THE MIDNIGHT SUN AS SEEN IN THE WHALE SOUND REGIONTHE MIDNIGHT SUN AS SEEN IN THE WHALE SOUND REGION
It must be remembered that during all this time we were in the region of constant daylight, in the season of the midnight sun. Sometimes the weather was foggy, sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny; but there was no darkness. The periods of day and night were measured only by our watches—not, during the passage of these channels, by sleeping and waking, for we slept only in those brief intervals when there was nothing else to do. Unresting vigilance was the price we paid for our passage.
Bartlett's judgment was reliable, but the cabin had no attraction for me when the ship and the fortunes of the expedition were swaying in the balance. Then, too, when the ship was butting the ice, the shock of the impact would have madeMorpheus himself sit up and rub his eyes every few minutes.
CAPTAIN BARTLETT IN THE CROW'S NESTCAPTAIN BARTLETT IN THE CROW'S NEST
Owing to the stupendous and resistless character of the heavier ice, a ship would be utterly helpless if she were ever caught fairly and squarely between two giant floes. In such a case there would be no escape for any structure which man could design or build. More than once a brief nip between two big blue floes has set the whole one hundred and eighty-four-foot length of theRooseveltvibrating like a violin string. At other times, under the pressure on the cylinders of the by-pass before described, the vessel would rear herself upon the ice like a steeplechaser taking a fence. It was a glorious battle—this charging of the ship against man's coldest enemy and possibly his oldest, for there is no calculating the age of this glacial ice. Sometimes, as the steel-shod stem of theRooseveltsplit a floe squarely in two, the riven ice would emit a savage snarl that seemed to have behind it all the rage of the invaded immemorial Arctic struggling with the self-willed intruder, man. Sometimes, when the ship was in special peril, the Eskimos on board would set up their strange barbaric chant—calling on the souls of their ancestors to come from the invisible realm and help us.
Often on this last expedition of theRoosevelt, as on the former one, have I seen a fireman come up from the bowels of the ship, panting for a breath of air, take one look at the sheet of ice before us, and mutter savagely:
"By God, she'sgotto go through!"
Then he would drop again into the stoke hole, anda moment later an extra puff of black smoke would rise from the stack, and I knew the steam pressure was going up.
During the worst parts of the journey, Bartlett spent most of his time in the crow's nest, the barrel lookout at the top of the main mast. I would climb up into the rigging just below the crow's nest, where I could see ahead and talk to Bartlett, backing up his opinion with my own, when necessary, to relieve him, in the more dangerous places, of too great a weight of responsibility.
Clinging with Bartlett, high up in the vibrating rigging, peering far ahead for a streak of open water, studying the movement of the floes which pressed against us, I would hear him shouting to the ship below us as if coaxing her, encouraging her, commanding her to hammer a way for us through the adamantine floes:
"Rip 'em, Teddy! Bite 'em in two! Go it! That's fine, my beauty! Now—again! Once more!"
At such a time the long generations of ice and ocean fighters behind this brave, indomitable young Newfoundland captain seemed to be re-living in him the strenuous days that carried the flag of England 'round the world.
TABULAR ICEBERG AND FLOE ICETABULAR ICEBERG AND FLOE ICE
To recount all the incidents of this upward journey of theRooseveltwould require a volume. When we were not fighting the ice, we were dodging it, or—worse still—waiting in some niche of the shore for an opportunity to do more fighting. On Sunday, the sixth day out from Etah, the water continued fairly open, and we made good progress until one o'clock in the afternoon, when we were held up by the ice pack as we were nearing Lincoln Bay. A cable was run out, and the ship secured to a great floe, which extended some two miles to the north and several to the east. The tide, which was running north at the time, had carried the smaller ice with it, leaving theRooseveltin a sort of lake. While we were resting there, some of the men observed a black object far out on the great ice floe to which we were attached, and Dr. Goodsell and Borup, with two Eskimos, started out to investigate. This walking across the floes is dangerous, as the ice is full of cracks, some of them quite wide, and on the day in question the cracks were for the most part concealed by a recent snowfall. In jumping across a lead, the men had a narrow escape from drowning, and when they got within shooting distance of the black object they were seeking, it proved to be only a block of stone.
Before the return of Borup and the doctor the ice had already begun to close in around the ship and, as soon as the men were safe on board, the cable was hauled in and theRooseveltdrifted south with the pack. So close was the ice that night, that we had to swing the boats inward on the davits to protect them from the great floes, which at times crowded the rail. Finally, the captain worked the ship into another small lake to the southeast of our former position by the great floe, and there we remained several hours, steaming back and forth in order to keep the pool open.
About eleven o'clock that night, for all our efforts, the ice closed in again around theRoosevelt; but I observed a small lead to the southeast, which led into another body of open water, and gave orders to ram the vessel through, if possible. By working the nose of the ship into the small opening, and then by butting the ice on alternate sides, we succeeded in widening the lead sufficiently to allow of our passing through to the pool of open water beyond.
At four o'clock the next morning we were again under way, working northward through slack ice to a point a little beyond Shelter River, where we were again stopped by ice about nine o'clock in the forenoon. TheRooseveltmoved in near the shore and her head was shoved against a big floe, to avoid her being jammed or carried southward by the now swiftly running tide and the ice pack.
After supper that night, MacMillan, Borup, and Dr. Goodsell, with two Eskimos, started for the shore over the jammed ice, with the intention of gettingsome game; but before they reached the shore there was so much movement in the adjacent floes that I considered their journey too hazardous for inexperienced men. A recall was sounded with the ship's whistle, and they started back over the now moving floes. Their movements were impeded by their guns, but fortunately they carried boat hooks, without which they could never have made their way back.
Using the boat hooks as vaulting poles, they leaped from one floe to another, when the leads were not too wide. When the open water was impassable in that way, they crossed it on small floating pieces of ice, using their hooks to push and pull themselves along. First the doctor slipped on the edge of a floe, and went into the icy water to the waist, but he was quickly hauled up by Borup. Then Borup slipped and went in to the waist, but he was out again as quickly.
Meanwhile the ice had separated about theRoosevelt, leaving a wide lane of water between her and the men; but by running the ship against one of the larger floes, we enabled them to clamber aboard. They lost no time in exchanging their wet garments for dry ones, and in a few minutes they were all laughing and recounting their exploits to an interested—and possibly amused—group of listeners.
A man who could not laugh at a wetting or take as a matter of course a dangerous passage over moving ice, would not be a man for a serious arctic expedition. It was with a feeling of intense satisfaction that I watched these three men, MacMillan, Borup, and Dr. Goodsell, my arctic "tenderfeet," as I called them, proving the mettle of which they were made.
I had selected these three men from among a host of applicants for membership in the expedition, because of the special fitness of each one. Dr. Goodsell was a solid, sturdy, self-made physician of Pennsylvania stock. His specialism in microscopy I trusted might give valuable results in a field not hitherto investigated in the North. He was to make microscopic studies of the germ diseases of the Eskimos.
MacMillan, a trained athlete and physical instructor, I had known, and known about, for years. I chose him because of his intense interest in the work, his intense desire to be of the party, and his evident mental and physical fitness for the rigorous demands of the Arctic.
Borup, the youngest member of the party, impressed me with his enthusiasm and physical abilities. He had a record as a Yale runner, and I took him on general principles, because I liked him, satisfied that he was of the right stuff for arctic work. It was a fortunate selection, as the photographs brought back by the expedition are due in a large measure to his expert knowledge of film developing.
I have been asked how the members of my party amused themselves during the long waits, when the ship was held up by the ice. The principal amusement of the new members was in trying to acquire from the Eskimos on board a smattering of their language. As interpreter, they had Matt Henson. Sometimes, looking down from the bridge of the ship onto the main deck, I would see one of these new men surrounded by a group of Eskimos, gesticulating and laughing, and I knew that a language lesson was in progress. Thewomen were delighted at the opportunity to teach Borup the Eskimo words for jacket, hood, boots, sky, water, food, et cetera, as they seemed to be of the opinion that he was a fine boy.
TheRooseveltlay quietly in open water all night on the 24th of August, but in the forenoon of the 25th steamed northward nearly to Cape Union. Beyond there the ice was densely packed. I climbed up into the rigging to take a look but, finding no suitable shelter, decided to turn back to Lincoln Bay, where we made the ship fast between two grounded ice floes. The day before had been calm and sunny, but the 25th was snowy and disagreeable, with a raw northerly wind. The snow was driving in horizontal sheets across the decks, the water was black as ink, the ice a spectral white, and the coast near us looked like the shores of the land of ghosts. One of our berg pieces was carried away by the flood tide, and we were obliged to shift our position to the inner side of the other one; but there were other grounded bergs outside us to take the impact of the larger floes.
On general principles, I landed a cache of supplies at this point on the following day. The possibility of losing the ship was always present; but if everything went well the cache could be made use of in the hunting season. The supplies, in their wooden boxes, were simply piled upon the shore. Wandering arctic hares, reindeer, and musk-oxen never attempt to regale themselves on tin cans or wooden boxes.
I went ashore and walked over to Shelter River, living over again the experiences there in 1906, when, during my absence at Cape Thomas Hubbard, CaptainBartlett—for he was then, as now, the master of theRoosevelt—had tried to drive the ship south from her exposed position at Cape Sheridan to a more sheltered place in Lincoln Bay, where I was to rejoin them.
At Shelter River, theRoosevelthad been caught between the moving pack and the vertical face of the ice-foot, receiving almost a fatal blow. She had been lifted bodily out of the water, the stern-post and rudder smashed into kindling wood, and a blade ripped off the propeller. Everything was landed from the vessel in the expectation that when the ice slacked off and she settled into the water, she would be leaking so badly it would be impossible to keep her afloat.
Bartlett and his men worked manfully in stopping the leaks, as far as possible; and when the pressure from the ice was partially released, the ship was floated. But she lay there nearly a month, and twice during that time even the rigging of the ship was landed, when it seemed impossible that she could survive.
Here at Shelter River I had found theRoosevelton my return from "farthest west." A new rudder was improvised, and the crippled and almost helpless ship floated around into Lincoln Bay, whence she finally limped home to New York.
After an hour of retrospection at this place I walked back to the ship. Borup and MacMillan had also gone ashore, in the hope of obtaining game but had not found any. It was a dull, raw, overcast day and MacMillan, Borup, the doctor, and Gushue, the mate, amused themselves by target-shooting with their Winchesters.
The next day was seemingly endless, and still we lay there at Lincoln Bay, with a strong, raw, northeast wind blowing steadily and with increasing violence. The edge of the moving pack was only a few yards from the ship, but we were fairly well protected by large pieces which had grounded outside of us. Every little while a big floe came rushing past, crowding everything out of its way and giving our protectors a shove that set them and us nearer the shore. From the crow's nest we could see a little open water near the east coast of the channel, but there was none in our vicinity—only ice, ice, ice, of every imaginable shape and thickness.
Still another day, and theRooseveltwas in the same position, with the ice crowding against her; but at the crest of the high tide the grounded floe-berg to which we were attached by cable went adrift, and we all hurried on deck. The lines were hastily detached from the berg. As the ice went south, it left a stretch of open water before us about a mile long, and we steamed northward along the shore, pushing our way behind the grounded bergs, trying to find another niche where we might be secure from the now rapidly approaching pack.
It was well for us that the wind was blowing violently off shore, as it eased the pressure of the pack against us. One place seemed secure, and we were making ready to attach the cables, when an ice-floe, about an acre in extent with a sharp, projecting point like the ram of a battleship, came surging along toward theRoosevelt, and we were obliged to shift our position. Before the ship was secured, she was again threatenedby the same floe, which seemed to be endowed with malign intelligence and to follow us like a bloodhound. We retired to still another position, and secured the vessel and finally the threatening floe passed onwards to the south.
There was no sleep for any one that sunlit night. About ten o'clock the berg fragment to which we were attached drifted loose under the pressure of the furious wind and the rising tide. In contracted space, with the ice whirling and eddying about us, we hastily got our lines in and shifted to another place, only to be driven out of it. We sought still another place of shelter, and in turn were also driven out of that. A third attempt to find safety was successful, but before it was accomplished theRoosevelthad twice been aground forward, her heel had been caught by a berg's spur, and her after rail smashed by the onslaught of another berg.
Saturday, the 29th, was another day of delay but I found some comfort in thinking of my little son in the far-away home. It was his fifth birthday, and Percy, Matt, and I, his three chums, drank a bottle of champagne in his honor. Robert E. Peary, Junior! What were they doing at home? I wondered.
I think that none of the members of the expedition will ever forget the following day, the 30th of August. TheRooseveltwas kicked about by the floes as if she had been a football. The game began about four o'clock in the morning. I was in my cabin trying to get a little sleep—with my clothes on, for I had not dared to remove them for a week. My rest was cut short by a shock so violent that, before I realizedthat anythinghadhappened, I found myself on deck—a deck that inclined to starboard some twelve or fifteen degrees. I ran, or rather climbed the deck, to the port side and saw what had happened. A big floe, rushing past with the current, had picked up the grounded berg to which we were attached by the hawsers, as if that thousand-ton berg had been a toy, and dashed it against theRooseveltand clear along her port side, smashing a big hole in the bulwarks at Marvin's room. The berg brought up against another one just aft of us, and theRooseveltslipped from between the two like a greased pig.
As soon as the pressure was relaxed and the ship regained an even keel, we discovered that the cable which had been attached to the floe-berg at the stern had become entangled with the propeller. It was a time for lightning thought and action; but by attaching a heavier cable to the parted one and taking a hitch round the steam capstan, we finally disentangled it.
This excitement was no sooner over than a great berg that was passing near us split in two of its own accord, a cube some twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter dropping toward the ship, and missing our quarter by only a foot or two. "Bergs to the right of them, bergs to the left of them, bergs on top of them," I heard somebody say, as we caught our breath at this miraculous escape.
The ship was now quite at the mercy of the drifting ice, and with the pressure from the outer pack theRooseveltagain careened to starboard. I knew that if she were driven any higher upon the shore, we should have to discharge a large part of the coal in order to lightenher sufficiently to get her off again. So I decided to dynamite the ice.
I told Bartlett to get out his batteries and dynamite, and to smash the ice between theRooseveltand the heavy floes outside, making a soft cushion for the ship to rest on. The batteries were brought up from the lazaret, one of the dynamite boxes lifted out with caution, and Bartlett and I looked for the best places in the ice for the charges.
Several sticks of dynamite were wrapped in pieces of old bagging and fastened on the end of long spruce poles, which we had brought along specially for this purpose. A wire from the battery had, of course, been connected with one of the primers buried in the dynamite. Pole, wire, and dynamite were thrust down through cracks in the ice at several places in the adjacent floes. The other end of each wire was then connected with the battery, every one retreated to a respectful distance on the far side of the deck, and a quick, sharp push on the plunger of the battery sent the electric current along the wires.
Rip! Bang! Boom!The ship quivered like a smitten violin string, and a column of water and pieces of ice went flying a hundred feet into the air, geyser fashion.
The pressure of the ice against the ship being thus removed, she righted herself and lay quietly on her cushion of crushed ice—waiting for whatever might happen next. As the tide lowered, theRooseveltwas bodily aground from amidships forward, heeling first to one side and then to the other with the varying pressure of the ice. It was a new variation of "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep"—one that sent Eskimobabies, the dogs, the boxes, and even ourselves, tumbling about the decks.
When the tide rose, efforts were made to dislodge the ship from her stranded position. From the port side of the bow a line was made fast to a stationary floe-berg, and the captain called for full steam, first ahead, then astern. For some time there was no perceptible movement of the ship. Finally, the pull on the port bow from the cable, with full speed astern, had the desired effect and the vessel slid off and floated free; but the ice was so heavily packed behind us that we could not move her away. It was far from a pleasant spot.
To put it mildly, the position in which we now found ourselves was dangerous—even with the assistance of so experienced and steady an ice fighter as Bartlett. As day followed day and still we hung there at Lincoln Bay, we should doubtless have been extremely anxious had theRooseveltnot had a similar experience on the preceding voyage. But we believed that sooner or later the movement of the ice would enable us to steam the few remaining miles to Cape Sheridan, and possibly beyond there; for our objective point was some twenty-five miles to the northwest of our former winter quarters in 1905-06. We tried to possess our souls in patience, and if sometimes the delay got on our nerves, there was nothing to be gained by talking about it.
On the first of September the ice did not seem to be moving quite so rapidly. The evening before MacMillan had been sent ashore to the bluffs beyond Shelter River, and he had reported that there was considerable open water along the shore. Bartlett then went forward to reconnoiter. On his return he also reported open water, but with corners of big floes barring it in every direction.
That the fall hunting might get under way, Ootah, Aletah, Ooblooyah, andOoqueahstarted off for theLake Hazen region, with a sledge and eight dogs, after musk-oxen and reindeer. It had been planned that they should hunt there until joined by other Eskimos from the ship, after she reached Cape Sheridan or Porter Bay. But in the absence of snow, the going was too rough for even a light sledge, and the Eskimos returned.
At last, a little before midnight on the 2d, we got out of theimpasseat Lincoln Bay, where we had been held up for ten days. The cables were taken in, and theRoosevelt, steaming first forward and then astern, extricated herself from the shore pack. We felt as men must feel who are released from prison. There was a narrow lane of open water following the shore, and along that course we steamed, rounding Cape Union about half an hour before midnight.
But we were soon held up again by the ice, a little below Black Cape, a dark cone-shaped mountain standing alone, on the eastern side washed by the waters of the sea, on the west separated by deep valleys from the adjacent mountains. It was a scene of indescribable grandeur, for the coast was lined for miles with bergs, forced shoreward, broken and tilted at right angles. At Black Cape we had made half the distance between our former position at Lincoln Bay and the longed-for shelter at Cape Sheridan.
As we made fast against the land ice, a sixty-foot thick fragment of a floe was driven with frightful force up on the shore a little to the north of us. Had we been in the way of it—but a navigator of these channels must not dwell too much on such contingencies.
As an extra precaution, I had the Eskimos with axes bevel off the edge of the ice-foot abreast of the ship, to facilitate her rising if she should be squeezed by the heavy floes outside. It was snowing lightly all day long; but I went ashore, walking along the ice-foot to the next river, and up to the summit of Black Cape. An occasional walk on land was a relief from the stench and disorder of the ship, for the dogs kept theRooseveltin a very unclean condition. Many persons have asked how we could endure the presence of nearly two hundred and fifty dogs on the deck of a small ship; but every achievement has its drawbacks, and it must not be forgotten that without the dogs we could not have reached the Pole.
At this point we landed another cache, similar to the one at Lincoln Bay, to be ready for anything that might happen.
On the 4th, the wind came strong from the south, and as there seemed to be a little open water ahead, at eight in the morning we started to get out of our berth. It took an hour to break up the "slob" ice which had cemented about the ship. We were happy to be under way again; but at the delta just ahead of us the ice refused to open, the drift ice from the south was coming up rapidly before the wind, and we were compelled to hurry back to our former berth below Black Cape. We did not get in again without some trouble as the strong wind made theRoosevelthard to manage. The starboard quarter boat was badly smashed against the corner of a big berg piece, and the starboard corner of the forward deck house was almost ripped from the decking.
But all hands were stimulated by the thought that we were now only a few miles from Cape Sheridan—so near our goal that we were restless to be off again. That evening, with the ebb tide, the ice slackened, and the order was given to steam ahead. After one or two narrow escapes between the rapidly running floes, we reached the delta of Black Cape River, a few miles beyond our former place. But when the tide turned we were obliged to hurry back about a quarter of a mile to the shelter of a grounded berg.
When the hawsers were made fast I went ashore and up to the delta to look at the ice beyond. Not a crack or hole was visible to the north, and the path by which we had retreated to our present position was now a sea of solid ice. Should weeverbe able to make the few remaining miles?
The wind continued to blow violently from the south, the ice began to slack off a little behind us, and at three o'clock in the morning of the 5th of September there was a gradually widening lead to the north. I felt that it was now or never, and the order went down for every pound of steam and full speed. Thus we rounded Cape Rawson, and Cape Sheridan was in view. At last! That sloping headland looked more beautiful than the gates of paradise to our vigil-wearied eyes.
We rounded the cape at a quarter past seven, fifteen minutes later than the time of our arrival in 1905. Since the 23d of August, thirteen days before, neither Bartlett nor I had had our clothes off.
Should we stop here? There was still open water beyond. I gave orders to steam ahead, hoping thatwe might reach Porter Bay. But after two miles we came to another impassable barrier of ice, and it was decided that it was Cape Sheridan again for this year's winter quarters. Back we went, and the work of getting theRooseveltinside the tide crack was begun.
My heart was light. Those two miles beyond Cape Sheridan had given us the record of "farthest north" which any vessel had ever reached under her own steam, 82° 30´. One vessel only, Nansen'sFram, had been farther north, but she had drifted there stern foremost, a plaything of the ice. Again the little black, strenuousRoosevelthad proven herself the champion.
There are some feelings which a man cannot express in words. Such were mine as the mooring lines went out onto the ice foot at Cape Sheridan. We had kept the scheduled time of our program and had negotiated the first part of the difficult proposition—that of driving a ship from New York to a point within striking distance of the Pole. All the uncertainties of ice navigation—the possible loss of theRooseveltand a large quantity of our supplies—were at an end. Another source of gratification was the realization that this last voyage had further accentuated the value of detailed experience in this arduous work. Notwithstanding the delays which had sometimes seemed endless, we had made the voyage with only a small percentage of the anxieties and injury to the ship which we had experienced on the former upward journey in 1905.
Lying there, with the northern bounds of all known lands—except those close to us—lying far to thesouth, we were in a position properly to attack the second part of our problem, the projection of a sledge party from the ship to the Pole itself. This rounding of Cape Sheridan was not the ultimate achievement probable.
So great was our relief at having driven theRooseveltthrough the ice of Robeson Channel, that as soon as the mooring lines were out at Cape Sheridan we set to work unloading the ship with light-hearted eagerness. TheRooseveltwas grounded inside the tide crack, and the first things we got ashore were the two hundred and forty-six dogs, which had made the ship a noisy and ill-smelling inferno for the last eighteen days. They were simply dropped over the rail onto the ice, and in a few minutes the shore in all directions was dotted with them, as they ran, leaped and barked in the snow. The decks were washed down with hose, and the work of unloading began. First the sledges came down from the bridge deck, where they had been built during the upward voyage, a fine fleet of twenty-three.
THE ROOSEVELT DRYING OUT HER SAILS AT CAPE SHERIDAN, SEPTEMBER, 1908
THE ROOSEVELT DRYING OUT HER SAILS AT CAPE SHERIDAN, SEPTEMBER, 1908(The Dark Spots on the Shore are the Supplies and Equipment of the Expedition)
We wanted to get the ship well inside the ice barrier where she would be really safe, so we lightened her that she might float with the high tide. We made chutes from planks, and down these we slid the oil cases from the main deck and the hold. It was necessary to work carefully, as the ice was thin at that season. Later two or three sledge loads of supplies broke through, and the Eskimos with them; but as the water was only five or six feet deep, and the supplies were packed in tins, no serious damage was done.
While the oil was being unloaded, a party of men went out with ice chisels, poles, saws, and so forth, chopping away the ice so that we could warp theRooseveltin, broadside to the shore. Bartlett and I were determined to get the ship beyond the floe-berg barrier and into the shallow water of the ice-foot. We were not looking forward to another winter of such torment as we had lived through on the last previous expedition, with the ship just on the edge of the ice-foot and subject to every movement of the hostile pack outside.
THE ROOSEVELT ON SEPTEMBER 12, 1908
THE ROOSEVELT ON SEPTEMBER 12, 1908Marie Ahnighito Peary's Birthday
After the oil cases came the tons of whale meat from the quarter-deck, some of it in chunks as large as a Saratoga trunk. It was thrown over the side onto the ice, sledged ashore by the Eskimos, some hundred yards over the ice-foot, and heaped in great piles, protected by the bags of coal which had also been taken from the quarter-deck. Then came the whale-boats, which were lowered from the davits and run ashore like sledges. They were later turned bottom side up for the winter and weighted down, so that the wind could not move them.
"PEARY" SLEDGES ON BOARD THE ROOSEVELT"PEARY" SLEDGES ON BOARD THE ROOSEVELT
The work of landing the supplies and equipment consumed several days. This is the very first work of every well-managed arctic expedition on reaching winter quarters. With the supplies ashore, the loss of the ship by fire or by crushing in the ice, would mean simply that the party might have to walk home. It would not interfere with the sledge work, nor seriously cripple the expedition. Had we lost theRooseveltat Cape Sheridan, we should have spent the winter in the box houses which we constructed and in thespring should have made the dash for the Pole just the same. We should then have walked the three hundred and fifty miles to Cape Sabine, crossed the Smith Sound ice to Etah, and waited for a ship.
The adjacent shore for a quarter of a mile was lined with boxes, each item of provisions having a pile to itself. This packing-box village was christened Hubbardville, in honor of General Thomas H. Hubbard, president of the Peary Arctic Club. When the boxes which had served as a bed platform in the Eskimo quarters of theRoosevelt'sforward deck were removed, the place was swept and scrubbed; then a bed platform was built of boards, divided into sections for the various families and screened in front by curtains. Under the bed platform was an open space, where the Eskimos could keep their cooking utensils and other personal belongings. The fastidious reader who is shocked at the idea of keeping frying-pans under the bed should see an Eskimo family in one of their native houses of stone and earth, eight feet across, where meat and drink, men, women, and children are crowded indiscriminately for month upon month in winter.
We next landed about eighty tons of coal, so that, in case we should have to live in the box houses, there would be plenty of fuel. At that time of the year it was not very cold. On the 8th of September the thermometer stood at 12 above zero, the next day at 4.
The heavier cases, containing the tins of bacon, pemmican (the condensed meat food used in the Arctic), flour, et cetera, were utilized ashore like so many blocks of granite in constructing three houses,about fifteen feet by thirty. All the supplies were especially packed for this purpose, in boxes of specified dimensions—one of the innumerable details which made for the success of the expedition. In building the houses the tops of the boxes were placed inside, the covers removed, and the contents taken out as needed, as from a shelf, the whole house being one large grocery.
The roofs were made of sails thrown over boat booms or spars, and later the walls and roof were banked in solidly with snow. Stoves were set up, so that, if everything went well, the houses could be used as workshops during the winter.
So here we were, safely bestowed at Cape Sheridan, and the prize seemed already in our grasp. The contingencies which had blocked our way in 1906 were all provided for on this last expedition. We knew just what we had to do, and just how to do it. Only a few months of waiting, the fall hunting, and the long, dark winter were all that lay between me and the final start. I had the dogs, the men, the experience, a fixed determination (the same impulse which drove the ships of Columbus across the trackless western sea)—and the end lay with that Destiny which favors the man who follows his faith and his dream to the last breath.
When the removal of supplies had lightened theRooseveltso much that Bartlett got her considerably farther in shore, she lay with her nose pointing almost true north. It cheered us, for this was her constant habit. It seemed almost like the purpose of a living creature. Whenever on the upward voyage—either this time or on her first trip in 1905—the ship was beset in the ice so that we lost control of her, she always swung around of her own accord and pointed north. When twisting through the ice, if we got caught when the ship was headed east or west, it was only a little while before the pressure would swing her round till once more she looked northward. Even on the return journey, in 1906, it was the same—as if the ship realized she had not accomplished her purpose and wanted to go back. The sailors noticed it, and used to talk about it. They said theRooseveltwas not satisfied, that she knew she had not done her work.
When we got the vessel as near the shore as possible, the ship's people began to make her ready for the winter. The engine-room force was busy blowing down the boilers, putting the machinery out of commission, removing every drop of water from the pipes and elbows so the cold of winter should not burst them;and the crew was busy taking down the sails, slacking off the rigging, so the contraction from the intense cold of winter should not cause damage, with a thousand and one details of like character.
Before the sails were taken down, they were all set, that they might be thoroughly dried out by sun and wind. The ship was a beautiful sight, held fast in the embrace of the ice and with her cables out, but with every sail filled with wind like a yacht in a race.
While this work was going on small hunting parties of Eskimos were sent to the Lake Hazen region, but they met with little success. A few hares were secured, but musk-oxen seemed to have vanished. This troubled me, for it raised a fear that the hunting of the former expedition had killed off the game, or driven it away. The Eskimo women set their fox traps all along the shore for five miles or so each way, and they were more successful than the men, obtaining some thirty or forty foxes in the course of the fall and winter. The women also went on fishing trips to the ponds of the neighborhood, and brought in many mottled beauties.
The Eskimo method of fishing is interesting. The fish in that region will not rise to bait but are captured by cutting a hole in the ice and dropping in a piece of ivory carved in the shape of a small fish. When the fish rises to examine this visitor, it is secured with a spear. The Eskimo fish spear has a central shaft with a sharp piece of steel, usually an old nail, set in the end. On each side is a piece of deer antler pointing downward, lashed onto the shaft with a fine line, and sharp nails, pointing inward, are set in the two fragments of antler. When this spear is thrust down on the fish, the antlers spread as they strike the fish's back; he is impaled by the sharp point above him, and the sharp barbs on either side keep him from getting away.
The char (?) of North Grant Land is a beautiful mottled fish, weighing sometimes as much as eleven or twelve pounds. I believe that the pink fiber of these fish—taken from water never warmer than 35° or 40° above zero—is the firmest and sweetest fish fiber in the world. During my early expeditions in this region, I would spear one of these beauties and throw him on the ice to freeze, then pick him up and fling him down so as to shatter the flesh under the skin, lay him on the sledge, and as I walked away pick out morsels of the pink flesh and eat them as one would eat strawberries.
In September of 1900 with these fish a party of six men and twenty-three dogs were supported for some ten days, until we found musk-oxen. We speared the fish in the way the Eskimos taught us, using the regular native spear.
The new members of the expedition were naturally anxious to go sight-seeing. MacMillan had an attack of the grip, but Borup and Dr. Goodsell scoured the surrounding country. Hubbardville could not boast its Westminster Abbey nor its Arc de Triomphe, but there were Petersen's grave and theAlertandRooseveltcairns, both in the neighborhood, and visible from the ship.
About a mile and a half southwest from our winter quarters was the memorial headboard of Petersen, theDanish interpreter of the English expedition of 1875-76. He died as the result of exposure on a sledge trip, and was buried there abreast of theAlert'swinter quarters. The grave is covered with a large flat slab, and at the head is a board covered with a copper sheet from the boiler room of theAlert, with the inscription punched in it. There may be a lonelier grave somewhere on earth, but if so I have no knowledge of it. No explorer, not even the youngest and most thoughtless, could stand before that "mute reminder of heroic bones" without a feeling of reverence and awe. There is something menacing in that dark silhouette against the white snow, as if the mysterious Arctic were reminding the intruder that he might be chosen next to remain with her forever.
Not far away is theAlert'scairn, from which I took the British record in 1905, a copy of it being replaced by Ross Marvin, according to the custom of explorers. In view of his tragic end, in the spring of 1909, the farthest north of all deaths known to man, this visit of Marvin's to the neighborhood of Petersen's grave has a peculiar pathos.
TheRooseveltcairn, erected by Marvin in 1906, is directly abreast of the ship's location at Cape Sheridan in 1905-06 and about one mile inland. It is on a high point of land, about four hundred feet above the water. The record is in a prune can, at the bottom of the pile of stones, and was written by Marvin himself in lead-pencil. The cairn is surmounted by a cross, made of the oak plank from our sledge runners. It faces north, and at the intersection of the upright and the crosspiece there is a large"R" cut in the wood. When I went up to see it, soon after our arrival this last time, the cross was leaning toward the north, as if from the intentness of its three years' northward gazing.
On the 12th of September we had a holiday, it being the fifteenth birthday of my daughter, Marie Ahnighito, who was born at Anniversary Lodge, Greenland—the most northerly born of all white children. Ten years before, we had celebrated her fifth birthday on the Windward. Many icebergs had drifted down the channels since then, and I was still following the same ideal which had given my daughter so cold and strange a birthplace.
There was a driving snowstorm that day, but Bartlett dressed the ship in all the flags, the full international code, and the bright colors of the bunting made a striking contrast to the gray-white sky. Percy, the steward, had baked a special birthday cake, and we had it, surmounted with fifteen blazing candles, on our supper table. Just after breakfast the Eskimos came in with a polar bear, a female yearling six feet long, and I determined to have it mounted for Marie's birthday bear. It should be standing and advancing, one paw extended as if to shake, the head on one side and a bearish smile on the face. The bear provided us with juicy steaks, and we had a special tablecloth, our best cups and saucers, new spoons, et cetera.
A day or two later we began to get the dogs made fast, in preparation for the first sledge parties. There was now sufficient snow to begin the transportation of supplies toward Cape Columbia, and Black Cliffs Bay was frozen over. The Eskimos tied the dogs, inteams of five or six, to stakes driven into the shore or holes cut in the ice. They made a fine picture, looking shoreward from the ship—nearly two hundred and fifty of them—and their barking could be heard at all hours.
It must be remembered that day and night were still determined only by the clock, as the ever-circling sun had not yet set. By reason of the industry of all hands on the upward voyage, everything was now ready for the fall work. The Eskimos had built the sledges and made the dog harnesses, and Matt Henson had finished the "kitchen boxes," which enclosed our oil stoves in the field, while the busy needles of the Eskimo women had provided every man with a fur outfit.
In the North we wear the regular Eskimo garments, with certain modifications. First of all, there is thekooletah, a fur jacket with no buttons, which goes on over the head. For summer wear the Eskimos make it of sealskin, but for winter it is made of fox or deerskin.
For our own use, we had jackets made of Michigan sheepskin. We took the skins up with us, and the women made the garments, but when it was very cold we wore the deerskin or foxskin jacket of the Eskimos. Attached to this jacket is a hood, and around the face is a thick roll made of fox-tails.
Theahteahis a shirt, usually of fawn skin, with the hair inside, and the Eskimos wear it even in summer. In some of the photographs of natives, the skilful piecing together of the skins in the shirt can be traced. The Eskimo women are more adept at this work than areany of the furriers of civilization. They sew the skins with the sinew taken from the back of the deer—the jumping muscle. It is absolutely unbreakable, and moisture does not rot it. For the coarser work of sewing boots, canoes, and tents, they use the sinew from the tail of the narwhal. The sewing is now done with the steel needles I have given them; but in former years they used a punch made of bone, passing the sinew through the hole, as a shoemaker uses a "waxed end." They do not cut the skins with shears, as that would injure the fur; but with a "woman's knife," similar to an old-fashioned mincemeat chopper.
The shaggy fur trousers are invariably made from the skins of the polar bear. Then there are stockings of hareskin, and thekamiks, or boots, of sealskin, soled with the heavier skin of the square-flipper seal. On the ship, on sledge journeys, and in all the field work of the winter, the regular footgear of the Eskimos was worn. Add the warm fur mittens, and the winter wardrobe is complete.
It may reasonably be inquired whether the close housing for so long a time of such a considerable number of human beings did not result in personal friction, due to the inevitable accumulation of a thousand and one petty irritations. To some extent it did. But the principal members of the expedition were men of such character that they were able to exercise an admirable self-restraint that prevented any unpleasant results of consequence. Practically the only trouble of a personal sort that was of any importance occurred between one of the sailors and an Eskimo whom we called Harrigan.
Harrigan acquired this sobriquet on account of his ear for music. The crew used to be fond of singing that energetic Irish air which was popular for some years along Broadway and which concludes ungrammatically with the words "Harrigan—that's me." The Eskimo in question seemed fascinated by this song and in time learned those three words and practised them with so much assiduity that he was ultimately able to sing them in a manner not wholly uncouth.
In addition to his musical leanings, Harrigan was a practical joker, and on one occasion he was exercising his humorous talents in the forecastle to the considerable discomfort of one of the crew. Ultimately the sailor, unable to rid himself of his persecutor in any other way, resorted to the use of his fists. The Eskimos, while good wrestlers, are far from adepts at the "manly art of self-defense," and the result was that Harrigan emerged from the forecastle with a well-blackened eye and a keen sense of having been ill used. He complained bitterly of his treatment, but I gave him a new shirt and told him to keep away from the forecastle where the sailors were, and in a few hours he had forgotten it like a school boy, so that the affair passed off without leaving any permanent ill feeling, and soon Harrigan was again cheerfully croaking his "Harrigan—that's me."
The main purpose of the autumn sledge parties was the transportation to Cape Columbia of supplies for the spring sledge journey toward the Pole. Cape Columbia, ninety miles northwest from the ship, had been chosen because it was the most northerly point of Grant Land, and because it was far enough west to be out of the ice current setting down Robeson Channel. From there we could strike straight north over the ice of the Polar Sea.