REPAIRING SLEDGES IN CAMPREPAIRING SLEDGES IN CAMP
At half-past ten on the morning of the 25th I came upon Bartlett and Henson with their men, all in camp, in accordance with my instructions to wait for me at the end of their fifth march. I turned them all out, and every one jumped in to repair the sledges, redistribute the loads, weed out the least efficient dogs, and rearrange the Eskimos in the remaining divisions.
While this work was going on, Marvin, favored by clear weather, took another meridian observation for latitude and obtained 86° 38´. This placed us, as I expected, beyond the Italian record, and showed that in our last three marches we had covered a distance of fifty minutes of latitude, an average of sixteen and two-thirds miles per march. We were thirty-two days ahead of the Italian record in time.
I was doubly glad of the result of the observations, not only for the sake of Marvin, whose services had been invaluable and who deserved the privilege of claiming a higher northing than Nansen and Abruzzi, but also for the honor of Cornell University, to the faculty of which he belonged, and two of whose alumni and patrons had been generous contributors to thePeary Arctic Club. I had hoped that Marvin would be able to make a sounding at his farthest north, but there was no young ice near the camp through which a hole could be made.
A MOMENTARY HALT IN THE LEE OF A BIG HUMMOCK NORTH OF 88°A MOMENTARY HALT IN THE LEE OF A BIG HUMMOCK NORTH OF 88°
About four o'clock in the afternoon Bartlett, with Ooqueah and Karko, two sledges, and eighteen dogs, got away for the advance. Bartlett started off with the determination to bag the 88th parallel in the next five marches (after which he was to turn back), and I sincerely hoped that he would be able to reel off the miles to that point, as he certainly deserved such a record.
Later I learned that he had intended to cover twenty-five or thirty miles in his first march, which he would have done had conditions not been against him. Though tired with the long march and the day's work in camp, after a short sleep the night before, I was not able to turn in for several hours after Bartlett got away. There were numerous details which required personal attention. There were letters to write and orders for Marvin to take back, together with his instructions for his projected trip to Cape Jesup.
The next morning, Friday, March 26, I rapped the whole party up at five o'clock, after a good sleep all round. As soon as we had eaten our usual breakfast of pemmican, biscuit, and tea, Henson, Ootah, andKeshungwah, with three sledges and twenty-five dogs, got away on Bartlett's trail.
Marvin, with Kudlooktoo and "Harrigan," one sledge, and seventeen dogs, started south at half-past nine in the morning.
No shadow of apprehension for the future hung over that parting. It was a clear, crisp morning, the sunlight glittered on the ice and snow, the dogs were alert and active after their long sleep, the air blew cold and fresh from the polar void, and Marvin himself, though reluctant to turn back, was filled with exultation that he had carried the Cornell colors to a point beyond the farthest north of Nansen and Abruzzi, and that, with the exception of Bartlett and myself, he alone of all white men had entered that exclusive region which stretches beyond 86° 34´ north latitude.
I shall always be glad that Marvin marched with me during those last few days. As we tramped along together we had discussed the plans for his trip to Cape Jesup, and his line of soundings from there northward; and as he turned back to the land his mind was glowing with hope for the future—the future which he was destined never to know. My last words to him were:
"Be careful of the leads, my boy!"
So we shook hands and parted in that desolate white waste, and Marvin set his face southward toward his death, and I turned again northward toward the Pole.
By an odd coincidence, soon after Marvin left us on his fatal journey from 86° 38´ back to land, the sun was obscured and a dull, lead-colored haze spread over all the sky. This grayness, in contrast to the dead white surface of the ice and snow and the strangely diffused quality of the light, gave an indescribable effect. It was a shadowless light and one in which it was impossible to see for any considerable distance.
That shadowless light is not unusual on the ice-fields of the polar sea; but this was the first occasion on which we had encountered it since leaving the land. One looking for the most perfect illustration of the arctic inferno would find it in that gray light. A more ghastly atmosphere could not have been imagined even by Dante himself—sky and ice seeming utterly wan and unreal.
Notwithstanding the fact that I had now passed the "farthest north" of all my predecessors and was approaching my own best record, with my eight companions, sixty dogs, and seven fully loaded sledges in far better condition than I had even dared to hope, the strange and melancholy light in which we traveled on this day of parting from Marvin gave me an indescribably uneasy feeling. Man in his egotism, fromthe most primitive ages to our own, has always imagined a sympathetic relationship between nature and the events and feelings of human life. So—in the light of later events—admitting that I felt a peculiar awe in contemplating the ghastly grayness of that day, I am expressing only an ineradicable instinct of the race to which I belong.
The first three-quarters of the march after Marvin turned back, on March 26, the trail was fortunately in a straight line, over large level snow-covered floes of varying height, surrounded by medium-rough old rafters of ice; and the last quarter was almost entirely over young ice averaging about one foot thick, broken and raftered, presenting a rugged and trying surface to travel over in the uncertain light. Without Bartlett's trail to follow, the march would have been even more difficult.
Near the end of the day we were again deflected to the west some distance by an open lead. Whenever the temperature rose as high as minus 15°, where it had stood at the beginning of the day, we were sure of encountering open water. But just before we reached the camp of Bartlett's pioneer division, the gray haze in which we had traveled all day lifted, and the sun came out clear and brilliant. The temperature had also dropped to minus 20°. Bartlett was just starting out again when I arrived, and we agreed that we had made a good fifteen miles in the last march.
The next day, March 27, was a brilliant dazzling day of arctic sunshine, the sky a glittering blue, and the ice a glittering white, which, but for the smoked goggles worn by every member of the party, would certainlyhave given some of us an attack of snow blindness. From the time when the reappearing sun of the arctic spring got well above the horizon, these goggles had been worn continuously.
The temperature during this march dropped from minus 30° to minus 40°, there was a biting northeasterly breeze, and the dogs traveled forward in their own white cloud of steam. On the polar ice we gladly hail the extreme cold, as higher temperatures and light snow always mean open water, danger, and delay. Of course, such minor incidents as frosted and bleeding cheeks and noses we reckon as part of the great game. Frosted heels and toes are far more serious, because they lessen a man's ability to travel, and traveling is what we are there for. Mere pain and inconvenience are inevitable, but, on the whole, inconsiderable.
This march was by far the hardest for some days. At first there was a continuation of the broken and raftered ice, sharp and jagged, that at times seemed almost to cut through our sealskin kamiks and hareskin stockings, to pierce our feet. Then we struck heavy rubble ice covered with deep snow, through which we had literally to plow our way, lifting and steadying the sledges until our muscles ached.
During the day we saw the tracks of two foxes in this remote and icy wilderness, nearly two hundred and forty nautical miles beyond the northern coast of Grant Land.
Finally we came upon Bartlett's camp in a maze of small pieces of very heavy old floes raftered in every direction. He had been in his igloo but a short time, and his men and dogs were tired out and temporarilydiscouraged by the heart-racking work of making a road.
I told him to take a good long sleep before getting under way again; and while my men were building the igloos, I lightened the loads of Bartlett's sledges about one hundred pounds, to put them in better trim for pioneering in this rough going. The added weight would be less burdensome on our own sledges than on his. Notwithstanding the crazy road over which we had traveled, this march netted us twelve good miles toward the goal.
We were now across the 87th parallel and into the region of perpetual daylight, as the sun had not set during the last march. The knowledge that we had crossed the 87th parallel with men and dogs in good condition, and plenty of supplies upon the sledges, sent me to sleep that night with a light heart. Only about six miles beyond this point, at 87° 6´, I had been obliged to turn back nearly three years before, with exhausted dogs, depleted supplies, and a heavy and discouraged heart. It seemed to me then that the story of my life was told and that the word failure was stamped across it.
Now, three years older, with three more years of the inevitable wear and tear of this inexorable game behind me, I stood again beyond the 87th parallel still reaching forward to that goal which had beckoned to me for so many years. Even now, on reaching my highest record with every prospect good, I dared not build too much on the chances of the white and treacherous ice which stretched one hundred and eighty nautical miles northward between me and the end. Ihad believed for years that this thing could be done and that it was my destiny to do it, but I always reminded myself that many a man had felt thus about some dearly wished achievement, only to fail in the end.
When I awoke the following day, March 28, the sky was brilliantly clear; but ahead of us there was a thick, smoky, ominous haze drifting low over the ice, and a bitter northeast wind, which, in the orthography of the Arctic, plainly spelled open water. Did this mean failure again? No man could say. Bartlett had, of course, left camp and taken to the trail again long before I and the men of my division were awake. This was in accordance with my general plan, previously outlined, that the pioneer division should be traveling while the main division slept, andvice versa, so that the two divisions might be in communication every day.
After traveling at a good rate for six hours along Bartlett's trail, we came upon his camp beside a wide lead, with a dense, black, watery sky to the northwest, north, and northeast, and beneath it the smoky fog which we had been facing all day long. In order not to disturb Bartlett, we camped a hundred yards distant, put up our igloos as quietly as possible, and turned in, after our usual supper of pemmican, biscuit, and tea. We had made some twelve miles over much better going than that of the last few marches and on a nearly direct line over large floes and young ice.
I was just dropping off to sleep when I heard the ice creaking and groaning close by the igloo, but as the commotion was not excessive, nor of long duration,I attributed it to the pressure from the closing of the lead which was just ahead of us; and after satisfying myself that my mittens were where I could get them instantly, in an emergency, I rolled over on my bed of deerskins and settled myself to sleep. I was just drowsing again when I heard some one yelling excitedly outside.
Leaping to my feet and looking through the peep-hole of our igloo, I was startled to see a broad lead of black water between our two igloos and Bartlett's, the nearer edge of water being close to our entrance; and on the opposite side of the lead stood one of Bartlett's men yelling and gesticulating with all the abandon of an excited and thoroughly frightened Eskimo.
Awakening my men, I kicked our snow door into fragments and was outside in a moment. The break in the ice had occurred within a foot of the fastening of one of my dog teams, the team escaping by just those few inches from being dragged into the water. Another team had just escaped being buried under a pressure ridge, the movement of the ice having providentially stopped after burying the bight which held their traces to the ice. Bartlett's igloo was moving east on the ice raft which had broken off, and beyond it, as far as the belching fog from the lead would let us see, there was nothing but black water. It looked as if the ice raft which carried Bartlett's division would impinge against our side a little farther on, and I shouted to his men to break camp and hitch up their dogs in a hurry, in readiness to rush across to us should the opportunity present itself.
Then I turned to consider our own position. Our two igloos, Henson's and mine, were on a small piece of old floe, separated by a crack and a low pressure ridge, a few yards away, from a large floe lying to the west of us. It was clear that it would take very little strain or pressure to detach us and set us afloat also like Bartlett's division.
I routed Henson and his men out of their igloo, gave orders to everybody to pack and hitch up immediately, and, while this was being done, leveled a path across the crack to the big floe at the west of us. This was done with a pickax, leveling the ice down into the crack, so as to make a continuous surface over which the sledges could pass. As soon as the loads were across and we were safe on the floe, we all went to the edge of the lead and stood ready to assist Bartlett's men in rushing their sledges across the moment their ice raft should touch our side.
Slowly the raft drifted nearer and nearer, until the side of it crunched against the floe. The two edges being fairly even, the raft lay alongside us as a boat lies against a wharf, and we had no trouble in getting Bartlett's men and sledges across and onto the floe with us.
Though there is always a possibility that a lead may open directly across a floe as large as this one, we could not waste our sleeping hours in sitting up to watch for it. Our former igloos being lost to us, there was nothing to do but to build another set and turn in immediately. It goes without saying that this extra work was not particularly agreeable. That night we slept with our mittens on, ready at a moment's noticefor anything that might happen. Had a new lead formed directly across the sleeping platform of our igloo, precipitating us into the icy water, we should not have been surprised after the first shock of the cold bath, but should have clambered out, scraping the water off our fur garments, and made ready for the next move on the part of our treacherous antagonist—the ice.
Notwithstanding the extra fatigue and the precarious position of our camp, this last march had put us well beyond my record of three years before, probably 87° 12´, so that I went to sleep with the satisfaction of having at last beaten my own record, no matter what the morrow might bring forth.
The following day, March 29, was not a happy one for us. Though we were all tired enough to rest, we did not enjoy picnicking beside this arctic Phlegethon, which, hour after hour, to the north, northeast, and northwest, seemed to belch black smoke like a prairie fire. So dense was this cloud caused by the condensation of the vapor and the reflection in it of the black water below that we could not see the other shore of the lead—if, indeed, it had a northern shore. As far as the evidence of our senses went, we might be encamped on the edge of that open polar sea which myth-makers have imagined as forever barring the way of man to the northern end of the earth's axis. It was heart-breaking, but there was nothing to do but wait. After breakfast we overhauled the sledges and made a few repairs, dried out some of our garments over the little oil lamps which we carried for that purpose, and Bartlett made a sounding of 1,260 fathoms, but found no bottom. He did not let all the line go out,fearing there might be a defect in the wire which would lose us more of it, as we were desirous of keeping all that we had for a sounding at our "farthest north," which we hoped would be at the Pole itself. I had only one sounding lead now left, and I would not let Bartlett risk it at this point, but had him use a pair of sledge shoes (brought along for this very purpose from the last broken up sledge) to carry the line down.
When our watches told us that it was bedtime—for we were now in the period of perpetual sunlight—we again turned into the igloos which had been hurriedly built after our exciting experience the night before. A low murmur as of distant surf was issuing from the blackness ahead of us, and steadily growing in volume. To the inexperienced it might have seemed an ominous sound, but to us it was a cheering thing because we knew it meant the narrowing, and perhaps the closing, of the stretch of open water that barred our way. So we slept happily in our frosty huts that "night."
Our hopes were soon realized, for at one o'clock in the morning, March 30, when I awoke and looked at my watch, the murmur from the closing lead had increased to a hoarse roar, punctuated with groans and with reports like those of rifles, dying away to the east and west like the sounds from a mighty firing line. Looking through the peep-hole, I saw that the black curtain had thinned so that I could see through it to another similar, though blacker, curtain behind, indicating still another lead further on.
CROSSING A LARGE LAKE OF YOUNG ICE, NORTH OF 87°CROSSING A LARGE LAKE OF YOUNG ICE, NORTH OF 87°
("As Level as a Floor" for Six or Seven Miles. In Places This Ice Was so Thin That It Buckled Under the Sledges and Drivers)
At eight o'clock in the morning the temperature was down to minus 30°, with a bitter northwest breeze. The grinding and groaning of the ice had ceased, and the smoke and haze had disappeared, as is usual when a lead closes up or freezes over. We rushed across before the ice should open again. All this day we traveled together, Bartlett's division, Henson's, and mine, constantly crossing narrow lanes of young ice, which had only recently been open water. During this march we had to cross a lake of young ice some six or seven miles across—so thin that the ice buckled under us as we rushed on at full speed for the other side. We did our best to make up for the previous day's delay, and when we finally camped on a heavy old floe we had made a good twenty miles.
The entire region through which we had come during the last four marches was full of unpleasant possibilities for the future. Only too well we knew that violent winds for even a few hours would set the ice all abroad in every direction. Crossing such a zone on a journey north, is only half the problem, for there is always the return to be figured on. Though the motto of the Arctic must be, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," we ardently hoped there might not be violent winds until we were south of this zone again on the return.
The next march was to be Bartlett's last, and he let himself out to do his best. The going was fairly good, but the weather was thick. There was a strong northerly wind blowing full in our faces, bitter and insistent, and the temperature was in the minus thirties. But this northerly wind, though hard to struggle against, was better than an easterly or westerly one, either of which would have set us adrift in open water, while, as it was, the wind was closing up every lead behind us and thus making things easier for Bartlett's supporting party on its return. True, the wind pressure was forcing to the south the ice over which we traveled, and thus losing us miles of distance; but the advantage of frozen leads was more than compensation for this loss.
So good was Bartlett's pace during the last half of the march that if I stopped an instant for any purpose I had to jump on a sledge or run, to catch up, and during the last few miles I walked beside Bartlett in advance. He was very sober and anxious to go further; but the program was for him to go backfrom here in command of the fourth supporting party, and we did not have supplies enough for an increase in the main party. The food which he and his two Eskimos and dog teams would have consumed between this point and the Pole, on the upward and return journeys, might mean that we would all starve before we could reach the land again.
Had it been clear we should undoubtedly have covered twenty-five miles in this march; but it is difficult to break a trail in thick weather as rapidly as in clear, and this day netted us only twenty miles. We knew that if we were not on or close to the 88th parallel at the end of this march, it would be because the northern winds of the past two days had set the ice south, crushing up the young ice in the leads between us and the land.
The sun came out just as we were preparing to camp, and it looked as if we should have clear weather the next day for Bartlett's meridian observations at his "farthest north."
When our igloos were built, I told the two Eskimos,Keshungwahand Karko, that they were to go back with the captain the next day; so they could get their clothes as dry as possible, as they probably would not have time to dry them on the forced march home. Bartlett was to return with these two Eskimos, one sledge, and eighteen dogs.
After about four hours' sleep, I turned everyone out at five o'clock in the morning. The wind had blown violently from the north all night, and still continued.
After breakfast Bartlett started to walk five orsix miles to the north in order to make sure of reaching the 88th parallel. On his return he was to take a meridian observation to determine our position. While he was gone I culled the best dogs from his teams, replacing them with the poorer dogs from the teams of the main party. The dogs were on the whole in very good condition, far better than on any of my previous expeditions. I had been throwing the brunt of the dragging on the poorest dogs, those that I judged were going to fail, so as to keep the best dogs fresh for the final spurt.
My theory was to work the supporting parties to the limit, in order to keep the main party fresh; and those men who I expected from the beginning would form the main party at the last had things made as easy as possible for them all the way up. Ootah, Henson and Egingwah were in this group. Whenever I could do so I had eased their loads for them, giving them the best dogs, and keeping the poorest dogs with the teams of those Eskimos who I knew were going back. It was a part of the deliberate plan to work the supporting parties as hard as possible, in order to keep the main party fresh up to the farthest possible point.
From the beginning there were certain Eskimos who, I knew, barring some unforeseen accident, would go to the Pole with me. There were others who were assigned not to go anywhere near there, and others who were available for either course. If any accidents occurred to those men whom I had originally chosen, I planned to fill their places with the next best ones who were all willing to go.
On Bartlett's return the Eskimos built the usualwind shelter already described, and Bartlett took a latitude observation, getting 87° 46´ 49´´.
Bartlett was naturally much disappointed to find that even with his five-mile northward march of the morning he was still short of the 88th parallel. Our latitude was the direct result of the northerly wind of the last two days, which had crowded the ice southward as we traveled over it northward. We had traveled fully twelve miles more than his observation showed in the last five marches, but had lost them by the crushing up of the young ice in our rear and the closing of the leads.
Bartlett took the observations here, as had Marvin five camps back partly to save my eyes and partly to have independent observations by different members of the expedition. When the calculations were completed, two copies were made, one for Bartlett and one for me, and he got ready to start south on the back trail in command of my fourth supporting party, with his two Eskimos, one sledge, and eighteen dogs.
I felt a keen regret as I saw the captain's broad shoulders grow smaller in the distance and finally disappear behind the ice hummocks of the white and glittering expanse toward the south. But it was no time for reverie, and I turned abruptly away and gave my attention to the work which was before me. I had no anxiety about Bartlett. I knew that I should see him again at the ship. My work was still ahead, not in the rear. Bartlett had been invaluable to me, and circumstances had thrust upon him the brunt of the pioneering instead of its being divided among several, as I had originally planned.
Though he was naturally disappointed at not having reached the 88th parallel, he had every reason to be proud, not only of his work in general, but that he had surpassed the Italian record by a degree and a quarter. I had given him the post of honor in command of my last supporting party for three reasons: first, because of his magnificent handling of theRoosevelt; second, because he had cheerfully and gladly stood between me and every possible minor annoyance from the start of the expedition to that day; third, because it seemed to me right that, in view of the noble work of Great Britain in arctic exploration, a British subject should, next to an American, be able to say that he had stood nearest the North Pole.
With the departure of Bartlett, the main party now consisted of my own division and Henson's. My men were Egingwah and Seegloo; Henson's men were Ootah and Ooqueah. We had five sledges and forty dogs, the pick of one hundred and forty with which we had left the ship. With these we were ready now for the final lap of the journey.
We were now one hundred and thirty-three nautical miles from the Pole. Pacing back and forth in the lee of the pressure ridge near which our igloos were built, I made out my program. Every nerve must be strained to make five marches of at least twenty-five miles each, crowding these marches in such a way as to bring us to the end of the fifth march by noon, to permit an immediate latitude observation. Weather and leads permitting, I believed that I could do this. From the improving character of the ice, and in view of the recent northerlywinds, I hoped that I should have no serious trouble with the going.
If for any reason I fell short of these proposed distances, I had two methods in reserve for making up the deficit. One was to double the last march—that is, make a good march, have tea and a hearty lunch, rest the dogs a little, and then go on again, without sleep. The other was, at the conclusion of my fifth march, to push on with one light sledge, a double team of dogs, and one or two of the party, leaving the rest in camp. Even should the going be worse than was then anticipated, eight marches like the three from 85° 48´ to 86° 38´, or six similar to our last one, would do the trick.
CAMP AT 85° 48´ NORTH, MARCH 22, 1909CAMP AT 85° 48´ NORTH, MARCH 22, 1909
Underlying all these calculations was the ever-present knowledge that a twenty-fours' gale would open leads of water which might be impassable, and that all these plans would be negatived.
As I paced to and fro, making out my plans, I remembered that three years ago that day we had crossed the "big lead" on our way north, April 1, 1906. A comparison of conditions now and then filled me with hope for the future.
This was the time for which I had reserved all my energies, the time for which I had worked for twenty-two years, for which I had lived the simple life and trained myself as for a race. In spite of my years, I felt fit for the demands of the coming days and was eager to be on the trail. As for my party, my equipment, and my supplies, they were perfect beyond my most sanguine dreams of earlier years. My party might be regarded as an ideal which had now come torealization—as loyal and responsive to my will as the fingers of my right hand.
My four Eskimos carried the technic of dogs, sledges, ice, and cold as their racial heritage. Henson and Ootah had been my companions at the farthest point on the expedition three years before. Egingwah and Seegloo had been in Clark's division, which had such a narrow escape at that time, having been obliged for several days to subsist upon their sealskin boots, all their other food being gone.
And the fifth was young Ooqueah, who had never before served in any expedition; but who was, if possible, even more willing and eager than the others to go with me wherever I should elect. For he was always thinking of the great treasures which I had promised each of the men who should go to the farthest point with me—whale-boat, rifle, shotgun, ammunition, knives, et cetera—wealth beyond the wildest dreams of Eskimos, which should win for him the daughter of oldIkwahof Cape York, on whom he had set his heart.
All these men had a blind confidence that I would somehow get them back to land. But I recognized fully that all the impetus of the party centered in me. Whatever pace I set, the others would make good; but if I played out, they would stop like a car with a punctured tire. I had no fault to find with the conditions, and I faced them with confidence.
At this time it may be appropriate to say a word regarding my reasons for selecting Henson as my fellow traveler to the Pole itself. In this selection I acted exactly as I have done on all my expeditions for the last fifteen years. He has in those years always been with me at my point farthest north. Moreover, Henson was the best man I had with me for this kind of work, with the exception of the Eskimos, who, with their racial inheritance of ice technic and their ability to handle sledges and dogs, were more necessary to me, as members of my own individual party, than any white man could have been. Of course they could not lead, but they could follow and drive dogs better than any white man.
Henson, with his years of arctic experience, was almost as skilful at this work as an Eskimo. He could handle dogs and sledges. He was a part of the traveling machine. Had I taken another member of the expedition also, he would have been a passenger, necessitating the carrying of extra rations and other impedimenta. It would have amounted to an additional load on the sledges, while the taking of Henson was in the interest of economy of weight.
The second reason was that while Henson was more useful to me than any other member of my expeditionwhen it came to traveling with my last party over the polar ice, he would not have been so competent as the white members of the expedition in getting himself and his party back to the land. If Henson had been sent back with one of the supporting parties from a distance far out on the ice, and if he had encountered conditions similar to those which we had to face on the return journey in 1906, he and his party would never have reached the land. While faithful to me, and whenwith memore effective in covering distance with a sledge than any of the others, he had not, as a racial inheritance, the daring and initiative of Bartlett, or Marvin, MacMillan, or Borup. I owed it to him not to subject him to dangers and responsibilities which he was temperamentally unfit to face.
As to the dogs, most of them were powerful males, as hard as iron, in good condition, but without an ounce of superfluous fat; and, by reason of the care which I had taken of them up to this point, they were all in good spirits, like the men. The sledges, which were being repaired that day, were also in good condition. My food and fuel supplies were ample for forty days, and by the gradual utilization of the dogs themselves for reserve food, might be made to last for fifty days if it came to a pinch.
As the Eskimos worked away at repairing the sledges while we rested there on the first day of April, they stopped from time to time to eat some of the boiled dog which the surplus numbers in Bartlett's returning team had enabled them to have. They had killed one of the poorest dogs and boiled it, using the splinters of an extra broken sledge for fuel under theircooker. It was a change for them from the pemmican diet. It was fresh meat, it was hot, and they seemed thoroughly to enjoy it. But though I remembered many times when from sheer starvation I had been glad to eat dog meat raw, I did not feel inclined to join in the feast of my dusky friends.
A little after midnight, on the morning of April 2, after a few hours of sound, warm, and refreshing sleep, and a hearty breakfast, I started to lift the trail to the north, leaving the others to pack, hitch up, and follow. As I climbed the pressure ridge back of our igloo, I took up another hole in my belt, the third since I left the land—thirty-two days before. Every man and dog of us was as lean and flat-bellied as a board, and as hard.
Up to this time I had intentionally kept in the rear, to straighten out any little hitch or to encourage a man with a broken sledge, and to see that everything was in good marching order. Now I took my proper place in the lead. Though I held myself in check, I felt the keenest exhilaration, and even exultation, as I climbed over the pressure ridge and breasted the keen air sweeping over the mighty ice, pure and straight from the Pole itself.
These feelings were not in any way dampened when I plunged off the pressure ridge into water mid-thigh deep, where the pressure had forced down the edge of the floe north of us and had allowed the water to flow in under the surface snow. My boots and trousers were tight, so that no water could get inside, and as the water froze on the fur of my trousers I scraped it off with the blade of the ice lance which I carried, andwas no worse for my involuntary morning plunge. I thought of my unused bath tub on theRoosevelt, three hundred and thirty nautical miles to the south, and smiled.
It was a fine marching morning, clear and sunlit, with a temperature of minus 25°, and the wind of the past few days had subsided to a gentle breeze. The going was the best we had had since leaving the land. The floes were large and old, hard and level, with patches of sapphire blue ice (the pools of the preceding summer). While the pressure ridges surrounding them were stupendous, some of them fifty feet high, they were not especially hard to negotiate, either through some gap or up the gradual slope of a huge drift of snow. The brilliant sunlight, the good going save for the pressure ridges, the consciousness that we were now well started on the last lap of our journey, and the joy of again being in the lead affected me like wine. The years seemed to drop from me, and I felt as I had felt in those days fifteen years before, when I headed my little party across the great ice-cap of Greenland, leaving twenty and twenty-five miles behind my snowshoes day after day, and on a spurt stretching it to thirty or forty.
Perhaps a man always thinks of the very beginning of his work when he feels it is nearing its end. The appearance of the ice-fields to the north this day, large and level, the brilliant blue of the sky, the biting character of the wind—everything excepting the surface of the ice, which on the great cap is absolutelydead level with a straight line for a horizon—reminded me of those marches of the long ago.
The most marked difference was the shadows, which on the ice-cap are absent entirely, but on the polar ice, where the great pressure ridges stand out in bold relief, are deep and dark. Then, too, there are on the polar ice those little patches of sapphire blue already mentioned, made from the water pools of the preceding summer. On the Greenland ice-cap years ago I had been spurred on by the necessity of reaching the musk-oxen of Independence Bay before my supplies gave out. Now I was spurred on by the necessity of making my goal, if possible, before the round face of the coming full moon should stir the tides with unrest and open a network of leads across our path.
After some hours the sledges caught up with me. The dogs were so active that morning, after their day's rest, that I was frequently obliged to sit on a sledge for a few minutes or else run to keep up with them, which I did not care to do just yet. Our course was nearly, as the crow flies, due north, across floe after floe, pressure ridge after pressure ridge, headed straight for some hummock or pinnacle of ice which I had lined in with my compass.
In this way we traveled for ten hours without stopping, covering, I felt sure, thirty miles, though, to be conservative, I called it twenty-five. My Eskimos said that we had come as far as from theRooseveltto Porter Bay, which by our winter route scales thirty-five miles on the chart. Anyway, we were well over the 88th parallel, in a region where no human being had ever been before. And whatever distance wemade, we were likely to retain it now that the wind had ceased to blow from the north. It was even possible that with the release of the wind pressure the ice might rebound more or less and return us some of the hard-earned miles which it had stolen from us during the previous three days.
Near the end of the march I came upon a lead which was just opening. It was ten yards wide directly in front of me, but a few hundred yards to the east was an apparently practicable crossing where the single crack was divided into several. I signaled to the sledges to hurry; then, running to the place, I had time to pick a road across the moving ice cakes and return to help the teams across before the lead widened so as to be impassable. This passage was effected by my jumping from one cake to another, picking the way, and making sure that the cake would not tilt under the weight of the dogs and the sledge, returning to the former cake where the dogs were, encouraging the dogs ahead while the driver steered the sledge across from cake to cake, and threw his weight from one side to the other so that it could not overturn. We got the sledges across several cracks so wide that while the dogs had no trouble in jumping, the men had to be pretty active in order to follow the long sledges. Fortunately the sledges were of the new Peary type, twelve feet long. Had they been of the old Eskimo type, seven feet long, we might have had to use ropes and pull them across hand over hand on an ice cake.
It is always hard to make the dogs leap a widening crack, though some of the best dog drivers can do it instantly, using the whip and the voice. A poor dogdriver would be likely to get everything into the water in the attempt. It is sometimes necessary to go ahead of the dogs, holding the hand low and shaking it as though it contained some dainty morsel of food, thus inspiring them with courage for the leap.
Perhaps a mile beyond this, the breaking of the ice at the edge of a narrow lead as I landed from a jump sent me into the water nearly to my hips; but as the water did not come above the waistband of my trousers, which were water-tight, it was soon scraped and beaten off before it had time to freeze.
This lead was not wide enough to bother the sledges.
As we stopped to make our camp near a huge pressure ridge, the sun, which was gradually getting higher, seemed almost to have some warmth. While we were building our igloos, we could see, by the water clouds lying to the east and southeast of us some miles distant, that a wide lead was opening in that direction. The approaching full moon was evidently getting in its work.
As we had traveled on, the moon had circled round and round the heavens opposite the sun, a disk of silver opposite a disk of gold. Looking at its pallid and spectral face, from which the brighter light of the sun had stolen the color, it seemed hard to realize that its presence there had power to stir the great ice-fields around us with restlessness—power even now, when we were so near our goal, to interrupt our pathway with an impassable lead.
The moon had been our friend during the long winter, giving us light to hunt by for a week or two eachmonth. Now it seemed no longer a friend, but a dangerous presence to be regarded with fear. Its power, which had before been beneficent, was now malevolent and incalculably potent for evil.
When we awoke early in the morning of April 3, after a few hours' sleep, we found the weather still clear and calm. There were some broad heavy pressure ridges in the beginning of this march, and we had to use pickaxes quite freely. This delayed us a little, but as soon as we struck the level old floes we tried to make up for lost time. As the daylight was now continuous we could travel as long as we pleased and sleep as little as we must. We hustled along for ten hours again, as we had before, making only twenty miles, because of the early delay with the pickaxes and another brief delay at a narrow lead. We were now half-way to the 89th parallel, and I had been obliged to take up another hole in my belt.
Some gigantic rafters were seen during this march, but they were not in our path. All day long we had heard the ice grinding and groaning on all sides of us, but no motion was visible to our eyes. Either the ice was slacking back into equilibrium, sagging northward after its release from the wind pressure, or else it was feeling the influence of the spring tides of the full moon. On, on we pushed, and I am not ashamed to confess that my pulse beat high, for the breath of success seemed already in my nostrils.
With every passing day even the Eskimos were becoming more eager and interested, notwithstanding the fatigue of the long marches. As we stopped to make camp, they would climb to some pinnacle of ice and strain their eyes to the north, wondering if the Pole was in sight, for they were now certain that we should get there this time.
We slept only a few hours the next night, hitting the trail again a little before midnight between the 3d and 4th of April. The weather and the going were even better than the day before. The surface of the ice, except as interrupted by infrequent pressure ridges, was as level as the glacial fringe from Hecla to Cape Columbia, and harder. I rejoiced at the thought that if the weather held good I should be able to get in my five marches before noon of the 6th.
Again we traveled for ten hours straight ahead, the dogs often on the trot and occasionally on the run, and in those ten hours we reeled off at least twenty-five miles. I had a slight accident that day, a sledge runner having passed over the side of my right foot as I stumbled while running beside a team; but the hurt was not severe enough to keep me from traveling.
Near the end of the day we crossed a lead about one hundred yards wide, on young ice so thin that, as I ran ahead to guide the dogs, I was obliged to slide my feet and travel wide, bear style, in order to distribute my weight, while the men let the sledges and dogs come over by themselves, gliding across where they could. The last two men came over on all fours.
I watched them from the other side with my heart in my mouth—watched the ice bending under the weight of the sledges and the men. As one of the sledges neared the north side, a runner cut clear through the ice, and I expected every moment that the whole thing, dogs and all, would go through the ice and down to the bottom. But it did not.
This dash reminded me of that day, nearly three years before, when in order to save our lives we had taken desperate chances in recrossing the "Big Lead" on ice similar to this—ice that buckled under us and through which my toe cut several times as I slid my long snowshoes over it. A man who should wait for the ice to be really safe would stand small chance of getting far in these latitudes. Traveling on the polar ice, one takes all kinds of chances. Often a man has the choice between the possibility of drowning by going on or starving to death by standing still, and challenges fate with the briefer and less painful chance.
That night we were all pretty tired, but satisfied with our progress so far. We were almost inside of the 89th parallel, and I wrote in my diary: "Give me three more days of this weather!" The temperature at the beginning of the march had been minus 40°. That night I put all the poorest dogs in one team and began to eliminate and feed them to the others, as it became necessary.
We stopped for only a short sleep, and early in the evening of the same day, the 4th, we struck on again. The temperature was then minus 35°, the going was the same, but the sledges always haul more easily when the temperature rises, and the dogs were on the trot much of the time. Toward the end of the march we came upon a lead running north and south, and as the young ice was thick enough to support the teams, we traveled on it for two hours, the dogs galloping along and reeling off the miles in a way that delighted my heart. The light air which had blown from the south during the first few hours of the march veered to the east and grew keener as the hours wore on.
I had not dared to hope for such progress as we were making. Still the biting cold would have been impossible to face by anyone not fortified by an inflexible purpose. The bitter wind burned our faces so that they cracked, and long after we got into camp each day they pained us so that we could hardly go to sleep. The Eskimos complained much, and at every camp fixed their fur clothing about their faces, waists, knees, and wrists. They also complained of their noses, which I had never known them to do before. The air was as keen and bitter as frozen steel.
At the next camp I had another of the dogs killed. It was now exactly six weeks since we left theRoosevelt, and I felt as if the goal were in sight. I intended the next day, weather and ice permitting, to make a long march, "boil the kettle" midway, and then goon again without sleep, trying to make up the five miles which we had lost on the 3d of April.
During the daily march my mind and body were too busy with the problem of covering as many miles of distance as possible to permit me to enjoy the beauty of the frozen wilderness through which we tramped. But at the end of the day's march, while the igloos were being built, I usually had a few minutes in which to look about me and to realize the picturesqueness of our situation—we, the only living things in a trackless, colorless, inhospitable desert of ice. Nothing but the hostile ice, and far more hostile icy water, lay between our remote place on the world's map and the utmost tips of the lands of Mother Earth.
I knew of course that there was always apossibilitythat we might still end our lives up there, and that our conquest of the unknown spaces and silences of the polar void might remain forever unknown to the world which we had left behind. But it was hard to realize this. That hope which is said to spring eternal in the human breast always buoyed me up with the belief that, as a matter of course, we should be able to return along the white road by which we had come.
Sometimes I would climb to the top of a pinnacle of ice to the north of our camp and strain my eyes into the whiteness which lay beyond, trying to imagine myself already at the Pole. We had come so far, and the capricious ice had placed so few obstructions in our path, that now I dared to loose my fancy, to entertain the image which my will had heretofore forbidden to my imagination—the image of ourselves at the goal.
We had been very fortunate with the leads so far, but I was in constant and increasing dread lest we should encounter an impassable one toward the very end. With every successive march, my fear of such impassable leads had increased. At every pressure ridge I found myself hurrying breathlessly forward, fearing there might be a lead just beyond it, and when I arrived at the summit I would catch my breath with relief—only to find myself hurrying on in the same way at the next ridge.
At our camp on the 5th of April I gave the party a little more sleep than at the previous ones, as we were all pretty well played out and in need of rest. I took a latitude sight, and this indicated our position to be 89° 25´, or thirty-five miles from the Pole; but I determined to make the next camp in time for a noon observation, if the sun should be visible.