day they walked about twenty miles; that
evening men and dogs were tired out.
Still, in spite of their fatigue, they had to build a snow-house in
which to pass the night; the tent would not have been enough. This
took them an hour and a half. Bell was very skilful; the blocks of
ice, which were cut with a knife, were placed on top of one another
with astonishing rapidity, and they took the shape of a dome, and a
last piece, the keystone of the arch, established the solidity of the
building; the soft snow served as mortar in the interstices; it soon
hardened and made the whole building of a single piece.
[Illustration]
Access was had into this improvised grotto by means of a narrow
opening, through which it was necessary to crawl on one's hands and
knees; the doctor found some difficulty in entering, and the others
followed. Supper was soon prepared on the alcohol cooking-stove. The
temperature inside was very comfortable; the wind, which was raging
without, could not get in.
"Sit down!" soon shouted the doctor in his most genial manner.
And this meal, though the same as the dinner, was shared by all. When
it was finished their only thought was sleep; the mackintoshes, spread
out upon the snow, protected them from the dampness. At the flame of
the portable stove they dried their clothes; then three of them,
wrapped up in their woollen coverings, fell asleep, while one was left
on watch; he had to keep a lookout on the safety of all, and to
prevent the opening from being closed, otherwise they ran a risk of
being buried alive.
Duke shared their quarters; the other dogs remained without, and after
they had eaten their supper they lay down and were soon hidden by the
snow.
Their fatigue soon brought sound sleep. The doctor took the watch
until three of the morning. In the night the hurricane raged
furiously. Strange was the situation of these lonely men lost in the
snow, enclosed in this vault with its walls rapidly thickening under
the snow-fall.
The next morning at six o'clock their monotonous march was resumed;
there were ever before them the same valleys and icebergs, a
uniformity which made the choice of a path difficult. Still, a fall of
several degrees in the temperature made their way easier by hardening
the snow. Often they came across little elevations, which looked like
cairns or storing-places of the Esquimaux; the doctor had one
destroyed to satisfy his curiosity, but he found nothing except a cake
of ice.
"What do you expect to find, Clawbonny?" asked Hatteras; "are we not
the first men to penetrate into this part of the globe?"
"Probably," answered the doctor, "but who knows?"
"Don't let us waste our time in useless searching," resumed the
captain; "I am in a hurry to rejoin the ship, even if this long-wanted
fuel should not be found."
"I have great hopes of finding it," said the doctor.
"Doctor," Hatteras used to say frequently, "I did wrong to leave the
_Forward_; it was a mistake! The captain's place is on board, and
nowhere else."
"Johnson is there."
"Yes! but--let us hurry on!"
They advanced rapidly; Simpson's voice could be heard urging on the
dogs; they ran along on a brilliant surface, all aglow with a
phosphorescent light, and the runners of the sledge seemed to toss up
a shower of sparks. The doctor ran on ahead to examine this snow, when
suddenly, as he was trying to jump upon a hummock, he disappeared from
sight. Bell, who was near him, ran at once towards the place.
"Well, Doctor," he cried anxiously, while Hatteras and Simpson joined
him, "where are you?"
"Doctor!" shouted the captain.
"Down here, at the bottom of a hole," was the quiet answer. "Throw me
a piece of rope, and I'll come up to the surface of the globe."
They threw a rope down to the doctor, who was at the bottom of a pit
about ten feet deep; he fastened it about his waist, and his three
companions drew him up with some difficulty.
"Are you hurt?" asked Hatteras.
"No, there's no harm done," answered the doctor, wiping the snow from
his smiling face.
"But how did it happen?"
"O, it was in consequence of the refraction," he answered, laughing;
"I thought I had about a foot to step over, and I fell into this deep
hole! These optical illusions are the only ones left me, my friends,
and it's hard to escape from them! Let that be a lesson to us all
never to take a step forward without first testing the ice with a
staff, for our senses cannot be depended on. Here our ears hear wrong,
and our eyes deceive us! It's a curious country!"
"Can you go on?" asked the captain.
"Go on, Hatteras, go on! This little fall has done me more good than
harm."
They resumed their march to the southeast, and at evening they halted,
after walking about twenty-five miles; they were all tired, but still
the doctor had energy enough to ascend an ice-mountain while the
snow-hut was building.
[Illustration: "The doctor had energy enough to ascend an ice-mountain
while the snow-hut was building."]
The moon, which was nearly at its full, shone with extraordinary
brilliancy in a clear sky; the stars were wonderfully brilliant; from
the top of the iceberg a boundless plain could be seen, which was
covered with strangely formed hillocks of ice; in the moonlight they
looked like fallen columns or overthrown tombstones; the scene
reminded the doctor of a huge, silent graveyard barren of trees, in
which twenty generations of human beings might be lying in their long
sleep.
In spite of the cold and fatigue, Clawbonny remained for a long time
in a revery, from which it was no easy task for his companions to
arouse him; but they had to think of resting; the snow-hut was
completed; the four travellers crawled in like moles, and soon were
all asleep.
The following days went on without any particular incident; at times
they went on slowly, at times quickly, with varying ease, according to
the changes in the weather; they wore moccasins or snow-shoes, as the
nature of the ice demanded.
In this way they went on till January 15th; the moon, now in its last
quarter, was hardly visible; the sun, although always beneath the
horizon, gave a sort of twilight for six hours every day, but not
enough to light up the route, which had to be directed by the compass.
Then Bell went on ahead; Hatteras followed next; Simpson and the
doctor sought also to keep in a straight line behind, with their eyes
on Hatteras alone; and yet, in spite of all their efforts, they often
got thirty or forty degrees from the right way, much to their
annoyance.
Sunday, January 15th, Hatteras judged that they had come about one
hundred miles to the south; this morning was set aside to mending
their clothes and materials; the reading of divine service was not
forgotten.
At noon they started again; the temperature was very low; the
thermometer marked only -22 degrees; the air was very clear.
Suddenly, without warning, a frozen vapor arose into the air from the
ice, to a height of about ninety feet, and hung motionless; no one
could see a foot before him; this vapor formed in long, sharp crystals
upon their clothing.
[Illustration]
The travellers, surprised by this phenomenon, which is called
frost-rime, only thought of getting together; so immediately various
shouts were heard:--
"O Simpson!"
"Bell, this way!"
"Dr. Clawbonny!"
"Doctor!"
"Captain, where are you?"
They began to look for one another with outstretched arms, wandering
through the fog which their eyes could not pierce. But to their
disappointment they could hear no answer; the vapor seemed incapable
of carrying sound.
Each one then thought of firing his gun as a signal to the others. But
if their voices were too feeble, the reports of the fire-arms were too
loud; for the echoes, repeated in every direction, made but a confused
roar, in which no particular direction could be perceived.
Then they began to act, each one as he thought best. Hatteras stood
still and folded his arms. Simpson contented himself with stopping the
sledge. Bell retraced his steps, feeling them with his hand. The
doctor, stumbling over the blocks of ice, wandered here and there,
getting more and more bewildered.
At the end of five minutes he said to himself,--
"This can't last long! Singular climate! This is too much! There is
nothing to help us, without speaking of these sharp crystals which cut
my face. Halloo, Captain!" he shouted again.
But he heard no answer; he fired his gun, but in spite of his thick
gloves the iron burned his hands. Meanwhile he thought he saw a
confused mass moving near him.
"There's some one," he said. "Hatteras! Bell! Simpson! Is that you?
Come, answer!"
A dull roar was alone heard.
"Ah!" thought the doctor, "what is that?"
The object approached; it lost its first size and appeared in more
definite shape. A terrible thought flashed into the doctor's mind.
"A bear!" he said to himself.
In fact, it was a huge bear; lost in the fog, it came and went with
great danger to the men, whose presence it certainly did not suspect.
"Matters are growing complicated!" thought the doctor, standing still.
Sometimes he felt the animal's breath, which was soon lost in the
frost-rime; again he would see the monster's huge paws beating the air
so near him that his clothes were occasionally torn by its sharp
claws; he jumped back, and the animal disappeared like a
phantasmagoric spectre.
[Illustration]
But as he sprang back he found an elevation beneath his feet; he
climbed up first one block of ice, then another, feeling his way with
his staff.
"An iceberg!" he said to himself; "if I can get to the top I am safe."
With these words he climbed up an elevation of about ninety feet with
surprising agility; he arose above the frozen mist, the top of which
was sharply defined.
"Good!" he said to himself; and looking about him he saw his three
companions emerging from the vapor.
"Hatteras!"
"Dr. Clawbonny!"
"Bell!"
"Simpson!"
These names were shouted out almost at the same time; the sky, lit up
by a magnificent halo, sent forth pale rays which colored the
frost-rime as if it were a cloud, and the top of the icebergs seemed
to rise from a mass of molten silver. The travellers found themselves
within a circle of less than a hundred feet in diameter. Thanks to the
purity of the air in this upper layer in this low temperature, their
words could be easily heard, and they were able to talk on the top of
this iceberg. After the first shots, each one, hearing no answer, had
only thought of climbing above the mist.
"The sledge!" shouted the captain.
"It's eighty feet beneath us," answered Simpson.
"Is it all right?"
"All right."
"And the bear?" asked the doctor.
"What bear?" said Bell.
"A bear!" said Hatteras; "let's go down."
"No!" said the doctor; "we shall lose our way, and have to begin it
all over again."
"And if he eats our dogs--" said Hatteras.
At that moment Duke was heard barking, the sound rising through the
mist.
"That's Duke!" shouted Hatteras; "there's something wrong. I'm going
down."
All sorts of howling arose to their ears; Duke and the dogs were
barking furiously. The noise sounded like a dull murmur, like the roar
of a crowded, noisy room. They knew that some invisible struggle was
going on below, and the mist was occasionally agitated like the sea
when marine monsters are fighting.
"Duke, Duke!" shouted the captain, as he made ready to enter again
into the frost-rime.
"Wait a moment, Hatteras,--wait a moment! It seems to me that the fog
is lifting."
It was not lifting, but sinking, like water in a pool; it appeared to
be descending into the ground from which it had risen; the summits of
the icebergs grew larger; others, which had been hidden, arose like
new islands; by an optical illusion, which may be easily imagined, the
travellers, clinging to these ice-cones, seemed to be rising in the
air, while the top of the mist sank beneath them.
Soon the top of the sledge appeared, then the harnessed dogs, and then
about thirty other animals, then great objects moving confusedly, and
Duke leaping about with his head alternately rising and sinking in the
frozen mist.
"Foxes!" shouted Bell.
"Bears!" said the doctor; "one, two, three."
"Our dogs, our provisions!" cried Simpson.
A troop of foxes and bears, having come across the sledge, were
ravaging the provisions. Their instinct of pillaging united them in
perfect harmony; the dogs were barking furiously, but the animals paid
no heed, but went on in their work of destruction.
"Fire!" shouted the captain, discharging his piece.
[Illustration: "'Fire!' shouted the captain, discharging his piece."]
His companions did the same. But at the combined report the bears,
raising their heads and uttering a singular roar, gave the signal to
depart; they fell into a little trot which a galloping horse could not
have kept up with, and, followed by the foxes, they soon disappeared
amid the ice to the north.